![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nortonspeaks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/trump-HEIL.jpg?resize=150%2C150\")
<\/p>\n
The Homeland Security Department of the Donald Trump administration has revealed that it\u2019s putting together a plan to monitor U.S. journalists, bloggers, and media influencers, presumably to track and intimidate those whose coverage of Trump is negative. Homeland Security\u2019s job is supposed to be keeping the U.S. safe from things like terrorist attacks, which means that the Trump administration now officially views the free press as something akin to terrorism. That\u2019s scary \u2013 but it doesn\u2019t scare me.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
From the start, Donald Trump and his administration have taken an overtly hostile and almost cartoonishly evil stance toward the free press. And frankly, why wouldn\u2019t they? Trump and his co-conspirators won the election by illegally conspiring with foreign enemies; if you\u2019re going to go that far to secure power, you\u2019re not going to think twice about persecuting those who try to expose your criminal antics. Because of what I do for a living, I\u2019ve always assumed that I\u2019m on some Trump administration watch list or other, and that other political journalists like me are as well. Frankly, I\u2019m surprised if it took Trump\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0long.<\/h4>\n <\/p>\n
In fact, come to think of it, this doesn\u2019t feel like Trump and his people confidently cracking down on the free press. Instead it feels like a last ditch desperation move. The key here is that they\u2019ve\u00a0revealed<\/em>\u00a0this tracking and monitoring system. Credit goes to Bloomberg Law for writing the\u00a0defining expose<\/a>\u00a0on it, but this Homeland Security plan is sitting in plain sight on the FBI website. There\u2019s no real attempt at putting this database together under the radar. They wanted the media to find it. They\u2019re trying to scare us off.<\/h4>\n <\/p>\n
That\u2019s because, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller comes closer to taking down Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for their crimes, and as the free press continues to help Mueller by exposing some things that he may not have already known about, Trump and his people are more desperate than ever. This is a truly and profoundly scary development, and one that reminds us of just how far the failing Trump regime will be willing to go in its desperate final throes. But it doesn\u2019t scare\u00a0me<\/em>. Trump is not going to intimidate me out of covering his criminal scandals. I doubt this will scare off many in the journalistic community. If anything, it\u2019ll prompt the free press to work even harder at exposing Trump\u2019s criminal behavior, so we can be done with him, and get back to being America.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sorry, Donald Trump, you\u2019re not going to intimidate me out of covering your criminal antics Special Guest Writer:\u00a0\u00a0Bill Palmer\u00a0|\u00a08:12 pm EDT April 6, 2018 The Homeland Security Department of the Donald Trump administration has revealed that it\u2019s putting together a plan to monitor U.S. journalists, bloggers, and media influencers, presumably to track and intimidate those…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[54,49,36,33,62],"class_list":["entry","author-larrynorton","post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-updates","tag-corrupt-trump","tag-democracy","tag-election-2016","tag-politics","tag-trump-organization-fail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nortonspeaks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Logomakr_9Av71k.png?fit=201%2C234","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bppg-cS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n