From Redford to Trump

Not all journalists are honest and all media outlets make mistakes and have biases, but when you read that Trump has sued The New York Times for defamation and asks for 15 billion dollars, you know you're on the right side of history, to put it with the expression that is being used these days until it is spent.

Trump slept last night in Windsor Castle as if he were a king, in the first of the three days of throat depression that the British government has prepared for the American president, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Netanyahu, but before leaving Washington he has filed a complaint against the most influential newspaper in the world. Nothing new: seeking the civil or economic death of those who criticize him is the way Trump usually relates to his neighbors.

The complaint has coincided with the death of Robert Redford, of whom I remember, for obvious reasons, the role of the journalist Bob Woodward in All the President's Men, the reenactment of the Watergate scandal, which ended with the resignation of President Nixon (the first and, for the moment, last in the history of the United States) in 1974. The case established that the president was not free to do whatever he wanted, no matter how much he invoked national security needs, because he was not above the law. It was a moral triumph of American life and a success of journalism understood as an oversight agent of executive power, at a time when the press held a monopoly on broadcasting. This is also at stake now, not only because anyone can be a broadcaster, but because Trump and his apprentices delight in persecuting critics, as dictatorships do with dissidents. And this is a triumph of immorality.