Last week Republican candidate Greg Gianforte won the Montana special election for the U.S. House of Representatives. His win came after he allegedly body-slammed Ben Jacobs, a journalist for The Guardian, who asked about his stance on the issue of health care.

The Washington Post seems to believe that Gianforte’s body-slam incident is a precursor to an all-out war on the American press. Not content to just criticize Mr. Gianforte for his allegedly inappropriate conduct, The Washington Post had to take it a step further. The Post states:

It is clear that the threat to journalists in the United States has escalated to a stage beyond angry rhetoric. That’s troubling enough for America, but what’s at stake is not just the rights of journalists in this country but also press freedom as a global value. When Trump calls the media the “enemy of the American people,” he provides fodder for dictators around the world to justify their own press abuses.

How shocking! Mr. Gianforte’s actions are all President Trump’s fault. It’s all a part of his insidious scheme to wage war on the free press of the United States. Because of this, despicable dictators all over the world will feel empowered to silence media opposition. Of course, The Washington Post makes no mention of the fact that corrupt leaders have always sought to silence opposing voices. They never needed Mr. Trump to justify their actions.

While the author of this piece condemns the president for his combative approach to the establishment media, he is remarkably silent on the fact that the Obama administration was blatantly hostile to news outlets that did not properly adore him. In 2013, Obama’s Justice Department obtained the phone records of reporters working for the Associated Press. In the same year, they targeted Fox News reporter James Rosen and labeled him a “probable co-conspirator” in a criminal spying case. They seized his phone records as well. The Obama administration even went international in their campaign against the press when the NSA surveilled journalists working with Der Spiegel. The Washington Post claims that President Trump’s rhetoric indicates a widespread effort to silence the press when the Obama administration’s actions were examples of actual attacks on the news media. The Washington Post also states:

The experience of countries that have seen a serious and rapid decline in press freedom — from Mexico to Ethiopia, Russia and Turkey — shows that the process proceeds in stages, with the media first being delegitimized and undermined. The United States has reached a juncture in which critical questions must be asked: How much do we as a society value freedom of the press? How energetically are we willing to fight for it?

Since they cannot name any concrete example of President Trump stifling journalists, they must portray his criticisms as incremental steps towards restricting the freedom of the press. This is yet another example of the media claiming victimhood because the president is willing to call them out for their biased reporting. While they attempt to position themselves as the ultimate bastion of truth, the American public sees through the charade. Americans no longer trust the establishment news media – and for a good reason.

The author of The Washington Post article ignores the fact that the establishment media is unfairly biased against conservatives, and has been for decades. They spin their stories to promote the left’s agenda. The real problem is that they do not seek to inform the American public – they wish to influence our thinking. They masquerade as objective purveyors of the news when, in reality, they are nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. The Trump administration has not delegitimized the press – they have delegitimized themselves.