In Trump’s Washington, a Moscow-Like Chill Takes Hold

I asked many questions that the president did not like. I reported a lot about his administration’s criticism. Thus, a long time ago, Yeena Tregubova was It was removed from the Kremlin swimming pool That covered President Vladimir F. Putin from Russia.
In the scheme of things, it was a small moment, but she forgot about 25 years later. But it was also one. Mr. Putin did not care about the challenges. The rest of the press group obtained the message and in the end what the Kremlin wanted to be: a group of corresponding correspondents who knew to collide the line, otherwise they would pay price.
President Trump team decision HandPick, which news institutions can participate in the White House press group This is asked in the Oval Office or travels with him on Air Force One is a step in a direction that no modern American president has taken for either party at all. The White House said it is a privilege, not really, in this arrival, and that it wants to open a space for the “new media” ports, including those that occur to support Mr. Trump.
But after the White House decision The suschid prohibited Press As a punishment for its coverage, the message is clear: any journalist can be expelled from the complex at any time for any reason. There are worse penalties, as Mrs. Tregubova later discovers, but in Moscow, at least, her evacuation was a very early slope.
The United States is not Russia in any means, and any comparisons are very far risks. Russia barely had any history with democracy at the time, while American institutions have endured nearly 250 years. But for those of us who have informed there a quarter of a century ago, Mr. Trump Washington brings back the memories of Mr. Putin Moscow in the early days.
The media is pressed. The lawmakers have been tamed. Justice officials who consider not linking are launched. The general prosecutors are targeted by the head of the promise of “revenge” with the perceived opponents and the dropping of cases against the allies or others who make its presentation. The billionaire is one of its heroes, who considered themselves the professors of the universe prostrating themselves in front of him.
Referees who temporarily prevent administration decisions believe that it may be illegal Accountable. The unified army, which resisted its use as a political tool in Mr. Trump’s first state, was now Cleansing And lawyers. And a president calls himself “the king ,” Outwardly, in Jest, it is upset that he might try to do so Stay in power Beyond the limits of the constitution.
Some versions of this are not new, of course. Other presidents have taken action that seemed heavy or pressed the opponents. There was no president in my experience in the White House, which dates back to 1996, especially his news coverage, and certainly there were times in which journalists punished their reports.
After an article on whether Vice President Dick Cheney may be dropped from his re -election ticket in 2004, the New York Times found this He no longer has a seat in the second air force. President Barack Obama team tried to exclude Fox News from briefing on other networks, just to retreat when Stop the rest of the Press Corps with the fox. The employees of President Joseph R. Biden Junior cuts the time from the email distribution menu as punishment at one point.
But those relatively conflicts were not like what is happening now. The acquisition of the White House of the pool – a rotating group of about 13 reporters, photographers, and technicians, is given close to the president so that they can submit reports to their colleagues – in the way the president was covered over generations.
The alarm was felt by the media through the spectrum. Just as other networks supported Fox against the Obama administration, Fox support for Associated Press Against the White House Trump and his White House correspondent criticized the pool acquisition. The precedent that is now appointed can be used by a future democracy administration against the media that was invalid.
On Wednesday, a day after Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, announced the acquisition, which was not included AP or Reuters, which are the basis of the White House press weapon for decades, in the complex. Newsmax and The Blaze, two conservative ports, were invited to take their places.
The rest of the broadcasting networks remained, as did other traditional organizations such as Bloomberg and NPR. The complex got an opportunity to ask Mr. Trump and his billionaire sponsors Elon Musk at the top of the cabinet meeting for about an hour, according to the White House aides, that they do not protect him from scrutiny.
“There is no longer a selection of journalists who take from the capital, monopolizing the privilege of reaching the press at the White House,” said Ms. Levitte when she revealed the acquisition. “All journalists, ports and sounds deserve a seat in this very desirable table. Therefore, by identifying the ports that make up the limited press group on a daily basis, the White House will return energy to the American people.”
This step, of course, “does not return strength to people – it gives power to the White House”, such as Jacoy Heinrich, the Great White House correspondent in Fox, Put it on social media. Mrs. Heinrich, who is sitting at the Board of Directors of the White House Representatives Association, which traditionally decided to support billiards, said that the group has long welcomed new voices.
All this happens against the background of a major shift in foreign policy, where Mr. Trump burns from Ukraine and towards Mr. Putin Russia. In recent days, he has Blame Ukraine Russia’s full invasion of information technology in 2022. It also called its popular president, Volodimir Zelinski, a “A dictator without elections”, With no blame words to Russia or Mr. Putin. “He is a very smart man,” said Mr. Trump on Wednesday. “He is a very cunning person.”
Yevgenia Albats, a leading Russian journalist who had to flee her country at the threat of detention after the invasion of 2022, said that developments in Washington over the past five weeks are similar to the first days of Mr. Putin’s era.
“The few who accept the ring, lawsuits against the media, and the restrictions that the media should be in the pond of the White House, which is not – everything that seems familiar.”
But she confirmed that, unlike Russia, the United States remains a nation with important checks and balances, regardless of its disruption. “There is a big difference,” she said. “You have a work and independent, and we did not do that. This is the hell of the difference.”
and This comparison with Moscow, Mr. Putin Mr. Trump’s camp strikes it as “hysterical”, ” As Ms. Levitt explained on the InternetThe likeness of too much by a left elite of the left elite that its privileges have faced a challenge by a president who “changes the need for it in an outdated organization.”
Russia was a place in a transition when my wife and I first arrived in Moscow in March 2000 to help cover Mr. Putin’s first elections and later returned at the end of the year to spend a four -year period. The emerging democracy established by President Boris N. Yeltin and hand it to Mr. Putin is very flawed, corrupt and increasingly decorated in the eyes of the audience.
The economic turmoil has cost millions of Russians the savings of their lives and their sense of safety, which means that many of the word equal in the word “democracy” by chaos and theft. But in those early days when Mr. Putin took over, he was still a relatively open and vibrant political environment, as opinions ranged on the series and were expressed freely and actively.
Mr. Putin, on the pretext that a steady hand is needed to restore the regime, moved to systematically unifying power, and creating what his “managed democracy” advisors called. He took not only the Kremlin Press group, but also used lawsuits to control one major independent television network. He toppled Western parties from Parliament and canceled the election of the conservatives so that they could appoint them himself.
Perhaps more importantly, Mr. Putin put the law with the oligarshin who were ever prepared and who became very dominant during the nineties, and promised to allow them to preserve their wealth and companies often as long as they did not challenge it. Those who ignored that dictations were arrested or expelled from the country and their actions that took over. “I control every person myself.”.
By the time we left in late 2004, Moscow turned. People who spoke with us happily at first were now afraid to restore our calls. “Now I have this fear all the time,” one of them told us at the time.
There is a cold similar now in Washington. Every day a person used to hesitate to speak publicly against Mr. Trump says that he will not allow journalists to replace them with name for fear of the repercussions, both Democrats and Republicans.
They are concerned about the FBI headed An advertiser of party warrior Which already developed it is a list of enemies. They are afraid that their frankness may harm family members who work for the government. They are a gambling that if they are low, they may be forgotten.
After all, this is the administration that stripped the details of security and resources from the former officials who turned the president and shot the people who were associated with investigations into Mr. Trump or his allies.
Chief Federal Public Prosecutor in Washington Send messages to two members of the Democrats Their interrogation about public comments is that incitement to violence is considered. At the same time, his office is running Purification of lawyers who sued Trump supporters Those who have already committed violence on January 6, 2021.
In Russia, it was eventually a darker path. Mrs. Tregubova continued to write a book that highlights everything angered the Kremlin. One day, A bomb exploded Outside her apartment, she later escaped in the country. In the following years, independent journalists were expelled, arrested, poisoned, or even killed. So, others were considered enemies for people, and the most famous opposition leaders Boris Y. Nimtzv, which was Release In the shadow of the Kremlin, and Alexei a. Navalney, who He died.
Again, America is not Russia. History there is very chef and complex. Certainly, many Russian journalists still live in Washington more these days than Moscow, and they are confident that America’s tradition in the free press and democratic ideals are still much stronger than what was present at home.
But in decades of reporting in Washington, during the era of Republicans and Democrats, he never felt this way.