https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-authoritarians-like-trump-orban-5feHow #
Authoritarians Like #
Trump, #
Orbán, & #
Putin Take Down a Free #
PressTrump is right now following a road blazed before him by multiple authoritarians and dictators who took over democracies in recent years…
THOM HARTMANN
JUL 25, 2024
..."Stephanopoulos had asked Republican Representative Nancy Mace how she could continue to support Trump when he had been “found liable for rape.” Trump is claiming that question libeled him and asking for damages that could run into the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
You’d think he doesn’t have a case. When a jury of his peers found in favor of E. Jean Carroll in her defamation case against Trump, Judge Lewis Kaplan noted:
“[T]he jury’s finding that Mr. Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally – in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law.”
Nonetheless, Judge Altonaga is letting Trump’s lawsuit against the reporter and news organization go forward. This is a very, very big deal that could signal the beginning of the end for a free and open press in America.
...
Both Putin and Orbán started by changing their nation’s libel laws, making it possible for the leaders and their cronies to sue any newspaper, radio or TV station, blogger, social media user, or website that criticized them for libel.
It’s a much “softer” way of shutting up the press (and the public) than simply storming in and arresting journalists: instead, you drive them and their media outlets into bankruptcy so they self-censor and their outlets can then be acquired by friendly billionaires and turned into pro-government organs.
...
Russia and Hungary are not, of course, the only countries that use libel laws to destroy opposition press and drive independent commentators, bloggers, social media users, and newsletter writers into bankruptcy.
Currently, such a strategy is employed by strongman leaders in Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, Belarus, Eritrea, Cuba, and Vietnam, among others.
Here in America, Florida was the first state where Republicans recently tried (unsuccessfully) to “open up” their state libel laws, in that case proposing legislation to make it criminally libelous for reporters to “cite an anonymous source.” More Red states will certainly follow as Orbán’s model is further embraced across the GOP."...
I would like to know what the raw data looks like in these polls before the massage them so the world fits the pollster's model...and I'd like to know what those filters are.
The same age group should be within the margin of error of each other if the polls are accurate.
One may be...which one?