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Trump Shutting Down a 159-Year-Old Military Newspaper After Calling Troops 'Losers' and 'Suckers' Is Not a Good Look

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | September 4, 2020 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | September 4, 2020 |


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The day after The Atlantic reported that Trump called people in the military “suckers” and “losers” and wondered aloud why “smart people” would enlist, we are now learning that Trump has also decided to shut down the Stars & Stripes, a newspaper for military personnel that’s been around since the Civil War.

From USA Today:

Even for those of us who are all too wearily familiar with President Donald Trump’s disdain for journalists, his administration’s latest attack on the free press is a bit of a jaw-dropper.

In a heretofore unpublicized recent memo, the Pentagon delivered an order to shutter Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that has been a lifeline and a voice for American troops since the Civil War. The memo orders the publisher of the news organization (which now publishes online as well as in print) to present a plan that “dissolves the Stars and Stripes” by Sept. 15 including “specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide.”

Wow. This is not a good look, on today, of all days.

Members on both sides of the aisle in Congress are trying to stop the dissolution of the newspaper, which has a meager $15 million line item compared to the $700 billion military budget, but the Pentagon is apparently moving ahead, anyway.

The eagerness to kill Stars and Stripes is hard to fathom … it would have an enormously negative impact on the paper’s more than 1.3 million readers. It would eliminate a symbol of the U.S. commitment to press freedom, flout the judgment of generations of military leaders and usurp the authority that the Constitution gives Congress to make decisions about how the government spends money.

In the meantime, both The Washington Post and The Associated Press have independently confirmed the reporting in The Atlantic piece.



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