NEW COMIC TUESDAYS AND FRIDAYS AND WHEN THE MOOD STRIKES
The American government is getting more secretive than ever. It's not as if the Obama administration was some paragon of transparency—I seem to recall Obama being hypocritically fond of exercising the state secrets privilege—plus there was all that noise about NSA collection of call data and so forth—but at least previous administrations have maintained a relationship to the free press. Trump's administration, meanwhile, recently barred journalists from recording audio or video at press briefings. (I'm guessing because they're tired of being made fun of on Saturday Night Live; or possibly the administration realized that making SNL relevant again might be the worst of their crimes against humanity.)
The loss of recordings of press briefings might not seem a huge step but that's only because the briefings—which have changed a lot over the years but basically go back to Hoover—have been taken apart piecemeal over Trump's five months in office. Sean Spicer and his frighteningly Frankensteinian sidekick Sarah Huckabee Sanders have been holding fewer briefings of shorter duration compared to previous administrations; Trump himself, who has spent almost his entire life within shouting distance of reporters' microphones, has held amazingly few press conferences.
When asked why recordings were being banned, famously sluglike evil mastermind Steve Bannon said, "Sean got fatter", which is not only somewhere in the Jabba the Hutt-calling-the-kettle-obese category, it's just terrible in general. This is the same asshole who called the press the opposition party like some low-rent Soviet dictator. But I guess all dictators seem pretty low-rent until they start murdering everyone.
Obviously our press isn't under direct attack from the government—yet—but things are looking pretty bad when journalists are arrested for doing their jobs and Congress is trying to write major legislation entirely in secret while also trying to keep reporters from reporting.
I've got a pretty cushy gig here at WTFA HQ, doodling comics no one reads, but if the jackboots come for me, I'll try and let you know.
