Larry Wilson: Waiting for the feds to knock on my door

Ours is not a country that arrests its journalists.

Until it is.

Many people say, as the once and future president is wont to intone, you shouldn’t pay any attention to what Donald Trump threatens, only to what he does.

This has always seemed to me like the weirdest meme, as a president has the actual power to do stuff, and that people who work for him have the power to, for instance, arrest and imprison people.

It’s akin to those who maintain, when Trump says something or other that is absolutely outrageous, that he is “clearly joking. Don’t you have a sense of humor?”

I do. It’s my favorite sense. Donald Trump does not. Can you imagine Trump telling a joke, for instance? You cannot. He doesn’t know how to tell a joke. Ever heard him tell one? You have not.

That’s OK. It’s a personality deficit, but it’s not a crime.

Unlike  writing mean things about Donald Trump.

Those of us who  do —  admittedly easy, given Donald Trump — are, according to him, “scum,” “evil,” “the enemy of the people.”

You’ll recall how he used his bully pulpit during his first miserable term in the White House to pontificate about how ABC, CBS and NBC should have their broadcast licenses revoked for saying mean things about him.

Trump, as is so often the case, had no idea what he was talking about, since the broadcast networks don’t have or need federal licenses. It’s local affiliates that do, as part of the regulation of the public airwaves. Still, it’s the thought that counts.

Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, told NPR he expects the incoming administration “to go after the press in every conceivable way … [using] every tool in the toolbox — and there are a lot of tools.”

“I think [Trump’s] salivating for the opportunity to prosecute and imprison journalists for leaks of national security information — or what they would call national security information,” Baron says. “I would expect that he would deny funding to public radio … and TV.”

The kinds of countries that arrest journalists on trumped-up spying charges are your Russias, your Chinas, your Irans. Baron’s Iran correspondent, Jason Rezaian, was convicted of espionage when he was editor of the Post. Unlike the president-elect, Rezaian has a sense of humor. After being arrested at gunpoint in a parking garage, his first interrogation focused “on a Kickstarter project he launched to grow avocados in Iran. (‘Where was the guacamole?’),” the journalist joked in a book, “Prisoner,” he wrote about his 15 months in a Tehran slammer.

But these are the kinds of things that, we like to think, can’t happen here. Until they do.

Because Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, says that’s just what he intends if he comes to the Justice Department. “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media,” Patel told the lousy Steve Bannon, still a Trump confidante after his own proper arrest for mail fraud and money laundering after ripping off Americans who thought they were donating money to Build the Wall — Trump pardoned him; he later did time in prison for contempt of Congress. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”

“This concern is not hypothetical. President-elect Donald Trump has openly vowed to use federal agencies to punish his critics and political adversaries.” Amy Fettig writes in an op-ed in these pages today.

As a critic who is among the “you all” the unqualified AG nominee refers to in his ramblings on the podcast hosted by the ex-con, I suppose I better start looking over my shoulder and listening for the feds’ knock on the door come late January. I’m easy enough to find, as are my many words of derision directed at a man with zero appreciation for First Amendment rights.

But it’s not just me. It’s you, too. Baron concludes: “The objective here is to suppress free expression by anyone. … So this is just the first step. And I think people should keep that in mind.”

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.