In a week marked by a steady drip of Leaks to the press and the collusion between the Washington Post and New York Times to publish dueling hit pieces minutes after the president left the ground for his first overseas trip, many have offered their advice to President Trump.
Jeb Bush, speaking at a Las Vegas hedge fund conference on Friday, had some simple advice for the man who bested him during the GOP primaries: find the leakers and fire them.
“People should be fired if they’re disloyal to the President of the United States and leaking," said Bush.
Many others have offered the same suggestion in front of cable news cameras and in opinion columns penned for newspapers and magazines. However, these alleged experts are wholly ignorant of one thing -- the enormous size and scope of the bloated behemoth known as the federal government.
Why Trump may never find the source of the leaks
According to a 2015 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 21,995,000 federal government employees. This is virtually the equivalent of the entire populations of the Moscow and Shanghai metropolitan areas combined, or the combined populations of London, Toronto and Philadelphia. Therefore, it seems laughably ridiculous that the same people who once said that it was impossible to deport a few million illegal immigrants are now advising Trump to sort through 22 million federal employees and weed out the bad ones.
There is a far easier and more practical way to fix the White House's leakage problem, and, no, it doesn't involve disposable adult diapers. In fact, the solution would allow Trump to put an end to the media's "death by a thousand paper cuts" strategy to bring down his presidency by publishing questionable reports based on anonymous, unverified sources, while crossing off yet another campaign promise.
At least, in a roundabout sort of way.
Reforming libel laws is not the answer
On the campaign trail, Trump memorably stated on several occasions that he would like to be able to sue the "dishonest" media for libel. This, of course, would require a Herculean effort, since there is no federal libel law and existing libel laws vary from state to state.
A more practical way to accomplish the same objective would be through the FCC, which presently regulates radio, television and cable communications. The FCC has also forayed into the internet realm in recent years, and therein lies the key to the solution. While the FCC cannot regulate print media, once those Fake News stories by the Washington Post and others hit the internet in a digital format, the publishers are fair game and subject to FCC fines and penalties -- if "net neutrality" laws are ever enacted.
But passing net neutrality laws may be just as difficult as reforming libel laws -- as long as the FCC continues to insist that it should be allowed to regulate the entire internet. While it would be a terrible idea to give the federal government complete control of the internet, it seems pretty reasonable to give the FCC control of regulating media that traverses print and electronic formats, such as news.
This would include fake news.
And make no mistake about it -- WaPo ran more fake news stories these past two weeks than a supermarket tabloid runs in a month. There was the report that the Deputy Attorney General threatened to quit after the Comey firing (he didn't), the report that Comey requested more funds for his Russian investigation (never happened), and the report that Trump disclosed classified information to Russians (impossible, since the president can declassify anything he wants at any given time).
So, instead of taking Jeb's advice and filtering through 22 million government employees to find the leakers, Trump ought to clean house at the FCC (only 1,688 employees), restock the pond with his own loyalists, and let the games begin.
Give the FCC the power to levy crushing, crippling, monumental fines every time a newspaper publishes a verifiably false story to the internet, and every leaker inside the White House will be rendered impotent. Every reporter, editor and journalist will think twice before breaking a story based on shadowy anonymous sources -- and those who don't will be hit with fines and penalties that will break their backs.
Best of all, Trump would cement the support of his base by taking swift and firm action against the "dishonest media," while crossing yet one more campaign promise off the list.
