CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl has revealed a candid remark made to her by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. Stahl told a group of fellow journalists at the Deadline Club Awards Dinner in New York City earlier this week that Mr. Trump had admitted his consistent attacks on the media were meant to “discredit” journalists so that negative stories about him would not be believed.

Stahl was the first television journalist to sit down with Mr. Trump for an interview following his election victory. Their wide-ranging on-camera interview did not delve into Mr. Trump’s attitude toward the press, but Stahl said on Monday night that in a candid, off-camera meeting earlier that year, she pressed him to explain his barrage of insults aimed at journalists, and he gave her a clear explanation:

“I said, ‘You know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this? You’re doing it over and over. It’s boring and it’s time to end that,’” Stahl said on stage alongside “PBS Newshour anchor Judy Woodruff.

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“He said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’ He said that,” Stahl told the audience, adding, “So, put that in your head for a minute.”

The audience, and Stahl’s fellow panellist Woodruff did take a moment to process the remarks.

“We’re all absorbing what you just said,” Woodruff said in reaction.

While the extended interview that “60 Minutes” aired did not discuss Mr. Trump’s views on the press, Stahl did allude to them in a post interview discussion on CBSN, saying he appeared to be struggling with the challenge of keeping his base happy while also assuring the wider American public that he was going to work for them.

ensorship.”

Even if Hunt’s historical memory goes no farther back in time than hit movies released in the last year, she should know that President Nixon’s Justice Department enjoined the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers under the dubious logic that release of historical documents from years past constituted a threat to national-security secrets. The Times was forced to sue the U.S. in order to continue publishing.

Trump doesn’t even take the prize for being the president who made the most outrageously personal threats to journalists.

Trump doesn’t even take the prize for being the president who made the most outrageously personal threats to journalists. President Truman threatened to beat up a Washington Post music critic for writing that Truman’s daughter Margaret couldn’t sing. President Clinton said through a spokesman that he wanted to punch a New York Times columnist in the face for (correctly) describing Hillary Clinton as a liar.

Even President George W. Bush did more damage to the First Amendment than Trump ever will when he signed the single most pernicious threat to it that has arisen in recent decades — the McCain-Feingold law that gave the federal government the power to ban political books and movies. Not only were the leading journalistic outlets sanguine about this, when it came to the Citizens United decision that struck down aspects of the law, they loudly supported the forces of censorship, not the First Amendment. The media are therefore (much) more dangerous opponents of the First Amendment than is the president they despise.

At the South Carolina rally, when Trump referred to the press as the “the enemy of the people” and said, “Look at all those fake-newsers back there,” he may have damaged reporters’ frail egos but he did no harm to the First Amendment. In fact, Trump was simply exercising the First Amendment rights he and all citizens enjoy to speak as freely as they wish, with almost no restrictions. Sure, Trump could up the ante on his rhetoric. He could come out on the South Lawn tomorrow and give a 45-minute speech calling for the Washington Post to be shut down. But if he did that, the proper reaction would be to just laugh. The First Amendment is in the strongest shape it’s ever been in, and it’s a lot stronger than Trump.