This is something other than condemning violence against journalists

On 22 February 2019, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that POTUS #45 hasn't "at any point has done anything but condemn violence, against journalists or anyone else." (ABC news clip)

What the Press Secretary says is not true. Every day, I remember this tweet by POTUS on 2 July 2017. It shows POTUS at a wrestling match. He throws his arm around the neck of a faceless man who represents a CNN journalist (the man's face is obscured by a CNN logo in the video). He tackles the CNN journalist and punches him repeatedly in the head.

On the day Trump posted this, the immediate reaction of then-Homeland Security adviser Thomas Bossert was to say that he felt "pretty proud" of the president for being so "genuine," and, after all, he assured us, "no one would perceive that [video] as a threat." That interpretation is not obvious. Since the time of this tweet, Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr. has been charged with mailing pipe bombs to CNN in three separate packages in October 2018, along with 15 other targets that included Democratic politicians. U.S. Coast Guard Lt. In February 2019, U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson was arrested on firearm possession and may be charged with attempted terrorism, based on his alleged plan to launch a major attack against CNN reporters, other journalists, and Democratic politicians.

POTUS has still not deleted this tweet, and, even if he does someday delete it, it will forever remain an official record of the United States by virtue of the office of the person who tweeted it. You can try reporting the tweet, but it is a fruitless effort; Twitter will not remove it.

We all have to think of other things we can do to #ProtectTheTruth.

You can donate to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In 2026, Trump is having a wrestling event outside the White House.

Lawrence Douglas writes in Will He Go? (2020):

A study released in August 2018 reported that a plurality of Republicans (43 percent) agreed with the statement that 'the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.' The report concluded on what it described as a 'somewhat reassuring' note — that 'less than a quarter of Republicans [23 percent]' agree that 'President Trump should close down mainstream news outlets, like CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times.' Somewhat reassuring? We are to feel reassured that only one in four Republicans support essentially gutting the First Amendment?

When the Taliban shot child peace activist Malala Yousufzai in Pakistan

An award-winning young Pakistani peace activist was shot in a deliberate attack in October 2012. She underwent surgery, the cost of which the Pakistani government and several hospitals promised to cover, and she was expected to recover from her injuries.

The shooting targeted Malala Yousufzai, 14, who for several years has advocated secularism and education opportunities for girls in a blog for BBC Urdu. She reported on life in the Swat Valley where the Taliban was burning girls' schools. Last year, she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize and received the National Peace Prize from one of Pakistan's former prime ministers. 

On Oct. 9, 2012, strange men disguised with scarves approached a school bus in Malala's hometown of Mingora, asked the children to point out Malala to him, and then fired. Two bullets struck her head and neck. Surgeons said her skull was cracked, and although the bullet did not penetrate her brain, her brain swelled and she was unresponsive. A bullet had to be surgically removed from her neck.

Two of her female classmates were also wounded in the attack. They were shot in the shoulder and in the leg.

News of the attack quickly spread across the world. At a concert in Los Angeles the next day, the singer Madonna stripped to her bra, displaying the name "MALALA" written on her lower back.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attempted assassination. Calling the girl "pro-West" and "against Taliban," the group's spokesman warned that they would try to kill her again if she survived her injuries, and that "anybody who speaks against us will be attacked in the same way."

All schools in the Swat Valley – a large area near the border of Afghanistan that is home to about one million Pakistanis – temporarily closed in response to the shooting.

Speaking two days after the attack, Pakistan's foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar said that about a hundred people had been arrested for possible connections with the attackers.

Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack. Zardari has unfortunately been affected by such violence many times, including by the assassination of his own wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in 2007. In the wake of Malala's shooting, Zardari invited former U.K. prime minister Gordon Brown to travel to Pakistan in the near future to discuss children's education. Brown accepted, and he referred to Malala as an "icon for courage and hope."

"Directing violence at children is barbaric, it's cowardly," said a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department.

The spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the Secretary-General's sympathies were with the wounded girls' families, and that he "expresses his solidarity with the Government and people of Pakistan in their efforts to confront violent extremism."

After her injury, Malala continued her advocacy work for the rights of all children to have an education. Two years and a day after the shooting, she won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2014. Pakistan's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, called her “the pride of Pakistan”. Malala cannot go home to Pakistan, however, for her own safety. She attends school in Birmingham, England.

This article was originally posted to Helium Network on Oct. 12, 2012. Pencil drawing by Tucker Lieberman, based on a photograph of Malala Yousufzai.

Ten years later:

"As of late August [2022], the southern province [of Sindh] had already gotten almost six times as much rainfall as its 30-year annual average.

Those rains combined with glacial melt have caused the flooding that has devastated the country.

* * *

Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority said the floods have killed at least 1,314 people, including 458 children, according to The Guardian. Around 33 million others have been affected by the flooding. Many have had to flee their waterlogged homes to stay in shelters or tent encampments.

* * *

Climate change fueled the floods in multiple ways. Intense heat waves earlier in the year caused the air to hold more moisture, and meteorologists at the time said that would lead to “above normal” rain in the monsoon season, Islamabad water-resources engineer Zia Hashmi told the journal Nature. That same heat melted glaciers in the north of the country, swelling the rivers that lead to the south.

* * *

...while Pakistan contributes to less than 1% of the world’s carbon emissions, it’s one of the top 10 countries hit hardest by rising temperatures."
— "Pakistan's Devastating Floodwaters Could Take 6 Months To Recede," Hilary Hanson, Sept. 14, 2022, Huffington Post, 2022