Marty Baron is the longtime executive editor of The Boston Globe and the Washington Post and generally regarded as one of the finest journalists and executive editors of this generation. An excerpt of his new book has appeared in The Atlantic magazine. It details his years running the Washington Post during the Trump era. The first paragraphs tell the story of where The Washington Post came up with the phrase democracy dies in darkness. It's incredible, I'm going to read
from Marty Baron's book. I should not have been surprised, but I still marveled at just how little it took to get under the skin of President Donald Trump and his allies. By February twenty nineteen, I had been the
executive editor of The Washington Post for six years. That month, the newspaper aired a one minute Super Bowl ad with a voiceover by two Hanks championing the role of a free press, commemorating journalists killed and captured, and concluded with the Post logo and message quote democracy dies in darkness end quote. The ed highlighted the strong and often courageous work done by journalists at the Post and elsewhere, including
by Fox News. Is Brett Bher because we were striving to signal that this wasn't just about us and wasn't a political statement. Please stop. Brett Bhaer has never done anything journalistically courageous. In fact, he is one of the great cowards that has ever sat in an anchorchair. Brett Baer was afraid of his audience, terrified, just like Josh Holly was terrified as he ran for his life from
the insurrectionists he incited. Just like Ted Cruz was afraid for his life hiding in a closet from the insurrectionists he had cited. Brett Behar is the anchor of a network of lies that was forced to pay nearly one billion dollars for a conspiracy of lies that has poisoned American democracy in the plain light of day, not in the darkness of the night. What Brett Baer did was
refused to deliver the news. And yet in the clubby insular, clicky world of Washington d C. Press, Brett Baer isn't just a good journalist, Brett Baer is courageous, a hero. What complete and total fucking nonsense. But I continue with the reading even that simple foundational idea of democracy was a step too far for the Trump clan. The president's son,
Donald Trump Junior, couldn't contain himself. You know how mainstream media journalists could avoid having to spend millions on hashtag super Bowl commercial to gain some undeserved credibility end quote. He tweeted with typical two bit belligerents quote, how about report the news and not their leftist bs for a change?
End quote. Two years earlier, a month into Trump's presidency, the Post had affixed quote democracy dies in darkness under its nameplate on the printed newspaper, as well as at the top of its website and on everything it produced. As the newspaper's owner, Jeff Bezos envisioned it, this was not a slogan, but a mission statement, and it was not about Trump, although his allies took it to be. Here's the thing. Democracy doesn't die in darkness. It dies
in the plane light of day. It dies in plain sight. It dies because of lassitude, because of apathy, because of corruption. It dies when a former president of the United States on the very same day threatens to execute a four star general the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with no outrage from members of his party. It dies when a former president of the United States, leading in his party for the nomination by fifty points, decrees that he's coming after the free press. He's coming to get
the journalists. He's coming to take away the airwaves. He's coming to lock them up. Donald Trump isn't keeping secrets. Donald Trump and his MAGA fanatics are telling us every day, all day long, from morning tonight, that they intend to burn down the American Republic. They intend to take away freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of worship. They keep saying it, and they mean it. We stand in this country at the edge of an abyss of our
own making. We have put our country into tremendous danger, and we have risked the futures of our children and grandchildren because of the recklessness that we all share. In the United States of America is facing a profound crisis, and in the end, the Democratic Party will be unable
to hold back the Trump tide. Understand this a party that does not have the integrity and the wisdom to throw Robert Menendez, who was caught red handed with gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash sewn into his suit jacket liners overboard for corruption that is obvious and unmistakable and clear to the American people. The standard to serve in the United States Senate is not
being acquitted in a criminal trial. In the fact that the majority of the Democratic Party's leaders, from is it In Biden to Chuck Schumer to Dick Durbin, do not understand, that means Donald Trump is on a glipath to winning the next election. His allies have a plan. Their plan is to completely dismantle the American government in six months time. They've written it out, it exists, they mean it. Why is it that the Democratic Party cannot stop this, whatever
the reason may be, they can't. That means it's in the hands of the American people, not the Democratic Party as Washington politicians. The American people face a great test, a great reckoning. The practice of citizenship can be avoided no longer. We stand at an hour where every inch of progress that is accumulated against two one hundred and fifty years of time that has lifted the human being from a condition of servitude and economic misery to prosperity
and freedom, stands to be erased. We are living in an ongoing story that is one of the most significant events in the history of the United States. On a seven year basis, the American democracy founded in seventeen seventy six has eroded. It has collapsed in substantial ways. Everywhere there is corruption. The American people look at Washington, DC, and they see one of the most corrupt congresses in history. They see the most corrupt Supreme Court in history, and
they see a fascist movement on the march. This is the morning