Trump wants the FCC to take CBS’s license away. This is a dark omen | Dennis Aftergut and Austin Sarat

His comments foreshadow a full-on assault on free speech and freedom of the press if he becomes president

Donald Trump's 10 October attack on CBS for editing its 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris - a normal television process - is pure distraction. It is designed to draw our attention away from the fact that he was afraid to give the news magazine its traditional interview with both political candidates. Trump's statement that the Federal Communications Commission should take away" CBS's broadcast license betrays his ignorance of the fact that the FCC does not license networks and foreshadows a full-on assault on free speech and freedom of the press if he becomes president.

History is clear that dictators move early to take control of the media in order to censor information unfavorable to their people. Our safety requires preventing that control, as Thomas Jefferson wrote two centuries ago: The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed."

Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy

Austin Sarat, associate dean of the faculty and William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty