This isn’t a game. It isn’t just Trump being Trump. It is a new front in his endless attack on a central pillar of our liberties — a free press. If you’re defending this latest affront to our traditions, values, and freedoms, I’d be obliged if you could stop referring to yourself as a conservative, forever. And no, you don’t get the free pass of, “Hey, we’re not taking him literally. It’s just Trump being Trump!”

If you’re defending his bully-boy intimidation today, I want you to promise to shut your mouth and keep it shut on that inevitable day when a leftist statist in the Oval Office decides to try to shut down Fox or Limbaugh or moves in even more sweeping directions to regulate, control, or suppress conservative voices online. If you don’t see the downsides of this future, you’re working with a set of mental predicates that assume there will never be a tough election ahead, and never be a moment when the jackboot is on the other foot.