At the moment when a gunman tried to kill Donald Trump, Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico was just returning to work after an assassination attempt on May 15. He was hit by four bullets and suffered injuries to his abdomen and hip. Fico is our prime minister for the fourth time. He has ruled Slovakia on and off since 2006. And like Trump he has long resented independent and critical journalists. He blames us for his failures and mistakes. He attacks us. He berates or ignores us. In his thirteen years in power, he started to prefer media that do not criticize him and don’t ask difficult questions, not to mention his own widely followed Facebook page. And when he became prime minister for the fourth time, last autumn, he further hardened his stance and declared some journalists and outlets to be hostile—I’m the editor of Denník N, which is one of them. So in a way, I am writing to you from eight weeks into your own future. I hope Slovakia holds some lessons for American journalists seeking to find the right ways to respond to their own analogue.

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