In the past week,???? ??????? ???????? ?????? ??????? Donald Trump has centered his campaign around a singular issue — the media.

The Republican presidential candidate's sparring with the media, a running theme since his campaign's onset, has grown much louder in recent weeks. It culminated over the weekend as Trump launched one if his most vitriolic missives about what he sees as unfair coverage.

Trump's most recent media tirade appeared to have been triggered by a New York Timesstory that painted his campaign as out of ideas for how to persuade the Republican candidate to adopt a strategy more conducive to success in the general election. Under the headline "Inside the Failing Mission to Tame Donald Trump's Tongue," the Timesstory also cited sources who described Trump as having little interest in the advice of his team and growing weary of the presidential campaign.

On Sunday, Trump fired off several anti-media tweets, including pointing to "freedom of the press" as an issue.

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Attacking the press is nothing new for Trump or any politician. President Barack Obama has routinely jabbed at media outlets. Richard Nixon had a famous distaste for journalists, even popularizing the term "the media" to describe the group of institutions that covered him.

And they should. The media is no more above critique than any other part of the political or electoral process, and often earns the ire that it receivers.

Trump, however, is breaking new ground. His most recent allegations against the media are now linking journalists to his campaign's new narrative of questioning the legitimacy of the entire electoral process — and whipping up supporters to do something about it.

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Trump's rhetoric toward the media had been building before the Timesstory. He had attacked journalists broadly, calling reporters "the lowest form of life" at a rally on Friday.

On Saturday, after the Timesstory was published, he upped the ante. At a rally in Fairfield, Connecticut, Trump spent large chunks of time going after the media, targeting CNN and the Times --threatening to take away the paper's press credentials for his campaign.

"The newspaper is going to hell. They've got a couple of reporters in that newspaper that are so bad, I mean lack of talent. But it's going to hell, so I think maybe what we'll do, maybe we'll start thinking about taking their press credentials away from them," Trump said at the rally, eliciting a cheer from the crowd.

Trump's campaign already has blacklisted a variety of outlets (there's about seven different outlets that have been on the list), although that hasn't stopped him from offering interviews to the same outlets, particularly the Washington Post.

The media now appears to be the main reason that Trump is losing, according to his narrative.

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Trump said early in his campaign that he wants to "open up those libel laws," arguing the press is given too much freedom to print stories that may be false or defamatory.

Trump's anti-media statements might be easy to shrug off if they did not appear to be building to a broader theme: the election will not be legitimate if Hillary Clinton wins. The notion of election fraud is something that Trump has been hinting at for a while. Back in January, he said the "voting system is out of control," and that people often voted numerous times.

Now, the legitimacy of the election is becoming a core part of his campaign, and a nuanced one at that. He recently singled out Pennsylvania as a state that Clinton can only win if her campaign cheats, despite her double-digit point lead in the polls. He also called for his supporters to volunteer to watch the polls.

Trump supporters appear to have canonized the mistrust he has sowed. At his events, journalists are required to stay in a particular area that is usually blocked off. That has led to a growing trend of rally attendees coming by to express their displeasure with journalists.

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As for what Trump supporters believe about the election process, BuzzFeedfound that people in various states were more than willing to echo Trump's concern about the election system.

By linking the media with his claims of a broader conspiracy against his campaign, Trump has moved beyond the usual press commentary. He is casting journalists as agents of an insidious state-based effort to take away the freedoms of Americans. In that mindset, it's easier to understand why one of his supporters felt compelled to call reporters "traitors." If Trump is to be believed, the media is now an enemy of the state.

There's little reason to think his narrative will change. Most mainstream media outlets have eschewed any attempts to building some sort of false balance between the two candidates. CNN has taken to fact-checking Trump claims directly in on-screen graphics, and other cable news agencies have followed on.

Clinton has solid leads in several important battleground states. FiveThirtyEightis projecting Clinton as having an 89% chance at winning the presidency. Trump, meanwhile, remains at odds with a large chunk of his own party, which is telegraphing that it could abandon support of his White House bid to focus on congressional elections.

There is still time for Trump to heed his advisers and turn away from the media criticism in favor of going after his opponent or looking to push hot-button issues to the forefront. However, as the Timesindicated, this kind of shift would need to be entirely top-down. He would need to decide to change. And if you take Trump's word for it, that won't happen.

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