Donald Trump’s mounting assaults on the free and independent press are enough to make me wax nostalgic for Spiro Agnew. When Richard Nixon’s vice president denounced members of the Fourth Estate as “nattering nabobs of negativism,” at least there was a modicum of wit.Not so the other night in Phoenix, where Trump chainsawed a constitutionally protected profession, because, in his supposed view, journalists are more dangerous and treasonous than neo-Nazis. A representative sampling of his oeuvre:“It’s time to expose the crooked-media deceptions ... Honestly, these are really, really dishonest people, and they’re bad people.