The way President-elect Donald Trump has treated the press during his presidential campaign, only to get far worse after winning the election, is nothing but terrifying. Trump has not only ditched press pools and created distrust for the media, but he has issued threats to punish or silence reporters for doing their jobs and holding him accountable. Trump has never sounded more like a dictator, and quite frankly we should all be very worried about what he s going to do once he gets into the White House.Fortunately, the press is fighting back. Editor in chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review Kyle Pope has just written an open letter to Trump on behalf of the U.S. Press Corps, and it s a strong message to Trump that things aren t going to go the way he wants them to go. Pope wrote: In these final days before your inauguration, we thought it might be helpful to clarify how we see the relationship between your administration and the American press corps. Pope then expertly outlined several attacks Trump has made on the press which have made the relationship between Trump and journalists extremely tense. Pope said: You ve banned news organizations from covering you. You ve taken to Twitter to taunt and threaten individual reporters and encouraged your supporters to do the same. You ve advocated for looser libel laws and threatened numerous lawsuits of your own, none of which has materialized. But while you have every right to decide your ground rules for engaging with the press, we have some, too. Pope noted that even if Trump tried to prevent journalists from having access to him, the media would not back down. Pope warned the President-elect that the press would merely take it on as a  challenge : We are very good at finding alternative ways to get information   Telling reporters that they won t get access to something isn t what we d prefer, but it s a challenge we relish. Signaling that what Trump has really done by suppressing the media is unite it, Pope stated that the press would be working together to hold him accountable now, specifically pointing out a disgusting incident in which Trump belittled and attacked CNN reporter Jim Acosta at a press conference last week: We now recognize that the challenge of covering you requires that we cooperate and help one another whenever possible. So, when you shout down or ignore a reporter at a press conference who has said something you don t like, you re going to face a unified front. We ll work together on stories when it makes sense, and make sure the world hears when our colleagues write stories of importance. Pope made it perfectly clear that journalists were not going to play by his rules and have every intention of being involved in covering his presidency honestly and with transparency, no matter how much he hates it or threatens them. Pope said: We ve been around since the founding of the republic, and our role in this great democracy has been ratified and reinforced again and again and again. Enjoy your inauguration. This is EXACTLY what we needed our press to say to this tyrant, and we hope it terrifies him.Featured image via Drew Angerer / Getty Images