There have been a disturbing amount of firsts achieved by Donald Trump as he commences his second occupation of the White House. None of which would foster pride in any honorable man or woman. They include his being the first president convicted of felonies; the first adjudicated as a rapist; the first barred from running a charity; and the first to openly admire, praise, and seek to emulate vile dictators like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and even Adolf Hitler.
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Trump is also the first president to hold the free press in such contempt that he repeatedly refers to it in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” And no American leader before him has sought so aggressively to undermine the constitutional protections of the press provided in the First Amendment. The white hot intensity of Trump’s hostility toward the media is reflected in his nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel…
SEE THIS: Trump’s Free Press? His FBI Flunky Kash Patel Threatens to ‘Come After the People in the Media’
The latest example of Trump’s anti-press obsession is his response to a perfectly reasonable editorial decision by the Associated Press concerning Trump’s preposterous plan to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” The AP noted that “Trump’s order only carries authority within the United States.” Then they elaborated saying that…
“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”
That decision is entirely within the rights of the AP to make as they see fit, and within the principles of professional journalism. However, in Trump’s egomaniacally twisted view, he imagines that he has the right to punish the media whenever they do something that offends him personally. Consequently, Trump issued an order banning the AP from Oval Office media events. That is pure, unadulterated censorship that violates the Constitution. The AP responded saying that…
“Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing.
“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”
The AP was not the only media enterprise that was appalled by the tyrannical behavior of Trump. Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said that…
“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions. The move by the administration to bar a reporter from The Associated Press from an official event open to news coverage today is unacceptable.
“The WHCA stands with The Associated Press and calls on the administration to immediately change course.”
Craig Aaron, President and Co-CEO of Free Press Action, testified before Congress Wednesday and enumerated the attacks on the free press by Trump and his administration that “is using the power of the government to shake down the media and quash dissent.” Including…
- Trump’s FCC chairman (and Project 2025 co-author), Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke broadcast licenses because he doesn’t like the viewpoints he sees on TV.
- Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News for $20 billion because he didn’t like how 60 Minutes chose to edit an interview with Kamala Harris.
- Disney/ABC, Meta, maybe now CBS — paying tens of millions of dollars to settle specious lawsuits. They appear to be paying off the president to shield themselves from reprisal or gain regulatory favors.
- All the billionaire owners of these companies line up on the dais at the president’s inauguration clutching million-dollar checks to show their loyalty.
MORE HERE: Trump Hurls Hate and Fear at All of the Media He’s Suing Following the ABC News Capitulation
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) also made an impassioned speech defending the free press and condemning Trump’s censorious assault on the AP…
“Yesterday, Donald Trump banned the Associated Press, a 179-year-old newspaper organization, from the White House because it declines to call the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America.’ This is straight up press censorship based on retaliatory viewpoint discrimination. Trump’s DoD kicked out eight newsgroups that had space in the Pentagon, but which asked skeptical questions of the new Secretary. Including the New York Times, NBC News, and the Washington Post. All ousted in favor of outlets willing to faithfully advance the party line of the state, like Breitbart and One America News Network.”
Raskin: "Yesterday, Donald Trump banned the Associated Press, a 179-year-old newspaper organization, from the White House because it declines to call the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America." This is straight up press censorship based on retaliatory viewpoint discrimination."
For these, and so many other reasons, the media needs to stop pussy-footing around with Trump. He is virulently opposed to the mission of the free press in America, and he couldn’t care less about the Constitution’s explicit protections. And now that he has escalated his attacks to actually banning journalists for doing their jobs, the press must stop giving him the attention he craves to disseminate pure propaganda.
His press conferences are nothing more than staged photo-ops where he badgers and bullies reporters without answering their questions. Instead he replies with known lies, infantile insults, and noxious self-exaltation. Then he filibusters until his nannies usher the reporters out of the room.
News outlets don’t need to be present to suffer that disrespect and abuse. They can send interns to record the nonsense that he spews, and then report on it later with proper context and fact-checking. That will surely drive Trump crazy(er), as he seethes in an empty room yearning for the adulation he covets to satisfy his narcissistic lust.
UPDATE 2/14/2025: Trump has escalated his war on the AP. They have now been banned indefinitely from the Oval Office and Air Force One.
UPDATE 2/22/2025: The AP is suing the Trump administration to rescind its unconstitutional ban on their reporters.
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I like your idea of sending interns into the Press Room to record the nonsense Trump (as you say, spews) then giving it to reporters. It’s a good idea. The Plumbers were defended by Nixon’s Attorney General That little bit of information was the WP sending Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to cover the trial. It was the beginning of Watergate and Nixon’s end.
Trump’s White House news conferences aren’t worth listening to/covering anyway, they’re just side bars to and lame regurgitations of his tantrums and acting out. Reputable news organizations should have stopped attending them in his first term. If he thinks barring the Press from them is a punishment, he’s mistaken.