The Media Must Boycott Trump’s Phony Press Conferences Until He Stops Censoring Journalists

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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Donald Trump TV Set

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."

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-02-12T15:24:14.097Z

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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HOW CONVENIENT: GOP Oversight Committee Chair Says He Can’t Find His Star Witness Against Biden

The new and razor thin Republican majority in the House of Representatives is proving that it is wholly unfit to govern and has no real interest in doing so. For the three months that they have been in charge, they have produced nothing but transparently partisan and meritless smear campaigns against President Biden, his family, and other Democrats.

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This sorry state of state affairs is a result of the GOP’s deliberate and openly articulated mission to bring down the President and to buttress their own illegitimate seizure of power and perversion of democracy. From the day that they assumed their majority they have pursued political vendettas, while ignoring the needs of the nation and the American people.

SEE THIS: New GOP Subcommittee Chair Openly Admits His Only Purpose is to ‘Make Life Hell’ for Democrats

So instead of legislation protecting children from mass shooters, or maintaining women’s reproductive health rights, or resolving immigration issues, or preventing a catastrophic debt default, Republicans are desperately trying – and failing – to sabotage the Biden presidency.

Among the worst offenders is James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. The maliciousness of his crusade to cripple the progress made by Biden and congressional Democrats has been matched by its ineptitude, dishonesty, and failure. And all of that was on display when he visited with Fox News on Sunday to spread more propaganda. In an exchange with Fox’s Senior Trump-fluffer, Maria Bartiromo, Comer announced that the star witness in his political persecution has gone missing.

Bartiromo: Hold on Congressman. Did you just say that the whistleblower, or the informant, is now be missing?
Comer: Well, we are hopeful that we can find the informant. Remember that these informants are kind of in the spy business.
Bartiromo: Stunning breaking news story this morning that some of these people now may be missing. Mr. Chairman, we’re certainly going to be covering and reporting your findings.

First of all, Comer doesn’t actually say that the alleged informant is missing. He just says that he can’t find him. He even implies that the so-called whistleblower is merely a secret operative who could just be concealing his own whereabouts for some unspecified reason.

That, however, doesn’t stop Bartiromo from insinuating some sinister scheme that invokes the possibility that harm has come to the spook and that, of course, the evil Biden team is responsible for it. Naturally, there is no evidence whatsoever for any of that, but when has Fox News ever cared about trivialities like evidence?

A more likely scenario is that Comer doesn’t actually have a witness at all, Or he doesn’t have one who has any credibility, and who wouldn’t just embarrass the Republicans further. So all of Comer’s shocking accusations for the past several weeks could just be fabrications, and now that he is being called upon to put up or shut up, he whines that he is unable to find the witness that he promised would blow the lid off this supposed scandal.

It’s interesting that this mysterious witness disappeared just a few days after Comer released a report by his Committee that was ridiculed for it’s prodigious lack of anything incriminating related to Biden. The New Republic reported that…

“The House GOP accused Joe Biden and his family on Wednesday of engaging in business with foreign entities—but were unable to provide any actual evidence linking the president to any wrongdoing.

“House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer released a 65-page memo detailing a sprawling investigation into Biden and some of his relatives, particularly his son Hunter Biden. Nowhere in the massive document was there a specific allegation of a crime committed by Biden or any of his relatives.”

That’s typical of GOP and Fox News scandal-mongering. They make furious proclamations of alleged wrongdoing, but they have nothing to back any of it up. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the Oversight Committee, responded to the report that Comer issued saying that…

“Once again Chairman Comer has failed to provide factual evidence to support his wild accusations about the President. He continues to bombard the public with innuendo, misrepresentations, and outright lies, recycling baseless claims from stories that were debunked years ago.” […]

“As Republicans use their oversight powers to advance this tiresome and aging smear campaign, they refuse to honor their public commitment to investigate former President Trump and former senior White House advisor, Jared Kushner, their hundreds of LLCs, and the billions of dollars they collected directly from autocratic and corrupt foreign governments.”

Comer joins House Squeaker Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan, the GOP chair of the House Judiciary Committee, as the leaders of the Bogus Scandal Caucus. Jordan was recently humiliated (for the umpteenth time) when he tried to coerce adverse testimony from Mark Pomerantz, a former New York prosecutor who had investigated Donald Trump’s hush money payments to adult film star, Stormy Daniels. That investigation eventually led to a Grand Jury indicting Trump for thirty-four felonies alleging the falsifying of financial records.

RELATED STORY: Former NY Prosecutor Righteously Rejects GOP House Judiciary Committee’s Political Theater

These are the sort of charlatans who are currently leading the Republican Party with the aid of their spinmeisters at Fox News. They have no interest in performing any of the duties expected of elected representatives. They are fully devoted only to embarking on hostile and futile campaigns to denigrate their opponents and, moreover, democracy itself. And unfortunately, with the regard to the latter, they are pretty damn good at it.

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Rep. Raskin: Donald Trump is the Problem of the Republican Party and He May Destroy Their Party

Rep. Jamie Raskin has been a stalwart defender of democracy and an ardent advocate for truth throughout his service in Congress. He served as the lead manager during the second impeachment of Donald Trump. That’s the one that proved Trump’s culpability for the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.

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Donald Trump Walking the Plank

Raskin currently sits on the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th insurrection. On Sunday Raskin was interviewed by Margaret Brennan on CBS’s Face the Nation. And in a succinctly articulated response to a question about Trump’s intention to affirm his cowardice by defying the Committee’s subpoena to testify, Raskin stated precisely what the role of Trump is for the Republican Party that just suffered a historic walloping in the midterm election.

RELATED: Trump Being Too Scared to Testify Under Oath, Files Lawsuit Against the January 6th Committee

What follows is the exchange between Raskin and Brennan wherein he tells her what many have known for several years (transcript): That Trump is the GOP’s problem.

Brennan: Former President Trump’s basically going to defy the subpoena you issued. He’s planning to announce he’s running for the presidency on Tuesday. Is the prime achievement of the January 6th committee simply going to be this written report? You’re not appearing to stop him from running.
Raskin: Well, in a democracy, the people have the right to the truth. And what we withstood was a systematic assault on democratic institutions in an attempt to overthrow a presidential election. So we have set forth the truth in a series of hearings. […]

When I was over in the Senate with the impeachment team, I told the Republicans there that this was our opportunity to deal with the problem of Donald Trump who had committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the people of the United States. And they needed to act on behalf of the country and the Constitution. But if they didn’t, he would become their problem. And at this point, Donald Trump is the problem of the Republican Party, and he may destroy their party.

Exactly! Republicans have only themselves to blame for their losses last week, and for those that are coming in the future. They had their chance to be rid of Trump and his losing ways, but they chose instead to embrace him and excuse the crimes he committed.

Whether it was out of fear, or misguided self-interest, or simply blind adoration for a cult leader, Republicans decided that worshiping a wannabe dictator was better than being the targets of his infantile insults. So now they are getting what they deserve. Will they be smart enough to cut their losses going forward? They’re Republicans, so don’t bet on it.

RELATED: Crybaby Trump Lashes Out at ‘Fake News’ for Reporting Accurately that He’s the Biggest Loser

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