NEWS: Trump sues to bury “another wonderful secret”
The President is furious at WSJ for revealing his sexually-charged messages to Jeffrey Epstein. He's once again at war with the free press.
Bottom Line Up Front:
Donald Trump is threatening to sue The Wall Street Journal over a bombshell story tying him to Jeffrey Epstein, an unprecedented move that goes far beyond damage control. It’s the latest, most extreme example of Trump using the power of the presidency to pummel the First Amendment.
WHAT HAPPENED
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published a disturbing exposé: a handwritten letter purportedly from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, featuring a marker-drawn sketch of a naked woman and a bizarre birthday message: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
The letter, reportedly part of a 2003 birthday album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, included a fictionalized conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person and dripping with cryptic innuendo, which sounded like the two of them knowingly comparing notes about their sexual proclivities, which for Epstein’s was the serial sexual abuse of minors.
The Journal claims to have seen the document. Trump, in response, blew up.
Calling the story a “fake” and a “Democrat hoax,” Trump immediately threatened to sue The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, and the paper’s editor, Emma Tucker. He posted on Truth Social that the letter was forged and that the Journal had ignored warnings from his staff and from Trump himself.
“I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” Trump raged.
And he’s not bluffing. This would be one of the only times in U.S. history a sitting president personally sues a major newspaper. Not over false claims of fact, of course, but because he doesn’t like the narrative. The Nixon administration threatened news outlets over the Pentagon Papers. But this is different.
Trump isn’t using lawyers to protect American secrets. He’s using them to suppress personal embarrassment.
WHAT IT MEANS
I’ll keep writing this until I’m blue in the fingers: this is part of the most sweeping anti-First-Amendment crackdown in modern history. The President of the United States is using all elements of national power to silence dissent. And the ripple effects are compounding.
Just this week, CBS announced it would cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , only days after Colbert torched the network’s decision to quietly settle a lawsuit with Trump over a 60 Minutes investigation. Colbert called the $16 million settlement “a big fat bribe.” Then he was out.
Last month, the network cracked down on 60 Minutes, putting pressure on the program for investigative reporting that caused Trump to fume, pressure that led to its long-time producer stepping down.
Meanwhile, as I wrote yesterday, Trump is gutting public media outlets that report what his Administration doesn’t want to hear. He’s slashing NPR and PBS funding while turning Voice of America into a global repeater of One America News.
The Trump White House is actively working to reshape American media. The WSJ suit, Colbert’s cancellation, 60 Minutes’ muzzle, NPR’s funding cuts, PBS’s dismantling, VOA’s hostile takeover, ABC News defamation settlement, and more. All of these are not coincidences. They’re canaries in the coal mine.
WHAT’S NEXT
You are watching repeated, direct strikes against the free press. When I type words like that, I always imagine myself a decade ago, thinking how outlandish it would be to say something like “the U.S. free press is under siege.” Yet here we are.
So what could happen next?
Trump has hinted at revoking FCC licenses for networks he dislikes. That means literally pulling them off the air. At the same time, he’s floated a twisted revival of the Fairness Doctrine, demanding “equal time” for MAGA viewpoints, which would really be a Trojan horse for state propaganda.
In the meantime, legal intimidation will likely escalate. Trump will surely seek to sue more papers and TV outlets if he feels like it can get them to tamp down their reporting. Worse still, he could direct DOJ investigations into CNN, MSNBC, or the Washington Post, under the guise of rooting out something preposterous like “election interference” or “foreign influence.”
My track record of predictions about Donald Trump has been pretty damn good. So put a pin in this one: he’s well on the way to making “free speech” in America look like that of a quasi-autocracy.
TACO is coming. There is no way he will go through with it because of discovery. Though I’m all for that. Imagine the interesting tidbits that will come out!
Great reporting Miles!