Trump threatens to shut down news networks — and jail reporters — over negative war coverage.
Over the weekend, the president and his allies in government issued brazen attacks on the free press, as questioned swirled about Trump's ongoing Iran war.
This weekend, Donald Trump unleashed one of the most direct attacks that an American president has leveled against the First Amendment.
First, let me provide a note of context. When dictators in foreign countries get angry about negative coverage — from Russia to Burma — they tend to follow a similar pathway. You see that same story, over and over, in autocracies. They delegitimize the free press (calling its reporting “fake” and questioning the loyalty of reporters)… then they issue threats and suggest that negative coverage is “criminal”… and finally, they do something gangster-like, i.e. shutting off those networks, throwing their reporters in prison, or just threatening them quietly to make the “right choice” and leave the profession altogether.
This weekend, the Trump administration ran all three plays in a 48-hour span.
On Sunday, the President of the United States posted a nearly 400-word Truth Social screed accusing American media outlets of coordinating with Iran to spread disinformation about his war. The charge was absurd on its face. Indeed, the networks he targeted had actually been debunking Iranian AI-generated propaganda, not amplifying it.
But as always with Trump, the accusation wasn’t not a plea for accuracy. He was establishing a pretext for taking some kind of action against news networks he doesn’t like. Buried in his rant, he went after outlets who published reporting about Iranian explosive-laden “kamikaze” boats that could attack U.S. warships. But it was his threat that stuck out:
“The story was knowingly FAKE,” Trump wrote, “and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!”
For anyone who needs a reminder, treason is one of the most serious crimes in federal law. Anyone who “aids and comforts” America’s enemies can face execution or a mandatory minimum of five years in prison. When Trump uses that word, he knows what it means, and it’s not just meant for whatever outlets he’s displeased with at this particular moment.
Take it from me. More than seven years ago, I published an op-ed critical of the president from inside his administration. His response was a seven-letter tweet: “TREASON?” As soon as he came back into office for a second term, he ordered a federal investigation into me for — you guessed it — “treason.” Afterwards, his aides disclosed the real purpose for coming after me was to make an example. To scare others into submission. “Donald Trump needed to send a message,” a White House official told Rolling Stone.
The president is nakedly wielding his power to silence dissent and members of the free press by threatening investigations, imprisonment, or even death. Nothing about that sentence is an exaggeration. Everything about it — at least for those of us who still appreciate our Constitution — should be an abomination.
Of course, Donald Trump didn’t stop there. What good is a threat if it’s not backed up by power?
The same weekend Trump was raging on Truth Social, his FCC Chairman Brendan Carr was doing the administration’s dirty work in parallel. On Saturday, Carr made direct threats to any networks that didn’t cover the war the way the administration wants them to:
“The law is clear,” Carr wrote. “Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
In this case, the “public interest” seems to be a bar that the FCC chair and the president intend to set themselves. Lest anyone think the FCC was freelancing, Trump cheered the statement, saying he was “thrilled” the agency would be “looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted the comments as “straight out of the authoritarian playbook.” She’s right. And I even think she’s being polite. As I said above, this is one of the most brazen attacks on the First Amendment by any sitting U.S. president. Rarely has the nation’s chief executive so directly tied his punitive powers to the threatened abridgment of free speech and the press.
You just witnessed history this weekend, folks. Sadly, for most people, it will escape notice because this administration is drowning the American republic in abuses of power and constitutional violations.
Thankfully the capitulation wasn’t immediate. CNN, for its part, pushed back. Chairman Mark Thompson put out a statement:
“Politicians have an obvious motive for claiming that journalism which raises questions about their decisions is false. At CNN our only interest is in telling the truth.”
That’s the right answer. It’s the only answer, really. But the pressure will intensify, and not every outlet will hold the line. In fact, CNN’s days itself are already numbered. The president’s billionaire allies at Paramount are in the process of acquiring CNN’s parent company, and the White House has told the new owners that CNN should purge its roster of reporters Trump doesn’t like.
There’s an even more chilling overlay to all of this, which is that we are in an active military conflict. The administration controls the flow of information from the battlefield. Journalists are already working with limited access, after the Pentagon banished almost every mainstream media outlet from the building. And there’s been suspicion that the administration is already covering up war casualty figures, much in the same way governments like Russia do during conflicts.
The First Amendment doesn’t disappear during wartime. If anything, it matters more. A free press isn’t some occasional luxury democracy affords itself when things are going well or when the president is benevolent enough to allow us to speak openly. It’s quite literally the most important mechanism by which citizens know when things are going badly — and whether they need to hold government accountable. That’s why Trump is going after it. To avoid scrutiny and to consolidate power.
For what it’s worth, we’re not bowing down. Our organization — DEFIANCE.org — has chosen to defy all the threats from the witless thug in the White House. That’s why we’re helping to take Trump to court, to defend whistleblowers, to combat censorship by standing with targeted journalists, to expand independent media, to mobilize America’s veterans to speak out about the war, and more.
On its face, Trump’s message this weekend was aimed at the press. But it was really aimed at you. I mean that. He wants you to distrust what you read. He wants you to doubt what you see. He also wants the space between reality and his version of it to be so muddied that accountability against him becomes impossible. That is why I’m writing this piece — to make clear that we will not let him.
Your friend, in defiance,
Who died and made him king, no one!
I am hopeful that Trump will become more intimately familiar with the word "treason" and its punishments.