Free Speech, But Only for Him

The Rapid Unraveling

I was easing into my morning, keeping my phone’s “Do Not Disturb” setting on in an attempt to protect my first moments of consciousness from news. Which I succeeded in… until The New York Times front page assaulted my first sip of coffee with the headline, “FOX News Adds a New Host: Lara Trump.” Let me get this straight: President Trump sought yes-men from the most popular pro-Trump platform in the media — not politics — leaving a void to be officially filled with his son’s wife. But here’s the thing: this extreme bias doesn’t just show the network’s cards. If you squint, you’ll see the plans of the whole executive branch. Trump is taking control of the media, and dismantling the credibility of legacy journalism in order to strengthen the credibility of — well — fake news. 

The Media Takeover

A lot has happened since Trump has begun his second term — which is by design —intentionally overwhelming media consumers and opposing politicians. But one of the most transparently bad-faith moves was that of his eviction of four major in-house stations from the Pentagon. The New York Times, NBC News, NPR and Politico are currently packing up to make room for Breitbart News, New York Post, One America News and HuffPost. 

And while it’s common for reporters to have access to work space within government buildings, and there are currently more than two dozen outlets operating out of the Pentagon, the Trump administration — including the president himself— has been vocal about which news organizations are favored and which Trump thinks are a “true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Hint: That’s what he called two of the publications he replaced. 

Enemies of the State: A Revitalized Nixonian Tactic

“When I was younger, there were these anti-Dan Rather, anti-Mike Wallace buttons,” Brett Gary, award-winning cultural historian and NYU Associate Professor told me. “People would wear these pins that attacked particular journalists because of their work on Watergate. The rhetoric — that kind of trope that journalists are enemies of the state, enemies of the people — has been around, and Trump has revitalized that.”

As it goes, journalists raking the muck and exposing wrongdoings have been criticized by those doing wrong since the dawn of time. Now, because the president deems headlines about his verified misconduct are “bad” and ones that praise him are “good,” we have an answer? I don’t think so. 

The media’s longstanding legacy as “societal watchdogs” has been challenged by Trump’s effective “fake news” campaign. In this, historians often draw comparisons between Trump and former President Nixon who told his national security adviser in 1972 that, “the press is the enemy.” 

“Oh boy,” Carl Bernstein, the journalist who helped uncover Watergate said after a reporter read him Trump’s tweet. When he found the words, he continued, “Donald Trump is demonstrating an authoritarian attitude and inclination that shows no understanding of the role of the free press.”

It’s clear that Trump took notes on Nixon’s media war, but is executing it at a far larger scale with a blindly loyal following and tech mogul alliances in the age of social media. 

A Kind of Compliance: Targeting Jim Acosta

And then there’s CNN — the longtime counterweight to FOX News — with Jim Acosta at the center of its most contentious battles. As chief White House correspondent under both Obama and Trump, Acosta became a national figure, known for reporting that frequently clashed with MAGA ideology. So naturally, his relentless coverage didn’t just make it a critic of Trump — it cemented his place as MAGA Enemy Number One.

“Jim is a major loser who will fail no matter where he ends up,” Trump posted to Truth Social last month. Naturally reverting to name-calling, he wrote that he’s “a major sleazebag” and “one of the most dishonest reporters in journalistic history.”

And what happens within the first two weeks of Trump’s presidency? The legacy journalist — bringing viewers to CNN for nearly two decades — gets bumped to the West Coast Prime Time slot. Suddenly, Acosta would be on-air while the rest of the country sleeps, signaling a broader effort to sideline critical voices. 

“The mainstream media’s efforts to protect themselves against ideological and political assault and financial damages produces a kind of compliance,” Gary said. “So you lose a really important set of possible critiques at the same time that this party loudspeaker increases in its volume, its reach and its resources — and I think that’s really dangerous.” 

In his X posts, Trump wrote: “The press has never been more dishonest than it is today. Stories are written that have absolutely no basis in fact. The writers don’t even call asking for verification. They are totally out of control.” 

But what is a fair basis of fact, President Trump — If you say it’s so? This is the very politician who was featured as Time magazine’s Person of the Year, twice — a rare and distinguished honor, with an unprecedented twist. The magazine had never fact-checked their own Person of the Year before. The fact that they did it for Trump underscores just how detached from reality his claims had become. 

When the Truth Doesn’t Align

For instance, Trump again claimed he “fixed the border” until Biden “dislodged everything. Time noted that, per U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 450 miles of barriers mostly replaced old fencing, only 80 miles were new, and migration surged in Spring 2020 — under Trump. He also told Time that most trans people regret transitioning. But the magazine cited an official investigation, showing the vast majority of transgender youths who received gender-affirming care remain satisfied.

Are we surprised? He also was fact-checked alongside his presidential debate opponents by NPR, NBC News, CBS and ABC, but alas’ such moderators are not moderate at all — Rather, they’re biased, despite fact-checking both voices. 

“It was a little outrageous that they would fact-check only one candidate on the fly,” said Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s 2020 communications director.

Outrageous or just logical? Harris made fewer, less far-fetched claims, making them naturally less noticeable. Trump, meanwhile, lied often — pushing bizarre falsehoods like the debunked claim that Haitian migrants in Ohio were abducting and eating pets or that some blue states allow infanticide.

The Death of Fact-Checking

“I think ABC took a big hit last night,” Trump said on Fox & Friends about the debate moderators the night before. “I mean, to be honest, they’re a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it. They oughta take away their license for the way they do that.” 

But the war on fact-checking doesn’t end at Trump’s invalidated claims — Mark Zuckerberg, a host of Trump’s 2025 presidential inauguration and CEO of Meta, made a bombshell announcement days before Trump took office: Meta would abandon third-party fact-checking, instead enabling Instagram, Facebook and Threads users to leave community notes. 

“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg said in his announcement video. 

“Fact-checking is such an important core principle of modern journalism, the editorial function,” Gary said. “The disappearance of that, and the capacity for these social media platforms to algorithmically amplify disinformation is really alarming.” 

Zuckerberg’s announcement mirrors X — formerly Twitter — which first introduced community notes as a verification tool. Yet, it still hasn’t fact-checked CEO Elon Musk’s claim that it’s working.

A coincidence that, weeks before the inauguration, Meta ditched fact-checking, appointed ex-GOP lobbyist Joel Kaplan as chief global affairs officer, and added Trump ally Dana White to its board?

Maybe Trump can answer that — when asked if Meta’s policy shift was a response to his criticism, he replied, “Probably.”

Weaponizing Misinformation

As confusing as it may be to hear that alleged truth-seekers are fighting off verified information, Trump’s supporters insist the “left-controlled” media is finally returning the power to the people. In reality, Pentagon press passes weren’t reassigned to balanced voices — they were handed to unreliable outlets, granting them unearned credibility.

“One of the very successful media criticism campaigns over the last 70 years has been the systematic articulation of the idea that the mainstream journalistic community has a liberal media bias,” Gary said. “Conservative media watchdog organizations have been very successful in creating this perception, which has led to a sustained effort to delegitimize critical journalism.” 

Media bias charts are imperfect, but telling — on Ad Fontes ranked every ousted outlet as “fact-based.” Their replacements? Far right, misinformation-laden, but loyal. And that’s what matters.

“As much as possible, Trump’s people will penalize silence, make life difficult for mainstream, critical journalistic sources and will try to dominate all the channels of information they can,” Gary said. “We’ll be getting celebrations for the Dear Leader.”

This shift is catastrophic — journalists are watchdogs, but Trump has convinced half the country that surrendering critical thought and accepting his ideology is what it means to be informed. Readers of The New York Times? Sheeple. “We will make America great again” and “They are communists that hate America.” FOX News? Your next pre-packaged opinion.

If you’re confused, don’t worry — OAN will remind you: Trans people are holding bathroom doors open for straight male predators, Biden opened the borders to lazy criminals, and D.E.I is crashing into planes.

Now that we’re all caught up on the world’s most pressing, relevant and deeply human-interest currents, let’s talk about DOGE — not the meme coin, but Trump’s newest government agncy, conveniently run by Elon Musk.

Digital Control: The Role of Elon Musk

Officially, DOGE stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, but functionally, it’s an unchecked consolidation of media, tech and financial power under Trump’s closest ally. And sure, it just happens to share its acronym with a cryptocurrency that both Tesla and SpaceX accept as payment — but that’s obviously just a coincidence.

“The fact that Elon Musk is a high-level operative within the Trump administration, and that X is so much his platform, means that there are very, very powerful platforms to push a particular agenda,” Gary said. 

So now, Trump’s allies control X and Meta, and then there’s that weird thing that happened with TikTok.

Back in 2020, Trump signed an executive order banning the China-owned app, which conveniently took effect just days before his inauguration. As the ban hit, American users got a notification: TikTok was working with “President Trump” on an agreement. Except — he wasn’t president yet.

What kind of deal was made? Who knows. But with that, we’ve now covered every major social media platform — and if someone’s pulling the strings, it’s not the libs.

Which is an idea is a stark difference from the idea that the media is completely controlled by the Democrats. Which democrats, you ask? Much like he’s never clarified when exactly America was great, Trump has never named the all-powerful “Dems” running the mainstream media.

What he has made clear? His plans for vengeance. On the campaign trail and in interviews, he’s vowed to punish outlets that anger him, jail journalists, and strips networks of their broadcast licenses for unfavorable coverage.

The self-proclaimed First Amendment champion seems to have forgotten who it protects — and who it protects them from.

As media historian Brett Gary explains, “It’s not state media yet. But it’s a direct line to an authoritarian playbook.”

The Playbook of Media Suppression

Looking at China’s state media, it operates within strict but evolving boundaries, which have expanded post-Mao — but never in pursuit of independence.

“Rather than resisting, media sources sought to connect with the state in order to gain access to financial resources or to obtain interviews with government officials,” notes the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. The CCP’s ability to hire and fire media leaders remains one of its most effective control mechanisms.

We have an understanding of what one-party media control looks like — just look at China or Russia. But despite Trump telling FOX News Digital that he has an “obligation to the American people” to work with the press — including those who have treated him “badly beyond comprehension” — he promptly removed The Associated Press (AP) from the Oval Office for referring to a certain body of water as the “Gulf of Mexico” and not the “Gulf of America.”

The irony? AP has long served as the publisher of the style guide used by most news organizations.

Now, Trump is pushing the world’s most widely recognized journalistic authority to conform to his editorial standards — establishing a precedent that press access comes at the cost of compliance.

Dictate the Press, Dictate Reality 

“There’s a reason authoritarian regimes control the press first,” Gary said. If you can dictate the terms of media coverage, you can dictate the public’s perception of reality.” 

In 2022, Russia cracked down on news and free speech harder than at any point in Putin’s 22-year rule — blocking Facebook, silencing foreign media and enacting a law punishing journalists with up to 15 years for spreading “false information” by calling the Ukraine invasion a “war” instead of Putin’s preferred “special military operation.”

“We Will Get Rid of Them”

And let’s not forget Trump’s 2019 photo-op with Putin at the G20 in Japan, where he casually said of the press: “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.”

Putin, smirked, responded: “We also have. It’s the same.”

“He’s only talking about fake news!” a Trump supporter might argue. “Just report the facts, and you’ll be fine.” But who decides what’s real when fact-checkers are gone and bipartisan media has been replaced by Trump-approved outlets? Trump and Musk, themselves, inaccurately reported that major outlets are government-funded propaganda machines — a claim based solely on federal agencies purchasing standard subscription services from those publications.

For someone who claims to champion the First Amendment, Trump seems to have forgotten what it protects — speech, religion, the press, assembly and petition. Three weeks back in the White House, he’s escalated beyond rhetoric, actively limiting press access, suing outlets and using directives to control coverage.

First Amendment experts say his lawsuits against CBS News and The Des Moines Register lack any legal merit. But merit isn’t the point — the goal, according to the conservative legal group filing similar suits, is to send a warning to American news organizations.

"Media institutions that have played a critical role in resisting authoritarianism in the past,” Gary said. “By keeping the dominant party’s foot to the fire, asking hard questions, and continuing to tell stories of resistance.”

Never a Good Time to Bow Down to a Tyrant 

Now is the time to support independent journalists — follow the journalists leaving newsrooms with their dignity in-tact. Continue reading legacy outlets — develop your media literacy and digital self-defense against propaganda. 

"I think the main lesson is… Don’t quit fighting,” Gary said. “Don’t quit fighting for the truth. Acknowledge that things are complicated. Acknowledge that you can get things wrong, but I think not quitting the fight is key."

Jim Acosta, long one of the most fearless journalists covering Trump, refused to be buried in a graveyard time slot. Instead, he left CNN — delivering one final message about the importance of truth in an era of lies:

“The highlight of my career came here, when I covered former President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator, Raúl Castro, about the island’s political prisoners. As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson: It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant. I’ve always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account… Don’t give in to the lies. Don’t give into the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope. Even if you got to get out your phone and record that message, ‘I will not give into the lies, I will not give into the fear.’ Post it on your social media so people can hear from you too.” 

Acosta’s words rang out like a call to arms. But in Trump’s America, truth is rewritten before the ink even dries. Within hours, The New York Post — one of Trump’s newly installed Pentagon-approved outlets — reframed his exit with a single headline: “Jim Acosta goes on anti-trump tirade.”

This isn’t speculation. It’s happening now — one journalist, one lawsuit, one silenced voice at a time. Unfortunately, there’s no Do Not Disturb mode in a war on truth. And history won’t remember who claimed to care about free speech — it’ll remember who actually did.