‘He knows all the levers’: How Trump has targeted, and shaped, the media in his second term

Since returning to office, Trump has taken the executive branch’s regulatory and enforcement powers over media organizations and their wealthy owners to new levels.

Combined with his extreme attention to coverage of him, Trump’s position in media has taken on a novel form in his second presidency: He’s the political leader of the nation, but he also styles himself as its senior media critic and top editor. He has gotten real results, even as critics warn that he is running an authoritarian playbook on the media.

“A lot of this stuff used to occur in the background,” said Michael Socolow, a University of Maine media historian and journalism professor who warned last year that about the danger of “the commander in chief becoming the editor-in-chief.” “They’re not hiding it.”

Some media organizations have fought against Trump’s attacks and resisted editorial changes, such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, which Trump has sued for defamation. But he has been successful in creating a chilling environment, the full effect of which may be impossible to ever quantify.

Trump has sued major newspapers and TV networks, defunded public media, and overseen a Justice Department that is arresting journalists — including former CNN anchor Don Lemon at a Minnesota protest. Meanwhile, he has also helped transform his administration into a major content producer itself. Since taking office, Trump and his administration have churned out artificial intelligence-generated content on social media and staged immigration raids to go viral online.

Underlying Trump’s aggressive push is a splintered media industry where podcasts, new digital sites, and social media platforms have allowed the president to amplify his message like never before. The effect of that shift is a traditional press that, under audience and financial strain, holds less power.

“The White House media strategy is simple—be ruthlessly transparent and unyieldingly aggressive so the American people can judge for themselves,” White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung said in a statement. “If people are concerned because we ask media outlets to run the President’s interviews in full, without deceptive edits, they should do some serious soul-searching and reevaluate their priorities.”

Trump’s influence over the press can be seen in how quickly the news cycle changes. Just this year, the top stories have rapidly shifted between the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland to ICE’s presence in Minneapolis to the Epstein files, among others.

“The tools that he uses to control attention, divert attention, redirect attention, all speak to the fact that attention is a finite resource that is even more valuable in an age of infinite information,” said Nancy Gibbs, the former Time magazine editor who serves as director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center.

In addition to the changes at CBS, Trump has hung over a recent overhaul at the Washington Post. Billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, who has business interests with the government through his roles at Amazon and Blue Origin, has remade the paper’s opinion page to align more closely with Trump, critics say.

While the paper had been losing readers before the changes to the opinion section, the shift triggered a tidal wave of subscription cancellations. Facing a sizable deficit, the Post laid off at least one-third of its newsroom last week, which included eliminating its sports and books sections.

“Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own,” former Post and Globe editor Marty Baron said in a statement last week. “This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”

The Trump administration’s pressure on the press isn’t limited to national newsrooms. Last year, the San Francisco-based KCBS-AM pulled back on political programming after Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr opened an investigation into the station, the Associated Press reported. The inquiry came after KCBS reported that immigration agents were in San Jose.

While there are many cases where the pressure campaign from Trump and his administration have succeeded, some incidents have prompted backlash from parties that normally have backed the president.

When ABC suspended late night host Jimmy Kimmel for criticizing Republicans in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, Carr threatened regulatory action against the broadcaster and Trump later threatened legal action. The pressure and suspension brought backlash, including from some Republican lawmakers such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz in a rare rebuke.

“That’s the kind of thing that can also unite libertarians with progressives, with First Amendment purists, and we saw a real public pushback on that,” Gibbs said.

There are more recent signs that the strategy is alienating some Trump supporters. After ICE officers shot and killed two protesters in Minneapolis, condemnation of the shootings could be seen across Reddit pages and influencers that rarely dive into politics, The Verge reported.

Some New Englanders who voted for Trump have been unhappy with his second term so far. That includes Darryll White, 66, a Skowhegan, Maine resident who previously spoke to the Globe for a series about how voters feel about Trump’s tenure.

Specifically, White has disagreed with the president’s handling of the Epstein filings, the government’s role in ousting Maduro from Venezuela, and the US’s aiding of Israel in the Gaza war. He’s also concerned about free speech and censorship, and specifically criticized the decision to arrest Lemon.

“It’s just your right to speak your mind and to stretch the law to arrest Don Lemon? I don’t like Don Lemon at all, but I’m certainly not for arresting somebody,” White said. “What are we, a third world country?”

Still, Trump constantly is pushing boundaries and trying to find what can appeal to his base and upset his detractors.

“Whether it’s tariffs or nuclear diplomacy or social media use, President Trump is comfortable being different and doing things that make traditional media uncomfortable,” Cantrell said. “I know he does things on purpose to make the establishment media types go crazy.”

Although the pressure on media organizations has been higher than ever, Socolow pointed out that the institutions that have pushed back against Trump have been able to resist him.

“Those who don’t settle with him, have been beating him,” he said, specifically citing Harvard University, as well as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. “Settling with Donald Trump never ends the conversation.”

Aidan Ryan can be reached at aidan.ryan@globe.com. Follow him @aidanfitzryan.