The Trump war on the news media takes an even stupider turn

Here are a few of the things that, in the opening weeks of the second Trump administration, have gone from “totally normal” to “DEVIANT BEHAVIOR THAT SHOWS THE EVIL LURKING AT THE HEART OF THE AMERICAN MEDIA”:

• A television news program does bog-standard edits on an interview with a politician, of the boring sort that have been done untold thousands of times. This becomes proof of “news distortion” to the degree that requires a federal investigation.
• A magazine’s photographer takes a photo. Editors, aware that a physical magazine has a particular shape, run a vertical crop of it for their print edition, while publishing a wider version online. Is this a recognition that different rectangles, in fact, exist? No, it is proof that the media is run by master manipulators intent on sparking a race war, spawning wave after wave of right-wing coverage.
• Public broadcasters air sponsorship messages, of the exact same type they have run for literal decades. (“Support for Delicious Dish is provided by A Tub of Cottage Cheese.”) Suddenly, their chief regulator is deeply “concerned” that these sponsorship messages “could be violating federal law.”

We’re seeing the repeated weaponization of even the most standard acts of journalism — an asymmetric kind of information warfare aimed at inventing clouds of controversy. But it’s hard to get stupider than the latest round, which claims that America’s media is hopelessly corrupted by all the bribes it takes from the federal government to slant the news in favor of Democrats.

Or, as the president truthed it this morning: “LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A ‘PAYOFF’ FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS. THE LEFT WING ‘RAG,’ KNOWN AS ‘POLITICO,’ SEEMS TO HAVE RECEIVED $8,000,000. Did the New York Times receive money??? Who else did??? THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY! THE DEMOCRATS CAN’T HIDE FROM THIS ONE. TOO BIG, TOO DIRTY!”

Is your brain hurting, just from reading that? If Politico was, in fact, being bribed in exchange for slanted coverage, that would be noteworthy. It is, of course, not.

Some of MAGA’s biggest brains seem to have noticed that several million federal dollars went to Politico and assumed that they came from a “Bribery—Media Fellow Travelers” line item in the budget. Instead, the money comes from federal offices buying subscriptions to Politico’s bureaucracy-focused Pro products. Government offices (and even Republican political campaigns!) have paid for news subscriptions for literal centuries. By the Trumpist line of logic, whenever a government department buys some desks or office chairs, it’s actually bribing Ikea to twist its Lagkapten and Grönfjäll into supporting DEI.

That, for outlets like the AP, the size of the outlays were greatest under Trump’s own previous administration does not seem to have shocked anyone back to reality. The questions, they continue to swirl!

the current right wing “scandal” that the U.S. government pays for news subscriptions is very funny

but its also funny that these guys can’t even read their own evidence that supposedly proves bias

his own screenshot shows AP received the most $ from the first Trump admin lol

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— Matt Binder (@mattbinder.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 4:38 PM

We’ve all gotten familiar with the absurdity of a lot of anti-media rhetoric the past decade or so. What’s different in this go-round is the speed with which nonsense spirals up from social media to policymakers to actual governmental action. Brendan Carr really does want to kill public broadcasting. Trump really is going to go after Politico’s revenues because he doesn’t like some of its stories. He really does think that the crime of totally normal editing should lead to the nation’s top TV news program being “immediately terminated” and should make the nation’s No. 1 broadcast network “lose its license.” The lawsuits will keep coming, and they’ll keep getting settled by nervous corporate executives. Where it ends is entirely unclear.