Donald Trump’s intentions are now very clear. What were once seen as the solid structures which sustained democracy in the US are now crumbling as he seeks to destroy or neuter institutions which stand in his way.
That’s why he has targeted the courts, the universities, civil servants of the federal government, as well as individuals like former Trump adviser John Bolton and Federal Reserve governor Liz Cook.
One key bulwark has crumbled under this assault: the media.
Trump vs the news – a systematic assault on free reporting
In the run-up to his election, we saw papers like the Washington Post decide not to endorse any candidate, and its owner Jeff Bezos donated $1mn, along with Mark Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs, to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Washington Post cartoonist Ann Tellnaes captured this process in a cartoon which was blocked by the paper in January – she resigned.
In February 2025, Bezos curtailed the scope of views on The Post’s opinion pages to advocate only for“personal liberties and free markets” and exclude opposing views.
Lawsuits against ABC News and the CBS news programme 60 Minutes for its interview with Kamala Harris were also settled, respectively, for $15mn and $16mn.
Since then CBS has appointed an ombudsman to ensure “unbiased journalism”. Kenneth R Weinstein is a former president and CEO of the Hudson Institute – a public policy think tank that has received funding from the Koch family and an adviser to the Trump administration.
Trump has also targeted public service broadcasting. In July Congress voted to claw back $1.1bn in funding from the previously approved federal budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In August the CPB announced it was shutting down.
The Epstein factor
Also in July, Trump sued Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal for $10bn over claims that Trump wrote a “bawdy” note to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On 16 September Trump brought a $15bn defamation and libel lawsuit against the New York Times which he has described as “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the nation’s history”.
In a post on Truth Social, the president accused the newspaper of being a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic Party, at the same time criticising its endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race as “the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER”.
The lawsuit came less than a week after The Times reported on and printed a crude birthday note given to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which bears Trump’s signature.
A few days later a federal judge threw out the defamation lawsuit, saying it was filled with “vituperation and invective” but allowed the president to refile within 28 days.
Post Charlie Kirk – a shift towards government control
But a more intense assault on free speech is now underway in the wake of the shooting of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
In the wake of Kirk’s murder, Trump adviser Stephen Miller singled out left-wing organisations that he baselessly alleged were promoting violence in the United States, adding that the full weight of the federal government would soon come down on them.
“We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” he said.
Shortly after this, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on the podcast hosted by Miller’s wife, Katie Miller. “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society [sic],” Bondi said.
Vice President Vance has singled out George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation and said both benefited from a “generous tax treatment”. He wrongly accused Soros’s foundations and the Ford Foundation of funding The Nation magazine, which he attacked over its coverage of Kirk’s death.
The sudden fall of Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday night 15 September became the focus for outrage. Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told a far-right podcaster on Tuesday, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way”, suggesting that the government would take action against Disney, ABC’s parent company, if it failed to dispense with Kimmel.
Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group, with the largest number of local ABC affiliates, then fell in line and said they would no longer carry the programme.
By Wednesday evening Disney had capitulated and suspended Kimmel’s show. This prompted former Disney CEO Michael Eisner to comment on social media that ”the chairman of the FCC’s aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation”.
But, in a surprising turn of events, Disney announced on Monday 22 September that Jimmy Kimmel would be returning, with the show going out the following evening.
The shifting ground on freedom of expression
Carr’s slavish support for Trump’s attacks on the media stands in marked contrast to his opinions before he became FCC chair. In response to a question from Democrat Senator Maggie Hassan, of New Hampshire, he told an oversight meeting in 2018: “The First Amendment operates as a restraint on the government … The idea is that we don’t put a thumb on the scale in favor of one speaker or the other. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to encourage strong, robust – perhaps rough in some situations – discourse.”
Trump, speaking on Air Force One on Thursday after his UK visit, made more threats. He said major US networks were “97% against me”, adding “They give me only bad press. I mean they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their licenses should be taken away. When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do.”
Trump benefits from a massive supportive right-wing media ecosystem, from Fox News to talk radio to a host of MAGA streamers and influencers. It was deployed effectively to generate the wave of anger against Kimmel over his inaccurate comment in his show. The worry now is the acquiescence of the big media corporations, many of which are, or have been, involved in acquisitions and takeovers which require FCC approval.
The need to stand firm against the silencing of dissent
What is now clear is Trump’s intention is to ensure that media outlets don’t produce coverage that criticises him or his administration. This flies in the face of the first amendment.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, one of two Commissioners working for Carr, and the lone Democrat, strongly criticised Carr’s threats on social media.
“This Administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression, not because it glorifies violence or breaks the law, but because it challenges those in power or reflects views they oppose.
“We must stand firm against every attempt to silence dissent, punish satirists and government critics, and erode individual liberty. To surrender our right to speak freely is to accept that those in power, not the people, will set the boundaries of debate that define a free society.”
Some 90 years ago, Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian political novel about how fascism came to the US, It Can’t Happen Here, was published. I hope Americans are reading it again now.
