Trump Allies Demand Compliant Pro-War State Media

Unhappy that “Dear Leader’s Glorious and Definitely Well-Thought-Out Campaign for the Liberation of Iran, Bombing Girls’ Schools, Increasing the Price of Gasoline, and Other Purposes” is not getting the fawning media coverage it deserves, members of the Trump administration are saying the quiet part out loud: What the country needs, in their estimation, is the kind of pro-MAGA propaganda that Fox News spoon-feeds conservatives.

“The fake news,” i.e., any media outlet that reports on factually correct things that do not portray him in the best light, has always been a convenient target for the reality-challenged president. In fact, anything Donald Trump disagrees with is “fake” or a “hoax” to him.

And since that worked well for him with the low-information crowd that tends to vote for the GOP, Republicans have long adopted his strategy of blaming the “Lügenpresse,” as it is known in the original German, for any news that portrays them in an unfavorable light.

Now that they are in charge, however, they want to take things a step further. Instead of just maligning real news outlets, they want to put them out of business, take them over, or pressure them to change their ways.

Take Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who tried to shut down Jimmy Kimmel last year because Trump can’t take a joke.

Like a good lackey, he sprang into action again on Saturday after the president complained about insufficiently favorable coverage of his special military operation against Iran.

“The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (in particular), and other Lowlife ‘Papers’ and Media actually want us to lose the War,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “Their terrible reporting is the exact opposite of the actual facts!”

Mind you, “facts” to the president are things he believes, no matter how wrong they are, e.g., that Iran has Tomahawk missiles and destroyed its own school on the first day of the war. When the media reports that it is likely that the US killed those girls, and that an initial investigation found as much, that is contrary to his made-up reality.

Trump especially doesn’t like reporting that draws attention to how his calamitous decisions are negatively impacting the country, for example when his tariffs are increasing the cost of living or when the war that he allowed himself to be drawn into wreaks havoc with the world economy and sends the price of gasoline skywards.

As a result, he has had a lot to vent about, which allowed someone like Carr to distinguish himself (and to push his own agenda, which is a complete takeover of the media by conservatives).

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” said Carr in a thinly veiled threat. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

A couple of things: First of all, Trump’s post was about the print media, over which Carr and the FCC have no jurisdiction, so he has no business weighing in.

What is more troubling, however, is that he seems to equate “the public interest” with “Trump’s interest.” Clearly, informing the public of how a war is going is in the public interest, but not in the president’s.

Carr also claimed that Trump won a “landslide election” in the face of “hoaxes and distortions.” Talk about a distortion: Trump didn’t even win a majority of the popular vote, and, even though his victory in the Electoral College looked decisive, he would have lost if a total of about 115,000 voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had chosen Kamala Harris instead of him.

The FCC chairman wasn’t the only member of the administration who had some thoughts about the media coverage.

Former Fox News morning show host and current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spent part of his briefing on Friday complaining about the news coverage of the war.

He called out CNN for reporting that the administration had underestimated Iran’s willingness and ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which he called a “fundamentally unserious report,” before adding that “the sooner [Trump-supporting billionaire] David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

Hegseth also suggested an alternative headline that he would like to see from a “patriotic press.”

Well, we have some news for the self-proclaimed “secretary of war,” Trump, and his FCC flunky: While it is not the job of the media to be “patriotic,” we can think of no greater service to the American people than to accurately report what is going on in the world since the president is a serial liar and his administration is the most dishonest in history.