The Trump Administration’s Palpable Contempt for the Press

“Do not buy into the lies from the legacy fake news media who are trying to fear you and scare you into believing otherwise. This is what we’ve seen them do about President Trump for years with every promise that he has made. He’s going in there to protect your hard-earned money. That is the ultimate goal.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, appearing on the Fox “News” Sean Hannity program, February 17, 2025, showed her contempt for the very people she was hired to provide information: the free press.

Referring to reporters’ questions on the role of Elon Musk and his so-called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), Leavitt continued:

“I’ve been fighting fake news reporters all day long here in the Washington D.C. swamp,” she asserted, “who are trying to fear monger the American people into believing that this administration is going after their hard-earned tax dollars and their hard-earned Social Security checks.”

She said that her purpose for appearing on Hannity’s program was to “set the record straight” by arguing that Trump and Musk and his team are merely trying to uncover fraud at the Social Security Administration.

Though this has yet to be seen, the tone of Leavitt’s comments both on Fox “News” and behind the podium at the White House press briefings are rancorous and contemptuous of the press. This is, however, consistent with Trump’s attitudes of the Third Estate, which was echoed by his Press Secretaries during his first regime.

His initial White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, had the decency to resign after all his blatant lies — like the inauguration crowd size, Elton John supposedly appearing, and the administration having no meetings with Russian diplomats before the inauguration — to his factual blunders — like Hitler never used chemical weapons on his own people — to his obvious abuse and hatred of the White House press corps.

I definitely miss Melissa McCarthy’s stunning parody of Sean Spicer on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” Now that was “spicy”!

Spicer was followed by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the mean girl we all had to endure in middle school, who continually violated her vow to uphold her Evangelical Christian beliefs by seriously disobeying the 9^th Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” by lying through her teeth.

Throughout his campaigns to the present day, Donald Trump has energized his base of supporters by consistently blaming and attacking the media generally as well as specific outlets. A very brief sample includes:

“[Journalists are] among the most dishonest human beings on earth.” He continually calls them “liars” whenever they write stories unflattering to him and his administration.

“The failing New York Times wrote a big, long front-page story yesterday. And it was very much discredited, as you know.”

At press conferences, Trump tells reporters to “sit down” when they ask questions he doesn’t like, and he speaks of a “running war” with the media. He has even accused “freedom of the press” as the cause of terrorist bombings in the U.S.

At the press conference (a.k.a. ranting tantrum), Trump accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of being “a rude, terrible person” for pressing him on why he refers to asylum seeking hundreds of miles from the southern border as “an invasion.”

After NBC’s Peter Alexander defended Acosta, Trump told Alexander “I’m not a big fan of yours. Just sit down, please.” He also demanded that Urban Radio’s April Ryan sit down when she tried to direct a question.

Yamiche Alcindor, a White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, stood up and asked whether Trump’s frequent embrace of the term “nationalist” was a nod or a dog whistle to “white nationalism,” as many of the President’s detractors claim. Trump erupted once again by accusing Alcindor:

“That’s such a racist question,” he charged. “What you just said is so insulting to me. It’s a very terrible thing that you said.”

During a wide ranging and often meandering recent press conference held at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, Donald Trump threatened the media. Following his victory to settle a defamation lawsuit against ABC News and Gannett, its parent company, in the sum of $15 million toward President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential foundation, Trump felt emboldened.

Trump sued ABC for defamation after anchor George Stephanolopous said that Trump had been “found liable for rape” during a March 10, 2024 on-air interview with Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.

The jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexual abuse against the writer E. Jean Carroll. The sexual abuse claim included the allegation that Trump forced his fingers inside Carroll against her will. The federal judge who presided over the case later wrote, “the jury implicitly found Mr. Trump did in fact digitally rape Ms. Carroll.”

ABC, however, decided not to contest the lawsuit against them in order to move on.

At the Mar-a-Lago press conference, Trump enumerated some of the additional media outlets he would go after. He announced his plans to sue the Des Moines Register, the newspaper of note in Iowa. He accused the pollster, J. Ann Selzer of saying “I was going to lose by three or four points,” after other Iowa surveys reported that he would win the state “by 20 points.” He eventually led Kamala Harris in Iowa by 13 points.

Most recently, Trump has barred reporters at the Associated Press from attending various press briefings or from boarding Air Force One with others from the press core over disputes that the AP will not rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as Trump has reclassified it.

Trump’s sustained and vicious attacks on what he refers to as the “dishonest and corrupt” media imperils our very freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, the Fourth Estate, while making some mistakes, fact-checks itself and our politicians, including Trump, and by so doing, exposes his lies for what they are.

 Trump admitted that he actually likes and has been positively energized by his feud with the media.

“I will be honest. I sort of enjoy this back and forth, and I have all my life, but I have never seen more dishonest people than frankly the political media.”

German Nazis popularized the term Lügenpresse (“lying press”) to intimidate and silence opposition.

Trump seems, however, to like people at Fox “News” and other conservative sources who serve as his apologists and promoters. Fox “News” has operated as the mouthpiece of the conservative segment of the Republican Party since its inception (a virtual Republican Party infomercial), and as the state-supported propaganda machine during Republican administrations much as Pravda (“truth” in Russian), functioned under dictatorial regimes during the former Soviet Union.

Fox “News” promotes “fairness and balance” as Pravda and “Truth Social” promote “truth.”

As the infamous quote from Nazi chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, makes clear: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

No matter how Trump and his accomplices wish to characterize the so-called “mainstream press,” gratitude must be showered upon them rather than the scorn and vile bigotry coming from the political right.

Members of the media, our purveyors of facts, ensure the perpetuation of our democratic form of government. While they sometimes get it wrong, when they do, they follow up with retractions, and at times, individual reporters and commentators lose their jobs if malice is proven.

I admire not only the center-left to progressive news outlets, reporters, and commentators, but also the courageous conservative Republican-leaning journalists and pundits who speak truth to power, people like Joe Scarborough, Nicole Wallace, Michael Steele (former RNC Chair), and former Fox “News” host, Shepard Smith, who stated in an on-air discussion with another former Fox anchor, Chris Wallace, regarding Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russian agents in Trump Tower:

“We’re still not clean on this, Chris. Why all these lies? Why is it lie after lie after lie? If you clean, come on clean.”

Donald Trump represents the voice of the alt-right in spreading his alt-facts within his alt-reality universe. Because of our mighty press providing the democracy-saving antidote to the constant stream – in dribs and torrents — of misinformation, lies, and cover ups from this and past administrations, We the People, by informing ourselves, will ensure that our system of government does not perish from the Earth.