Are you planning a sunny vacation this winter?
You may fly over the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America. One month into the wrecking ball that is Trump 2.0, the media is ducking for cover. Outlets have two choices: nod along with the swirling chaos or trigger the wrath of King Trump and end up as Sean Hannity’s butler.
On Tuesday, an Associated Press reporter was barred from an Oval Office briefing. Why? The White House is peeved the AP won’t change its style guide and start using “Gulf of America.” On Sunday, the U.S. president unveiled a new holiday to celebrate his rechristened body of water.
Trump proclaimed Feb. 9 as “Gulf of America Day.” No word if kids held candlelight vigils for the yellowfin tuna and red snappers that will soon be choking on plastic straws. Meanwhile, everyone in Canada, Panama, Greenland and Gaza celebrated Gulf of America Day by praying the threat of imperial conquest will be as short-lived as Trump Steaks.
It’s one thing for Trump to expect his cultists to blindly follow his impulsive orders. They will. No more low-flow toilets? Bravo, Mr. President! No more brown M&Ms? We always knew that candy was a DEI plot to disguise replacement theory. How about an executive order banning GPS — it favours liberal destinations and never gets us to our book burnings.
On Tuesday, a Republican lawmaker introduced a bill to empower Trump to buy Greenland and rename it, “Red, White and Blueland.” Catchy! These lunatics are nuttier than a bucket of Trail Mix.
But with so much noise, people are missing the signal: Trump is waging war on the media. Sure, he always denigrated the free press as “fake news” or “enemy of the people.” But an emboldened spirit defines Trump 2.0.
He plans to ban or sue media outlets into submission.
In December, ABC settled a defamation lawsuit Trump filed after anchor George Stephanopoulos said the president had been “found liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll case. ABC could have won this lawsuit based on New York statutory language and the judge’s own verdict interpretation. Instead, ABC agreed to give $15 million to Trump’s future library, an audacious sum for a theoretical facility that is likely to contain nothing but colouring books.
On Friday night, Trump amended his lawsuit against CBS. He claims deceptive editing in a Kamala Harris interview on “60 Minutes” amounted to “election interference.” He is seeking $20 billion, an audacious sum since all network interviews are edited and CBS recently released the full transcripts and videos that prove they did nothing wrong.
No matter. The network’s parent company, Paramount, may well settle instead of fighting King Trump. That would be another body blow for journalism. You can’t throw punches while turtling. Trump is so confident he can intimidate and browbeat the press, he’s even suing the Des Moines Register because pollster J. Ann Selzer got it wrong when she declared Harris ahead in Iowa.
Suing a pollster for a mistake is like suing Dairy Queen for being delicious.
But Donald Trump won’t rest until the media drowns in the Gulf of America.
Politicians have always viewed the press with fear and loathing. Justin Trudeau once told me he loves my column — except the ones about him. Fair enough. But what Trump is now doing is weaponizing his plutonium powers against anyone who dares to challenge his supremacy.
One of the first things on an autocrat’s to-do list is a media crackdown. There’s a reason you’re more likely to stumble upon a financial planner than an independent journalist in North Korea. Telling the truth in Russia will get you thrown out of a window. Criticize the communist regime inside China and that’s a vanishing. Condemn the theocratic monsters in Iran? Beheading.
Trump will not resort to barbarism — he will just turn journalism into a living hell.
Why did the Pentagon, now under the direction of DefSec Pete “Jack Daniels” Hegseth, implement a “media rotation program”? So it could boot the Washington Post, The Hill, CNN and The War Zone out of office spaces to make room for friendlier outlets.
Dictators want stenographers, not challengers. Dictators are allergic to the truth.
Trump can elevate his media war to DEFCON 1 because Big Tech is already in the bag. Both Google and Apple have caved to “Gulf of America” for domestic mapping. Trump could sign an edict to rename New York and Mark Zuckerberg would be wearing a “Trumplandia” T-shirt by sundown.
That makes the media one of the last bulwarks to stand against Trump’s demolition of laws, rules and mores. Trump hates journalists more than he hates dogs because we bark louder. He wants to glance out at a press conference and see a sea of nodding apparatchiks and bootlickers.
So don’t settle and bow down, media. The next four years are consequential.
