CNN and MSNBC anchors deliberately hid the ball from their viewers after President Donald Trump struck a blow against Brazil’s censorship regime, which has attacked American companies.
Trump placed 50 percent tariffs on Brazil, in part due to its anti-free speech policies imposed upon American Big Tech companies. However, CNN and MSNBC hosts and contributors repeatedly ignored the president's free speech concerns in segments about the raised tariffs, instead focusing on his defense of former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro.
After Trump mentioned Brazil’s persecution of Bolsonaro in his July 9 letter to Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announcing the tariffs, he immediately followed up;
“Due in part to Brazil's insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market)”.
Nearly all related segments that CNN and MSNBC aired on July 9 through 11 entirely ignored Brazil’s anti-free speech policies or any reason why the new tariff might be in America’s interest. In fact, MSNBC veteran Washington correspondent John Harwood blew off Trump’s concerns about free speech and American tech companies as a “Bunch of other gibberish” without bothering to explain them to viewers.
MSNBC anchor Ari Melber also let former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pontificate on the new tariff without pushback. Krugman lashed out at what he called Trump’s effort to “bully them into basically abandoning democratic principles.” Hopefully, Krugman meant the politicized persecution of Bolsonaro and not Brazil’s outrageous censorship regime.
CNN was no better. The network’s anchor Jim Sciutto asked reporter Alayna Treene if there were any other reasons the White House had given for the tariffs besides Trump’s ties to Bolsonaro, and she proceeded to repeat the legacy media narrative that only focuses on accusing Trump of making a play to support the former Brazilian president.
“[White House officials] argue that this–trying to intervene on behalf of a political ally who is of course, facing prosecution for attempting a coup against the current government and presidency in Brazil is only part of the reason. Of course, that is their words,” she said, before transitioning to discussing the legality of tariffs.
In another segment, CNN anchor John Berman characterized the tariffs very similarly, leading guest Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) to compare Bolsonaro to Trump, whine about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, and complain that the tariffs target a U.S. ally.
The congressman’s final claim is quite the stretch. Beyond targeting American companies and embracing anti-American values like censorship, Brazil is also a founding member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) partnership to challenge American global economic dominance. But Berman made no effort to challenge or correct Quigley’s assertion that Brazil is a U.S. ally.
The above examples weren’t isolated incidents. CNN anchors Dana Bash, Jake Tapper, Kaitlan Collins and Wolf Blitzer, as well as MSNBC anchors Lawrence O’Donnell, Mika Brzezinski, Stephanie Ruhle, MSNBC host and contributor Jonathan Lemire and others also all ignored these key reasons and framed the sanctions as simply an attempt to rescue a political ally.
Rare exceptions included MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace and CNN anchor Katy Tur, who each eventually addressed the social media aspect of Trump’s decision after long segments pushing the same anti-Trump narrative as the rest. However, Tur did not explicitly mention censorship, but simply mentioned that Trump thought Brazil was not treating American tech companies fairly.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has harassed social media platforms, Truth Social and Rumble, to force them to censor U.S. citizen and political commentator Rodrigo Constantino. Both companies have sued over the order. Prior to this move, the Brazilian government faced lawsuits from both of these social media platforms over demands that the platforms censor Allan dos Santos, a Brazilian national in the U.S. Brazil ordered Rumble to shut down in the country on Feb. 21.
The Brazilian government has also aggressively targeted X owner Elon Musk. The country fined Musk, made threats against Brazilian employees of X, and targeted multiple Musk-owned companies after he refused to comply with Brazilian government demands to censor content on X. This struggle even led X to temporarily close in Brazil in August 2024.
The Brazilian government also seized millions of dollars from Musk’s companies’ accounts and ordered X to shut down in Brazil. After X resumed operations in Brazil, the country fined Musk another $5 million.
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