President Donald Trump is stepping up his war with the media in his second term, shaking up the White House briefing room, blasting his favorite adversaries, and even trying to cut off government funding streams for certain news outlets.
“I can confirm that the more than 8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer’s dime will no longer be happening,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Wednesday. “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”
But the Politico payment spat — the company says the money was for subscriptions to its “Pro” product — is just one part of a larger effort within the Trump administration to battle with large portions of the news media.
Conservatives have long decried the national press as a bastion of left-wing groupthink, dating back at least to Vice President Spiro Agnew’s 1969 speech blasting “quarrelous criticism” of his boss, Richard Nixon, by the unelected news media.
Trump, as is typical, is taking that rhetoric to another level and has much of the Republican Party joining him.
The right-wing Media Research Center released a report Monday alleging that Wikipedia has effectively blocked 100% of right-leaning news outlets from being used in its citations, while blocking just 15% of left-leaning sources, saying it’s another example of bias in the press.
Also on Monday, the House subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency invited NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who was formerly the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, to testify before the committee about “systemically biased news coverage.”
“This hearing is an opportunity for you to explain to Congress and the American people why federal funds should be used for public radio — particularly the sort of content produced by NPR,” subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said. PBS is also in the subcommittee’s crosshairs.
A third front in the debate, and another that involves government funding of news, is the Trump administration’s abrupt overhaul of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Trump’s funding freeze includes over $268 million allocated by Congress to support independent media in more than 30 foreign countries. Nine out of 10 media outlets in Ukraine rely on USAID funding, per RWB’s release.
“The American aid funding freeze is sowing chaos around the world, including in journalism,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of the group’s U.S. operations. “The programs that have been frozen provide vital support to projects that strengthen media, transparency, and democracy.”
Trump had success suing media outlets during the 2024 campaign, with ABC News paying out a $15 million defamation settlement and CBS News releasing the unedited 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris amid a federal investigation.
He’s built up relationships with media moguls, including billionaire Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, and found alliances with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and X’s Elon Musk, whom Trump empowered with a far-reaching government job to shrink the bureaucracy.
Along with journalism advocacy groups, Democrats are decrying Trump’s moves and pledging to fight back against them for the next four years.
Two different elected Democrats made that argument during the Washington Press Club Foundation’s annual congressional dinner on Wednesday night.
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) charged that “the public needs a free press in this moment to rise to the occasion, to do the best, to tell the truth and report the news without fear or favor.”
Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) took things a step further, comparing Trump’s anti-media actions to the work of “authoritarian regimes.”
“There’s a reason that authoritarian regimes always come after journalists because you are uniquely positioned to speak uncomfortable truth to extraordinary power,” she said. “I’m not asking you to take sides in the fight between Democrats and Republicans, but I am asking you to take sides in the fight between democracy and authoritarianism.”
“The truth must matter,” Smith added. “Democracy must prevail, and in order for that to happen, the free press must endure.”
Of course, the Trump team doesn’t see things that way, arguing that it is opening new opportunities for nontraditional media to have their voices heard.
Leavitt has opened up a rotating “new media” seat in the White House press briefing room, offered credentials to scores of nontraditional content creators, and made a habit of calling on reporters who sit outside of the room’s first two rows, which are dominated by network news and major newspapers.
On Wednesday, Leavitt called on every reporter in the room’s back row, saying aloud that those smaller outlets had been ignored by former President Joe Biden’s press team.
Trump has also purposefully chosen a TV-friendly Cabinet, including one member, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was a Fox News host prior to joining the administration.
Under Hegseth’s leadership at the Defense Department, the New York Times, NBC News, NPR, and Politico were given notice to vacate their office space at the Pentagon, allowing more Trump-friendly outlets to come in, including Breitbart News.
While many of Trump’s top officials have given a large amount of their access only to Fox News, reporters from other news outlets have often been able to catch them walking back to the West Wing from interviews at Fox News’s booth outside the White House.
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Trump has also taken questions from reporters much more frequently than Biden did, something his deputies are happy to mention when pressed about their treatment of the media.
“All of you, once again, have access to the most transparent and accessible president in American history,” Leavitt said last week. “There has never been a president who communicates with the American people and the American press corps as openly and authentically as the 45th and now 47th president of the United States.”