Republicans are hard at work making the midterms unfair.

Their mid-decade redistricting in the South has diminished Black political power. They’ve pushed a dodgy non-citizen-voting narrative to scare away voters and stoke mistrust in elections. They’re attacking Alaska’s Senate election before a single vote is counted. And while their assault on mail-in voting has largely failed, it undoubtedly made people less confident in that option, so in that sense it succeeded.

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This behavior is on-brand for Republicans. In the last six decades, there’s compelling evidence that they’ve tried to rig national elections at least five other times – in 1968, 1972, 1980, 2000, and 2020. Most of these plots you know about; some you may not. Four times, they were declared the winner, so we can’t say cheaters never prosper.

Here’s a look back.

1968: The Chennault Affair

Lame-duck President Lyndon Johnson tried to get Vietnam peace talks going, but Republicans secretly persuaded South Vietnamese leaders to stall the effort by assuring them that GOP nominee Richard Nixon would get them a better deal if he won. LBJ may have been playing politics, too, seeking a peace breakthrough to help the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey.

A key emissary between the Republicans and South Vietnam was Chinese-born GOP fundraiser Anna Chennault. Her mission was successful: South Vietnam boycotted peace talks, and Nixon was elected.

Information about this plot was kept secret for decades, but now there’s no doubt. Republicans sabotaged a sitting president’s peace efforts for political gain while American troops kept dying. It was traitorous, but they got away with it.

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1972: Watergate

This Republican conspiracy went beyond the break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s offices. It was a far-flung effort to boost Nixon’s reelection with a campaign of dirty tricks.

One particular target was Democratic frontrunner Edmund Muskie. New Hampshire primary voters got phone calls late at night from callers with Black dialects claiming to be from a “Harlem for Muskie Committee.” A letter on “Citizens for Muskie” stationery sowed Democratic division by spreading false rumors that one of Muskie’s primary rivals had been arrested for homosexual acts and another had gotten into a drunk-driving accident with “a well-known call girl.”

The right-wing Manchester (NH) Union Leader published something called the “Canuck letter,” which was signed by a “Paul Morrison” but actually written by a White House staffer. It accused Muskie of prejudice against Americans of French-Canadian descent. The newspaper also insulted his wife. These smears so upset Muskie that he showed up outside the paper’s offices on a snowy morning to publicly denounce it.

The news media said Muskie shed tears. He insisted it was snow melting on his face. But the crying narrative won out, casting him as weak, and his campaign flamed out. A more liberal candidate, George McGovern, won the Democratic nomination and got swamped by Nixon.

Two years later, the Watergate scandal forced Nixon’s resignation, but Republicans kept the White House for the rest of the term. The dirty tricks worked.

1980: Fear of an “October Surprise”

Iran holding U.S. embassy staffers hostage dragged down President Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid against Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. But the Reagan camp worried about an “October Surprise” in which a hostage release would give Carter a last-minute boost. After Iran waited and Reagan won, strong suspicions arose that Republicans had secretly urged the regime to hold off until after the election.

Congressional investigators later found “no credible evidence” of covert Republican outreach to Iran, but in 2023 came a revelation: Texas politician Ben Barnes told the New York Times he was part of the plot. A secret backchannel is especially plausible because some of the same Republicans were later involved in an arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. And the alleged scheme bears similarities to the Chennault Affair 12 years earlier.

If it happened – and I think it did – it means Republicans engaged in an outrageously cruel conspiracy: urging Iran to keep Americans in captivity longer.

2000: The Brooks Brothers Riot

Democrat Al Gore won half a million more votes than Republican George W. Bush, but that didn’t matter under our flawed Electoral College system. The outcome came down to Florida, where the winner would take the presidency. The count was incredibly close, and Republicans sent dirty tricksters to the state, including the infamous Roger Stone. They violently besieged an election office to stop Miami-Dade County’s recount. The incident became known as the Brooks Brothers Riot, a reference to the rioters’ upscale clothes.

The case went to the Supreme Court – where seven of the nine justices had been chosen by Republican presidents – and a statewide recount was blocked, leaving Bush as the winner by just 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.

The consequences have been devastating. Bush’s selection of Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito was enough to tip the balance in the Citizens United ruling, which allowed the rich to further dominate our politics, and also made the difference in the Dobbs decision, which took away women’s reproductive rights.

2020-2021: The insurrection

I don’t need to explain this one. You saw the televised Republican-fueled assault on the Capitol. You read about the Republicans’ fake electors plot.

Of the five examples of apparent GOP cheating I’ve cited, this is the only one in which Republicans didn’t win immediately. But they sure did later. Joe Biden served four years, but the failure to throw Donald Trump in prison allowed him to retake the White House, pardon the Jan. 6 rioters who beat up cops, and start building his dictatorship.

I’m not saying Democrats have been squeaky clean. Of course not. But Republicans have been far worse, and still are. It’s up to us to not let the cheaters win this time.

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This week’s media atrocity

An organization called Wedgewood Polls said it faked the results of political polls as a “social experiment,” and the not-careful-enough news outlets that got fooled included the New York Times, Newsweek, the Hill, CBS News, MS NOW, and the Daily Beast.

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First off, let me state: I am not a psychiatrist. I’m a career-long journalist, which might raise questions about my own mental state.

That said, I’ve been begging the news industry to say loudly and clearly that Donald Trump is mentally unhinged. That’s not a clinical diagnosis – it’s a holy-crap-he’s-got-the-nuclear-codes assessment.

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I’m not mocking or trivializing mental illness. People who are unwell need empathy and treatment. But they don’t need to be president. And the media need to do their job and call out the danger. To prod them, this newsletter assesses Trump’s mental state against 14 signs and symptoms of mental illness as listed by the American Psychiatric Association:

Illogical thinking

The APA describes this as “unusual or exaggerated beliefs about personal powers to understand meanings or influence events; illogical or ‘magical’ thinking typical of childhood in an adult.” Among Trump’s delusions of grandeur: a social media post depicting him as Jesus Christ, and his claim that “I probably would’ve won all 50 [states] if we had an honest count.” There’s also this quote from a recent Time interview: “If I weren’t here, there wouldn’t be a Saudi Arabia. There wouldn’t be an Israel. There wouldn’t be various other countries also.” So, might Trump be mentally ill based on this indicator? YES.

Sleep or appetite changes

Trump’s sleep habits have long seemed strange, featuring torrents of social media posts in the middle of the night. But there’s no indication that’s a change, nor is there any sign Trump has changed his junk-food diet. So on this one, we’ll give him a NO.

Decline in personal care

Some people who have spent time with Trump complain about his body odor, but that’s not new (or proven), so we’ll give him another NO.

Mood changes

He does seem more distressed and quick to lash out at people. He even posted the cellphone number of longtime ally Sen. Tom Cotton over a policy disagreement. And his banning of CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House appeared to be a snap decision after he saw video clips criticizing him. So this one’s a YES.

Social withdrawal

We can only wish. NO.

Drop in functioning

His incompetence at running the government – including, but not limited to losing a war, creating a tariff fiasco, and hiring and firing a press secretary within five days – speaks to a disordered mind. YES.

Body pain

Trump’s secrecy about his health makes this impossible to assess, so we’ll say NO.

Problems thinking

That’s the APA’s exact wording: “problems thinking.” The organization explains that it means “problems with concentration, memory or logical thought and speech that are hard to explain.” I could list hundreds of examples, but here are a few: Trump referred to “the Islamic Republic of Japan,” said he wanted to drive home prices up, confused Greenland with Iceland, and said ”most people don’t know that dumb ends in a B.” After months of insisting that the total elimination of Iran’s missiles was a key war goal, he said, “They have to have some, because other people have some.” At a Medal of Honor ceremony, he veered into an extended monologue about the White House drapes and ballroom. So, YES. Definitely YES.

Increased sensitivity to sights, sounds, smells, or touch

Hard to know about this one, but there was a military flyover during Xi Jinping’s visit that didn’t faze the Chinese leader but caused Trump to flinch enough that it became a topic of discussion. Let’s say MAYBE.

Apathy

He said ”I don’t care” if Iran comes back to negotiations and “I don’t care about the Nobel Prize.” But he obviously does care, and his recent heavy schedule of rallies attests to his continued deep engagement. So, NO.

Feeling disconnected — a sense of unreality

Trump’s problem is slightly different. He has invented his own reality and demands that the entire country get connected to it. His “unreality” is real to him. So, NO.

Nervousness — fear or suspiciousness of others

He keeps telling us that large segments of society are out to get him, even Fox News. YES.

Odd, uncharacteristic, peculiar behavior

For a long time, Trump’s behavior has been characteristically odd, so it’s hard to address this indicator. Two years ago, he bizarrely swayed to music at a campaign rally for 39 minutes – an incident that the New York Times sanewashed as an “improvisational departure.” During that same campaign, Trump told a rally crowd that dead golfer Arnold Palmer had an impressive penis. But Trump keeps trying to top himself. Just last week, he told multiple crowds that he admired Sen. Jon Husted’s ass. Peculiar? YES.

Changes in school or work

He seems increasingly distracted by pet projects that people don’t care about, rather than things everyone cares about, such as inflation. The Reflecting Pool mess is one example of a blind alley he’s gone down. His threat to demolish the Kennedy Center is another. This is a YES.

Trump’s score:

• “Yes” on seven mental illness indicators.

• “No” on six.

• “Maybe” on one.

The APA advises: “If several of the following are occurring, it may be useful to follow up with a mental health professional.”

Which means we need to get him out of office and into care. And we need to get the media to take the problem seriously.

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This week’s media atrocity

The Status newsletter (behind a paywall, sorry) had a great takedown of media such as CBS and ABC for getting overly excited about Elon Musk’s “flying car” project. As Status points out, “Tesla is seeking as much as $250,000 to reserve a version of the car that never leaves the ground” and “the website’s fine print includes a disclaimer that the vehicle might not be delivered at all.”

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Attend in person at The Milton Theatre in D.C. or watch the live stream online. RSVP today!

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An email popped into my inbox a week ago. The subject line: “Hi Mark -- NY Times editor here - reaching out with a pitch to you.” It claimed to be from Patrick Healy, the Times’ assistant managing editor for standards and trust.

I was skeptical that it was legit. After all, I’ve long criticized the Times for sanewashing and normalizing the rise of Republican fascism. I’m not exactly their favorite person. So why would they want to talk to me? But after a bit of checking, I confirmed the email was authentic.

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Healy wrote: “I follow your writing and analysis of Times journalism, and I wanted to reach out and invite you to be a guest on a new Times undertaking.” He invited me to talk with him for a 15-minute “Sound Off” video in which I could air my grievances with Times coverage.

Perhaps my past job as the Chicago Tribune’s metro editor gave me some credibility with him, perhaps not. Either way, he was offering me a forum, and I took it.

Healy’s outreach cited a complaint I had made on Bluesky and in my Stop the Presses newsletter about a Times article on former Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt joining Fox News. The story described her as “fierce,” “steely,” “nimble,” and a “homegrown star of the Trump White House,” but failed to mention that she routinely lied to the American public. In fact, the article didn’t mention a single negative aspect of her White House tenure.

In my interview with Healy, I started with the Leavitt story. I tied it to the Times’ overall failure to come to grips with the threat facing both the press and our democracy. I said the Leavitt story amounted to “awarding her style points” as a fascist liar.

I also criticized the cutesy euphemisms used by the Times, such as calling Trump’s authoritarianism his “expansive interpretation of presidential power” and describing his threat to seize the Panama Canal as a desire “to expand America’s footprint.”

Healy defended the Times’ hesitancy to use the word “lie” in its Trump coverage. He said frequent use of the word would change “the people’s sense of our own fairness” and ”lose the potency of the word itself.”

“So you’re saying you want to retain the potency of the word ‘lie’ by not using it?” I responded.

I also asked him, “Do you think that Trump is attempting to overthrow democracy? Because I do, and think it’s obvious that he is. And I think the fact that mainstream media won’t say it makes it more likely that it’s going to happen.”

The full interview is at this link.

I don’t understand why the New York Times let me rant against the Times on its own website. But I have to give its editors a sliver of credit for doing so. Healy seems like a sincere person who believes the Times is doing a fine job, but is open-minded enough to want to hear opposing views.

I expect more from the Times than some people do. It’s the nation’s most prominent newspaper, with a brilliant staff. It occasionally writes good headlines like “Trump Hands Victories to Putin, Who Offers More War in Return,” and when it does, I offer my praise. But it cares way too much about appearing nonpartisan and not enough about standing for decency and democracy.

The Times comes up with stories that document Trump’s deep corruption and cruelty. Yet it flinches at its duty to connect those dots and warn the public that Trump and his Republican co-conspirators are building a dictatorship.

I don’t want the Trump regime to shut down the Times before the Times wakes up to what a threat the regime is.

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Things are looking up for pro-democracy forces in the midterms.

When Donald Trump has to travel to Alaska in the campaign’s final month to try to save a Senate seat, it’s a sign that the dictator’s magic is wearing off, even among former true believers. According to a recent Pew poll, only 67% of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 approve of his performance as president, down from 83% at the start of this year and 95% early in his second term.

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It seems likely that Democrats will win the House and they could even take the Senate, with strong candidates in red states like Kansas and Iowa.

That’s encouraging. But it’s also scary. Because when authoritarians like Trump see a dramatic slide in support, they often respond with further abuses of power and even violence.

Trump has already tried to overthrow democracy once. He didn’t succeed, but he wasn’t punished either, so why wouldn’t he try again? He has built ICE up into a dangerous thug army and installed even more compliant underlings, including a defense secretary who specializes in performative violence.

Both the 2021 attempt and a potential new one would be what is called a “self-coup”: when a sitting leader overturns an election result or makes another power grab to retain or expand their power.

Trump has kinship with another authoritarian who participated in a self-coup: Delcy Rodríguez of Venezuela. The only difference is that Rodríguez’s power grab was successful. She was a key ally of President Nicolás Maduro when he stole his country’s 2024 election, and when U.S. forces later seized Maduro in a deadly raid ordered by Trump, she was happy to take over and help the U.S. regime steal Venezuela’s oil. It won’t surprise you to hear that no elections are currently scheduled there.

What’s really happening at the Supreme Court?

Join COURIER and Americans United on October 20 for Weaponizing Faith: Christian Nationalism at the Supreme Court. Featuring Rachel Laser, Stasha M. Rhodes, Michael Podhorzer, and moderator Lisa Graves, this panel uncovers how political allies are reshaping our legal system and what we must do to reclaim it.

Attend in person at The Milton Theatre in D.C. or watch the live stream online. RSVP today!

There are several ominous signs as our own elections approach. I often criticize major media for not taking the Trump threat seriously enough, but they’ve done a decent job of covering Republicans’ sneaky maneuvers:

• Homeland Security officials are targeting voter registration groups with investigations, and may deploy undercover agents to “disrupt activities.”

• ICE agents are already showing up near polling places.

• Tina Peters, a former Colorado official who did prison time for election misconduct, met with Trump at the White House to discuss “election integrity” and the possibility of a federal seizure of ballots.

• For the first time in more than two decades, observers from an international election-monitoring group won’t be present during midterms voting… because the regime declined to invite them.

• At a rally last week, Trump said: “We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right, Russ? He’s going to be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion.” The “Russ” in question is Russell Vought, who heads the Office of Management and Budget – not the kind of agency you’d expect to be a major player in an election crackdown. But Vought had a major role in Project 2025 and is pushing Trump to seize more power.

• Trump’s “Justice” Department is seeking to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for telling the truth about the Jan. 6 insurrection.

• Homeland Security investigators raided Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home on Monday, about three weeks before Election Day, disregarding the general policy that investigators go quiet on matters involving candidates this close to an election.

So what can we do to safeguard democracy?

• Participate in the No Kings nationwide day of action this coming Saturday, Oct. 17.

• Volunteer to campaign for pro-democracy candidates. It’s not too late.

• Remind your less engaged friends and relatives to vote.

• Support organizations waging legal fights for fair elections. It’s possible that Democrats could win both houses of Congress and the regime would accept the result, but their rhetoric doesn’t offer much hope for that. So expect legal challenges and conspiracy theories if the Republicans dislike the results.

• Don’t assume that the resolution of individual election disputes in court will be the end of the problems. Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig has warned that Republicans might refuse to seat some Democrats when the new session of the House begins on Jan. 3.

• Get psychologically prepared for the possibility that Trump will invent some sort of national emergency to delay or disrupt the voting or the seating of a new Congress. If that happens, it will be time for concerted resistance. University of California, Berkeley, professor Neil Abrams wrote an article for The New Republic about how “nonviolent rebellion” worked in Serbia and Minnesota and could work if Trump tries to steal this election.

I’m not trying to be alarmist, but I am trying to be realistic. This is an opportunity for us to be the kind of Americans our descendants will be proud of.

This week’s media atrocity

ABC News blew it by publishing a clearly flawed story about a company linked to Donald Trump. Jr. that has been getting government contracts. The article contained factual errors and failed to give the company a chance to comment. People may think the only reason journalists seek comments from the subjects of stories is for the sake of fairness, but it’s also a chance for them to save you from yourself if you’ve got facts wrong.

After defending the story for a while, ABC deleted it from its website (in the business, we call that “unpublishing”), and later reposted it with a tamer headline, no byline, and corrections made. In this time of rampant corruption by the Trumps, the last thing we need is a major news outlet giving credence to Trump’s lies about “fake news.”

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“Pretend I’m on the ballot,” says Donald Trump, who’s not on the ballot.

But I hope voters do pretend, since his second term has been a disaster.

I also hope voters pretend some other people are on the ballot, such as Elon Musk, David and Larry Ellison, and the Saudi royals. That’s because the outcome of the November election may determine whether they achieve “media capture,” buying up news outlets and putting them in service of a dictator to prevent everyday Americans from knowing what their government is doing to them.

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A new supersized media corporation called Skydance, a merger of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery, is on track to launch tomorrow. It will be run by Trump supporter David Ellison, who acquired CBS last year and will now be adding CNN to his empire.

Ellison is considering asking Trump supporter Musk to invest in his media behemoth, sources told Semafor. That would deepen a relationship that already includes Ellison’s father, Larry, putting $1 billion into the social media platform X when Musk took it private in 2022.

Skydance will have 49.5% foreign ownership, including 38.5% from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. These will be non-voting, “silent” shares, David Ellison promises. Excuse my skepticism.

In any case, the Saudi dictatorship that murdered U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi will co-own two major U.S. news outlets. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission thinks this is just fine.

The Saudis and other petrostates have their mitts on other media too. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a bigger share of X than anyone except Musk, and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is also an investor. Another X co-owner is the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which started in China but now operates in Abu Dhabi. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, got a suspicious pardon from Trump in a money-laundering case.

Then there’s TikTok. The Trump regime oversaw a deal in which the Ellisons and Abu Dhabi-based firm MGX each bought 15% stakes in the U.S. version of the social media platform.

Musk and the Ellisons boost Trump’s agenda – Musk with white supremacist messaging on X and the Ellisons with a CBS News operation that plays footsie with the regime. They also help MAGA financially. Musk spent $290 million to boost Republicans in the 2024 election and authorized his super PAC to spend at least $100 million this year. Larry Ellison gave $45 million to a group backing Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In exchange, Musk and the Ellisons get government help that earns them billions. The regime has eased oversight of Musk’s businesses and dropped investigations into them. It has gifted the Ellisons with favorable antitrust policies as they gobble up U.S. entertainment and news media.

The Musk-Ellisons-Saudi nexus is the most troubling media trend of the moment. But they’re not the only superwealthy people participating in American media capture.

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, the second richest person in the world (trailing only Musk), has diminished his news outlet’s influence through layoffs and a rightward turn in its opinion section. Bezos appears to be placating Trump to protect his other businesses, including Amazon and Blue Origin, from federal harassment.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who controls both Facebook and Instagram, made a showy attempt to curry Trump’s favor after the 2024 election. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, where Zuckerberg sat with Musk and Bezos in a row of oligarchs. Meta also rolled back fact-checking, dropped diversity policies, and named Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan as chief global affairs officer.

Another member of the row of oligarchs was Google CEO Sundar Pichai, whose company changed Lake Ontario to “Lake America” on its maps just because a demented dictator wanted it to. Many people use Google to find news, so it’s alarming when it foists Trump’s twisted version of reality on us.

Then there’s the Murdoch family’s Fox News, a key amplifier of right-wing lies. The Murdochs have problems with Trump personally, but they’re all-in on Trumpism.

And let’s not forget Trump-friendly local TV news chains such as Nexstar and Sinclair. The regime approved Nexstar’s merger with Tegna – a deal that was possible only because Trump’s FCC repealed the national ownership cap that barred a single company from reaching more than 39% of U.S. TV households.

There’s a common theme: media consolidation in the hands of the right wing.

So what do we do about it?

Well, we call it out, as I’m doing in this newsletter, which I hope you’ll share. The first step in solving a problem is increasing awareness.

We also should financially support truth-telling news outlets and boycott those that spread lies.

And we should vote in the midterms against politicians who promote a puppet press. We need congressional hearings to push back against anti-democratic media moguls and foreign bad actors trying to dominate our news.

A revitalized Congress could – and should – strengthen antitrust laws to discourage media consolidation. It could approve tax breaks for small local news outlets so they’re not gobbled up by huge corporations. I’m not saying reforms can happen instantly. For example, I don’t see how we can restore the FCC to legitimacy until we get a non-MAGA president.

But building an aggressive Congress is step one. Media that suck up to Trump for business reasons (such as Meta and Google) need to realize that an anti-fascist movement is here and they need to get aboard.

We must free this country from media capture.

This week’s media atrocity

The New York Times called former Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt “fierce,” “steely,” “nimble,” and a “homegrown star of the Trump White House” in a story about her new Fox News gig. Not a single mention of her relentless lying to the American public, which I documented last year. The obvious conclusion is that the Times doesn’t mind being lied to by taxpayer-funded “public servants” and doesn’t even think the lying is newsworthy.

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What’s really happening at the Supreme Court?

Join COURIER and Americans United on October 20 for Weaponizing Faith: Christian Nationalism at the Supreme Court. Featuring Rachel Laser, Stasha M. Rhodes, Michael Podhorzer, and moderator Lisa Graves, this panel uncovers how political allies are reshaping our legal system and what we must do to reclaim it.

Attend in person at The Milton Theatre in D.C. or watch the live stream online. RSVP today!

Get the full receipts every Monday in The Cover-Up

Legacy media moved on from the Epstein files. We didn't. Our new Contradictions Tracker lines up what officials swore to against what the documents show. Follow it every Monday in The Cover-Up.

The cost of sucking up to a dictator is that hardly anyone feels sorry for you when the dictator turns on you.

The mainstream media are learning that right now.

Donald Trump’s regime recently banned three networks from the White House – an autocratic move that was soon blocked in court. But the regime is still keeping CNN off its TV pool, in which networks share duties to cover the president’s public activities. Trump constantly finds new ways to undermine a free press.

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By being timid bystanders as Trump and his cadre of liars have assaulted their profession for more than a decade, many journalists have not only enabled this terrible behavior, they’ve volunteered to be victims.

Last year, Trump restricted the Associated Press’ White House access because it called the Gulf of Mexico by the name it’s had for four centuries instead of using Trump’s invented name, the “Gulf of America.” The AP sued and won a preliminary injunction, but the overall reaction from the news industry was underwhelming.

Trump called female reporters “Piggy,” “ugly,” “dumb,” and “stupid,” and the White House press corps did little to defend their colleagues.

Trump and his minions have repeatedly lied to reporters, and instead of treating that dishonesty as an insult to themselves and their audiences, journalists have found cutesy ways to minimize it, such as saying Republicans are “untethered to truth” and show “a penchant for dispensing with the facts.” When regime figures go on TV news shows and lie repeatedly, the hosts thank them for their time and invite them back.

After the regime threatened networks’ broadcast licenses and raided the home of a Washington Post reporter, the White House Correspondents’ Association invited Trump to be the honored guest at its annual dinner. It’s as if the journalists wore “kick me” signs over their tuxedos and gowns, inviting further abuse.

And indeed they got it. About a month after NBC’s Kristen Welker was caught on video laughing with ethnic cleansing czar Stephen Miller at the dinner, Trump became furious at her for accurately stating that his midterms endorsements had mixed results. He called for her to face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission.

Trump feels emboldened to disrespect the press because the press disrespects itself. I’m not saying Trump would suddenly be nice to the news media if they got tougher with him. I’m saying his abuse would be less effective if they put up a united front to defend press freedom and obvious truths. There are ways to do that, such as more aggressive questioning, sticking up for targeted colleagues, and refusing to sip champagne with fascists.

They also must avoid legal settlements with Trump in the vein of the $15 million paid by ABC and the $16 million that CBS forked over after the 2024 election. Those deals signaled weakness and encouraged him to sue other outlets.

I don’t blame the frontline reporters for media submissiveness as much as I blame their editors and producers who are often unknown to the public but are really calling the shots. Corporate media would rather stay out of Trump’s crosshairs than show courage. But for democracy to function, the press need to demand access to public information, not hope for a shower of crumbs from the regime.

There are some signs of pushback, but they’re rare.

ABC, whose shows “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The View” have come under the regime’s regulatory assault, sued the FCC on First Amendment grounds. It also launched a public appeal for viewers to make their objections known to the agency. More of this, please.

Trump’s ban on CNN, MSNOW, and Politico prompted the outlets to sue, and the WHCA joined the case. A judge quickly ordered their access restored, at least for now.

The other networks involved in the White House TV pool initially showed some backbone in support of CNN. ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC refused to do pool duty until CNN’s access was restored. But the judge’s ruling did not explicitly order CNN’s reinstatement, and the White House left the network off Air Force One over the weekend. Sunday was Fox’s turn to serve as the TV pool, and they took it.

The networks’ decision-making on whether to skip the pool appears to be day-to-day, but the New York Times said they see a continued boycott as “untenable.”

That would leave CNN on the outside, at least in the short term, while other major media outlets put their “kick me” signs back on.

This week’s media atrocity

The New York Times wrote another story about former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel over the weekend as part of major media’s campaign to make him seem like a credible presidential candidate when he isn’t. Is he calling in decades’ worth of favors from the press? Or is something else at work? The NYT story, like many others, ignores the damning issue that Chicagoans know well: the police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and Emanuel’s shameful role in the case. Under his leadership, the city of Chicago tried to cover up a murder.

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New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have written major news stories – and a best-selling book – using anonymous sources with inside knowledge of White House policymaking.

Their book, “Regime Change,” and a recent story headlined “Behind the Scenes, Vance Gathered Unvarnished Views of the Iran War” have portrayed JD Vance as a cautious, responsible statesman worried about the consequences of the war with Iran.

Which makes me wonder whether Vance or one of his close aides is a key source and whether the reporters are helping Vance absolve himself of responsibility for the war as he eyes a presidential bid in 2028 or beyond.

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The “Unvarnished Views” story was all about Vance, so the reporters normally would be obligated to seek his comment. Yet the story neither quoted Vance nor said he declined to comment. That’s strange, unless he was the source.

Let me be clear: I do not know the identities of Haberman and Swan’s sources. And there can be legitimate reasons to grant a source anonymity, especially when they’re inside a regime like Trump’s that punishes people who tell the truth.

But the problem is that when the press doesn’t identify its sources, readers can’t assess their motives.

Are they trying to expose government conduct they disapprove of? Planting a favorable spin about themselves or their boss? Befriending a journalist so they can ask for a favor later? Trying to make a rival look bad?

There are other possibilities too, such as “official leaks” in which the government floats a policy idea as a trial balloon without having to take responsibility for it.

Because of what we don’t know, information from unnamed sources should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The New York Times has a policy that unidentified people can serve as news sources “only for information that we believe is newsworthy and credible, and that we are not able to report any other way.”

But it’s hard to see how a July 24 NYT story met that standard. Headlined “How a Grieving Trump Decided to Back Lindsey Graham’s Sister for Senate,” the Times wanted us to believe that the world’s most famous narcissist was in personal grief over Graham’s death. What was that notion based on? According to the story, “Mr. Trump, who is not known to show emotion, appeared upset by the loss, two people said.”

That’s two unidentified people describing another person’s emotions in subjective terms. Was that really newsworthy? If so, what did readers gain from it? It’s clear what Trump gained – he was normalized in the New York Times.

Negotiations over anonymity don’t always happen via Signal or in whispers on park benches. Under both Republican and Democratic presidents, it’s become routine for White House officials to brief reporters under the condition that they not be identified.

Why? Sometimes it’s the “trial balloon” tactic mentioned above. Sometimes, officials want to talk with favored reporters in a small group to curry favor or because they trust them to report accurately. Sometimes, they want to disclose technical details ahead of a policy change so reporters can carefully gather the facts rather than hastily publish something inaccurate. And sometimes, anonymity provides deniability in case the officials themselves get something wrong.

Whatever the reason, this is the news media agreeing to hide the identities of public servants making news in a democracy. No wonder people think the press and politicians are in cahoots.

We’ve seen a lot of anonymously sourced reporting during the Trump era, for various reasons. Trump is constantly doing outrageous things in secret. And he lies more than his predecessors, so the media know they’re unlikely to get the truth from official channels. Also, Trump’s henchmen and henchwomen tend to be personally ambitious and morally bankrupt people who lack loyalty. The Obama White House didn’t have nearly as many leaks because the president’s staff was generally united in its policy mission.

In recent years, I’ve been impressed by how rarely an anonymously sourced story by a major news outlet is proven false. Most reporters are not sloppy about this. But still, the practice is vulnerable to abuse.

When I was an editor at the Chicago Tribune, I saw one of the abuses firsthand. A reporter had written a story with three pieces of information from three anonymous sources. Each source was described slightly differently. I asked the reporter who these people were, and he told me all three were the same person. He said the source wanted his comments to be presented that way to help mask his involvement.

I don’t think the reporter was consciously trying to trick the readers, but the story as written would’ve led readers to believe we had three sources when we had only one. We didn’t let the reporter do it.

I’m not saying the Haberman-Swan reporting poses similar questions. But its treatment of Vance has been so favorable to him that it raises a lot of eyebrows. Maybe the reporters think every word is true. Maybe every word is true. But in any case, we’re getting the pro-Vance spin because someone wants us to get it.

Haberman and Swan need to ask themselves whether their personally profitable access to the White House is worth the image boost they’re giving a fascist like JD Vance who wants to succeed Trump as dictator.

If they have a conscience, they should be thinking about that.

This week’s media atrocity

The “atrocity” I’m citing occurred in 2023, when the New York Times published a factual error tying an Alabama basketball player to a shooting. But what’s new is an excellent article by Bill Grueskin in the Columbia Journalism Review that lays out the series of mistakes that led to the paper’s first defamation trial loss in a U.S. court in more than 50 years. And it fits in with this week’s topic: The mistake involved misplaced trust in an anonymous source.

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It must be tough to work for the Washington Post these days.

The paper has flushed away tons of credibility since owner Jeff Bezos turned its opinion section into a right-wing chorus line. The news section, though, still breaks important stories. It has done excellent work on the politicization of the Pentagon, Donald Trump’s oil grab in Venezuela, the Reflecting Pool fiasco, and many other stories.

A lot of quality journalists have made the difficult decision to quit the Post. Others have made the difficult decision to stay. News consumers face a similar choice: Is it better to support the strong news gathering at the Post or to refuse to boost the bank account of an owner who is sucking up to a dictator?

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CBS News is a different case. While WaPo’s problem is the news side vs. the opinion side, CBS’s problem is worse – it’s news vs. news. Under Trump-friendly ownership and management, some of CBS’ reporting still seems credible, but other stories reek of propaganda, such as the cheap-shotting of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. A once-respected journalism institution is not to be trusted anymore.

Another institution, the New York Times, comes in for criticism these days because of its political team’s failure to take the Trump threat as seriously as it should. Every time I blast the NYT on social media, I get comments like “Cancel your subscription.” But I’m not urging people to do that. I post about the NYT in hopes that the nation’s most prominent newspaper will do better. We can’t cancel everything. We have to get our news from somewhere.

I feel a special sympathy toward good journalists under bad ownership because I once worked for Rupert Murdoch.

I was 29 years old and needed a job in Chicago so my wife could attend graduate school there. Murdoch had bought the Chicago Sun-Times, a quality tabloid, and the news guild had a contract provision that journalists could claim a generous severance if the paper was sold and they chose to leave. Many did. That created job openings, and I got one as a copy editor.

I knew Murdoch’s reputation, but not all of his newspapers were awful. Sure, his New York Post had published this famous front page in 1983:

But Murdoch also owned the Times of London, and he hadn’t ruined that centuries-old publication. This was 12 years before Murdoch invented something called Fox News.

The Chicago Sun-Times of that era had great journalists, including film critic Roger Ebert, and its stories were usually solid. But the front page tended to be obnoxious, with headlines like “ZINC ZAPS COLDS” and heavy promotion of the Wingo sweepstakes.

Murdoch sold the paper after only two years so he could buy a TV station in Chicago without violating the cross-ownership rule. The Sun-Times’ headlines got less garish, but the ownership didn’t get much better. Later on, I worked for a Sun-Times owner worse than Murdoch: Conrad Black. He ended up getting convicted of swindling his company’s shareholders, did three years in prison, wrote a book praising Donald Trump, and – probably not coincidentally – received a Trump pardon.

In my 15 years at the Sun-Times, I rose through the ranks, became Sunday editor, and tried to produce quality work despite the challenges. Black’s underling, David Radler, once told me I should pay attention to the National Enquirer to learn what people wanted to read. And the paper’s editor, Nigel Wade, grew so impatient with my ethical misgivings that he started calling me “the loyal opposition.” It was time to go (or past time), so I took an entry-level job at the Chicago Tribune and eventually made it to metro editor. Ownership and management weren’t perfect there, either, and eventually I asked for a buyout and got it.

So I feel for what the Washington Post staff is going through. And I can see why some of them might think it would be wrong to leave when there’s so much corruption to uncover. That’s the calculation they have to make: Whether they’re doing more good by staying than they would by leaving and no longer lending their credibility to a flawed organization.

As a news consumer, I faced a similar dilemma regarding WaPo: Was it better for me to support the strong newsgathering there or to stop paying money to an oligarch paying tribute to Trump? I eventually dropped my subscription, but I sometimes miss it.

After I left the Tribune, I was website editor for the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University, where we examined ways to combat the ever-growing problem of local news deserts. After a few years, I came to think there was a two-word solution: “good owners.” Which is much easier said than done.

I won’t presume to tell people when to quit their jobs or cancel their subscriptions. My only advice is to be true to yourself and your values. Have a breaking point. If you’re afraid to leave your job, remember that there’s another job out there somewhere. The same goes for news outlets. There are plenty of good ones awaiting your support. Give them a chance.

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MAGA propagandists are brilliant at inventing “controversies” and pretending the public is having a major “debate” over them.

Sometimes a story starts in a dodgy outlet like Gateway Pundit or Breitbart, then gets rewritten by other news websites, spread by podcasts, and widely posted on social media. The issue then assumes an appearance of credibility based merely on volume, and sometimes even legitimate news outlets think they must report on it simply because it’s “out there.”

Even the stupidest of lies can gain currency with enough MAGA enthusiasm behind it.

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The claim that Haitian immigrants were eating the dogs and cats of Springfield, Ohio, was traced to a woman’s Facebook post passing on something she heard from her neighbor, who heard it from her daughter, who heard it from her friend. A cat whose disappearance may have started the rumor was later found in a basement, uneaten.

But Republicans went big with the pet-eating claim, unconcerned that it put the safety of innocent immigrants at risk. Donald Trump repeated the lie during a presidential debate, and JD Vance even defended the lie, saying it was proper to “create stories” to call attention to real issues. The news media generally tried to knock down the hoax, but a headline calling it the “Ohio pet-eating controversy” didn’t help. There was no real controversy about the facts.

Sometimes there’s a small amount of real news but it gets blown out of proportion. For example, the Republican-fueled “growing controversy” over New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani attending the city’s main 9/11 remembrance event. Some family members of the victims noted that Mamdani’s chief legal counsel once served as a lawyer for a convicted al-Qaeda member whose brother-in-law was a Sept. 11 hijacker. But it’s obvious that the main objection was simply that Mamdani is Muslim.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to lead the charge, and the media gave him more credibility than he deserved. In the same interview in which Giuliani said he would be offended if Mamdani showed up, he accused the current mayor of being part of a Muslim plot aimed at “taking over certain parts of America and certain parts of Europe.”

ABC reported that ”the debate intensified” because of Giuliani’s comments, but it failed to note his history of political mischief. Giuliani was pardoned by Trump in the plot to overturn the 2020 election, was successfully sued after he falsely accused two former Georgia election workers of election fraud, and was disbarred in both Washington, D.C., and New York. The New York Times, which led its story with Giuliani’s complaints, mentioned his pardon and his smearing of the election workers but not the disbarments.

I’m not saying there was no story there – just not much of one, and Giuliani was the wrong person to hang it on.

I am indeed saying there is nothing to another “controversy” – the Fox News-promoted idea that the WNBA has a “mounting transgender eligibility controversy” amid a “transgender eligibility debate.” There are no trans players in the WNBA, nor any in line to join the league. The whole thing is an attempt to distract people from other issues, including skyrocketing gas prices and an illegal war, by playing the trans card once again.

It’s easier than ever to create the appearance that a topic is “hot.” In the past, a reporter would have to get out of the office and find real people with real grievances. Now, people post things on social media and “journalists” sitting in their basements mine those posts as proof of a “growing controversy.”

Then outlets like Fox News cite the fact that it’s “viral” or that the internet is “going wild” as justification for publishing lame stories. That’s how you get “Starbucks barista did not want to write Charlie Kirk’s name on coffee cup in viral video” and “Social media goes wild over former first lady Michelle Obama’s $4K designer boots.”

Because Republicans hold key positions in government, they have made dishonest conspiracy theories newsworthy – something the media cannot simply ignore. And in many cases, journalists do a good job of reminding the public that mail-in voting is safe, noncitizen voting is so rare as to be meaningless, and vaccines do not cause autism.

But the media need to be sharper. Instead of “FACT FOCUS: Examining RFK Jr.’s claims about measles, autism and diet as head of HHS,” the Associated Press’ headline should read: “FACT FOCUS: RFK Jr. spreads falsehoods about measles, autism and diet as head of HHS.”

An even worse problem than generic fact-check headlines is the click-hungry media’s “just asking questions” gimmick:

• Newsweek: “Did Kamala Harris Pay Beyoncé $11M for Endorsement? What Records Show”

• WRAL.com in North Carolina: “Fact-check: Are COVID vaccines linked to higher miscarriage rates?”

• And this US News & World Report classic from 2016: “Was Antonin Scalia murdered?”

The answers to those three headlines are no, no, and no.

The Scalia conspiracy theory was fueled by a Trump comment: “They say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow.” (Fact check: They didn’t find a pillow on his face. Scalia’s family asked people to move on.)

Good journalists ignore fake “controversies” if they can. But when a lie becomes prominent enough to demand fact-checking, they must do so without giving scanning readers the impression that the lie might be true. It’s the duty of news outlets not to metastasize misinformation.

This week’s media atrocity

Last Thursday, Trump led his cult members in a pledge to “cheat like hell” in the midterms. That’s a direct quote. But major media downplayed it, apparently thinking it was just Trump’s rhetorical playfulness. If legacy news outlets haven’t learned by now, they never will. We’ll have to defeat the fascists in spite of them.

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Fox News remains the No. 1 propaganda outlet for the American right, but there are growing fissures in its relationship with Donald Trump.

Last week, Fox dumped host Maria Bartiromo for tipping off the White House that Fox brass had ordered its staff not to amplify a Trump prime-time speech about election fraud.

“Basically she was calling daddy to tell on mommy,” CNN’s S.E. Cupp said. “She was basically saying, ‘Mommy won’t let me do this, dad. What are you going to do about it?’”

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You can be sure Fox didn’t ignore Trump’s speech out of journalistic integrity, because that’s not Fox’s brand. Instead, the network wanted to avoid another defamation lawsuit like the one that cost it $787 million for spreading Team Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

There are other signs of conflict between Trump and Fox, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan. Some Fox personalities have complained about Trump’s disastrous conduct of the war in Iran. When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tried to restrict journalists covering the Pentagon, Fox joined other media in pushing back. Hegseth, a former Fox host, hasn’t been on the network in almost a year. And Trump frequently denounces Fox News’ polls, one of the network’s few products that can actually be believed.

Trump is at odds with another Murdoch outlet, too, suing the Wall Street Journal for reporting – apparently accurately – that Trump sent a birthday note to his sex trafficker friend Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

While Trump has provided the personality for the fascist movement Fox supports, it’s obvious that the Murdochs view him as a liability to the cause. He’s too overtly corrupt, too focused on gilded statues, too damn crazy. He revs up the resistance. Remember that Fox clearly backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president after Trump seemed too toxic to win in the post-Jan. 6 period. Murdoch supposedly told a friend he wanted to make Trump a “non-person.” It was only after Trump proved his staying power and DeSantis showed his lack of charisma that Fox re-boarded the Trump train.

I can’t read the Murdochs’ minds, so I don’t know whether they’re guided more by their right-wing views or their desire to capture an audience and make money off of it. There’s plenty of evidence that both are significant factors.

In the legal battle over who would control Rupert Murdoch’s empire after his death, the patriarch was vitally concerned with securing it in the hands of Lachlan because he most closely mirrors his father’s politics. If it were all about money, Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t care about that.

But if it were all about politics, the old man wouldn’t let the Wall Street Journal’s news side undercut Trump the way it does – not just on the birthday note to Epstein but also on Trump’s push for the Justice Department to launch investigations, his efforts to grab Venezuela’s oil, and his rupturing of relations with European allies. The Murdochs know their lucrative WSJ subscriber base is upscale and sophisticated. The customers would leave if WSJ started pulling Fox News-style stunts.

Even Fox’s amplification of 2020 election fraud lies seems to have had more to do with money than a desire to help keep Trump in office. Internal communications released in lawsuits against Fox show that its top people knew Trump had lost, but they panicked over losing market share to even more extreme-right competitors.

Tucker Carlson wrote: “We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.”

Jesse Watters put it in a more upbeat but equally dishonest way: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL.”

Since its $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, the network has learned how to have it both ways – spreading right-wing lies without getting sued over them, as I wrote a couple years ago.

At this point, Fox seems determined to promote Trumpism while maintaining some distance from Trump. In essence, they’re working toward the same thing – a less kind, less fair, less free country.

What looks like a Murdoch-Trump feud may be more personal than professional – two corrupt old warhorses locked in a battle of egos. After Trump sued over the Epstein story, Rupert Murdoch told associates, “I’m 94 years old and I will not be intimidated,” according to the Washington Post.

But as Jon Allsop put it in the New Yorker last year: “Their relationship, ultimately, deserves to be remembered not as one of occasional antagonism but one of persistent mutual benefit.”

That will end some day, and I suspect Fox will last longer than Trump. When Fox no longer finds Trump useful and stops fearing his wrath, it will turn on him completely. And long after Rupert Murdoch goes to that tabloid newsroom in the sky, his son’s version of Fox will be polluting journalism to prop up other fascist liars.

This week’s media atrocity

Longtime readers know I’ve speculated that the New York Times has a Euphemism Desk where they find ways to soften hard truths. In an impressive new example, they avoided saying Maria Bartiromo allowed her guests to lie, instead writing that she was “permitting guest commentators to free-associate.”

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Nine months ago, the Trump regime assembled a military force off the coast of Venezuela that included the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. Then it sent in Delta Force and about 150 aircraft to snatch up the country’s leader and jail him in the United States.

Last week, the Trump regime announced an “agreement” with the Trump-approved Venezuelan government to grab 65 billion barrels of oil.

Axios called it “taking an ownership stake.”

Semafor described it as “custodianship” of the country’s oil industry.

The New York Times called it “a significant win for the Trump administration.”

To me, it seems reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde taking an “ownership stake” in banks and serving as “custodians” for the money in a “significant win” for their criminal gang.

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Dictators steal things. That’s not a news flash. But when some journalists enthusiastically focus on how much money the thieves will make, it shows a news industry that has been laundered of a basic sense of right and wrong. Shockingly few people in the media are asking: Do we really want to be a country that blows people up and steals from them?

From a military perspective, the Jan. 3 raid was well executed. No U.S. soldiers were killed, but an estimated 80 to 100 Venezuelans and Cubans died, some of them civilians. From an international-rule-of-law perspective, the attack was shameful. The regime dishonestly cast the abduction of Nicolás Maduro as a law enforcement operation rather than a blatant act of aggression.

Instead of freeing Venezuelans from a dictatorship, Trump left Maduro’s underlings in place, led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is effectively running the country’s finances. No elections have been scheduled, and opposition leader Maríia Coarina Machado has not returned from exile.

Trump quickly declared that the country’s oil money “will be controlled by me” to benefit both Venezuela and the United States. Early this month, he said, “We’re making hundreds of billions of dollars, and so are they.” But fact-checkers say that’s impossible, since Venezuela’s gross domestic product is only $111 billion. The exact oil revenue collected since the attack – and who’s getting what – remains opaque.

One thing is crystal clear, though: The raid on Venezuela was an armed robbery.

Some news outlets want us to think the regime is doing Venezuela a favor. Axios, a frequent channel for Trump regime spin, cited the disrepair of the country’s oil industry before the U.S. attack and offered this supposedly exonerating paragraph to justify the theft:

The administration is sensitive to accusations that Rodriguez would be giving away Venezuela’s natural resources to the U.S., one official said, so ‘we’re going out of our way to show how this will benefit the people of Venezuela, because it will.’

The Associated Press buys into Trump’s spin, too. In early August, the AP said talks between the Rodríguez government and the opposition “will focus on strengthening democracy and restoring rights after nearly three decades of socialist rule.” But the problem with Venezuela’s previous government wasn’t socialism – it was authoritarianism. They’re not the same thing!

The story carried the subhead: “US wants to facilitate process, not dictate.” Yeah, sure, AP. Because Trump is a famously hands-off person, especially when he’s the one with the guns.

Business media seem especially excited by the oil grab. CNBC said Trump was “trying to solve this three-dimensional oil puzzle that’s gripping the world right now.” But the outlet did note that “the sitting Venezuelan administration that the United States is negotiating with was installed by the U.S. government earlier this year, so presumably the thumb is on the scale.”

The Washington Post, whose opinion section is in the tank for Trump but whose news section often performs well, was an exception to the cheerleading. WaPo cast doubt on Trump’s claim that the oil deal would be cost-free for U.S. taxpayers and noted that a key Venezuelan partner, Alejandro Betancourt López, is “the subject of investigations in multiple countries into alleged money laundering and faces a Swiss warrant for his arrest.”

Of course, defiance of the law is an asset to Trump, not a disqualification.

Trump called the Venezuelan operation the “perfect scenario” for what he hoped to do to Iran. But while the Iran war has been a strategic failure so far, Trump is still thinking about plunder. In April, he posted: “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE.” More recently, he insanely called the Strait of Hormuz a “new U.S. territory.”

The more the media cast the Venezuela operation as a “success,” the more they encourage Trump to menace the Middle East and move on to Greenland and Cuba.

Some might say it’s not the job of straight-news reporters to determine whether Trump’s smash-and-grab policies are right or wrong. But journalists make value judgments all the time, and an obvious one in today’s world is to believe in human rights and national sovereignty, where the powerful don’t run roughshod over the weak. Too often, the American news industry mistakes normalizing theft and murder for “objectivity.”

If major media are too timid to challenge American banditry themselves, they could at least quote people who do. Initial coverage was full of oil-deal boosterism from Trump, Rubio, and Rodríguez, and short on skepticism.

A “might is right” mentality has consumed the U.S. government. If it fully consumes the news media, we’re doomed.

This week’s media atrocity

In its six-month assessment of the war with Iran, the New York Times ran the headline: “U.S. Goals Remain Unmet.” That’s quite an understatement. Even things that weren’t stated goals are unmet, such as keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, protecting Gulf countries from attacks, and maintaining decent relations with European allies.

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Back in March, the Trump regime claimed it had defeated Iran “in the first hour.”

Now, with the war about to enter its seventh month, the regime is launching a new economic squeeze campaign and appears in no particular hurry to wrap things up.

The United States is “low-keying it” and “only semi-negotiating” with Iran, Donald Trump says.

“The president is playing the long game,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright says.

“We’re in a new phase … this is a delicate dance,” Vice President JD Vance says.

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So, please, media, let’s not make a big deal over an ongoing war that has put 50,000 U.S. troops in harm’s way, killed 18 of them, wounded more than 750 others, jacked up gas prices, and cost taxpayers an estimated $100 billion. Trump would rather focus on new topsoil on the White House grounds and note that “if you’re grass, you’re very happy.”

Members of the military, not being grass, are unhappy. Sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln were so distressed over a lack of supplies and their long deployment in the Middle East that some of them tried to jump overboard. Yet when a reporter told Trump that military families were concerned about conditions on the Lincoln, he said: “No, they’re not.”

Trump is dangerously detached from reality, and his comments work against any resolution of the fiasco. He keeps saying, ridiculously, that he wants to make the Strait of Hormuz “a territory of the United States.” And he has threatened to “bomb the shit out of” Oman – our ally – if it “gets in the way.”

Trump obviously wishes mainstream media would put coverage of the war on the back-burner. But responsible outlets are not complying, even though the Pentagon is playing games with the casualty toll and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been ducking reporters as if they were Iranian drones.

The regime’s desire to suppress the facts was evident with its assault on Stars & Stripes, the news outlet tasked with informing members of the military and their families. Stars & Stripes is under the Pentagon’s authority but has a long tradition of editorial independence in order to maintain credibility with its audience. Last week, the Trump regime blew that up, firing key journalists after they reported on the USS Abraham Lincoln and other problems with the conduct of the war.

Trump’s media suck-ups have fallen in line. Fox News host Sean Hannity had only one extensive discussion of the war between July 23 and last Wednesday, according to Media Matters for America. Hannity broke that drought by absurdly claiming that Trump should get more “credit” for the triumphant outcome in Iran.

While mainstream media’s coverage of the war has been fairly strong, Trump isn’t entirely irrational in hoping news outlets will eventually lose interest.

In his first term as president, the war in Afghanistan was a minor issue, overshadowed by other MAGA-fueled chaos and controversy. Trump managed to successfully shirk responsibility for the war even though it continued through all four years of his term and his dealings with the Taliban further destabilized the situation. He left the withdrawal to his successor, Joe Biden, and denounced him after a suicide bombing killed 13 U.S. service members during the pullout. But more than three times that number died during Trump’s first term while he was failing to end the war.

When we have a relatively cold war instead of a hot one, it can start to feel like the status quo – and therefore not particularly newsworthy. Economic warfare like that announced by the Trump regime on Monday is less flashy and immediate than cruise missile strikes. Some might even say “boring.”

But as in Afghanistan, the day-to-day situation in the Iran war is terrible, and it’s likely to keep deteriorating. Plus, Trump is using the current military disaster to get more taxpayer money for future military disasters.

As ProPublica reported last week: “President Donald Trump wants to spend $1.5 trillion on defense next year. Adjusted for inflation, that would be more than the U.S. spent annually on defense during the height of World War II.”

Let that sink in.

The news media often have a short attention span, but they need to stay focused this time.

This week’s media atrocity

Darline Graham was appointed to the Senate last month after her brother Lindsey’s death, and she’s seeking a full six-year term, with Trump’s endorsement. At a debate last week, Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren asked her: “Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? If so, why?”

Graham replied: “I’m not that informed on national security … National security is not my thing.”

This caused an uproar, understandably. But Van Susteren and her Trump-toady network must have worried about upsetting the king, because Van Susteren denounced other media for focusing on the gaffe instead of “the other 19 questions.” And she added: “I wish I hadn’t asked that question.”

Pitiful.

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