Stop the Presses

Mark’s reading list: Black voters, DOJ slime peddlers, and more

Mark Jacob — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 15:46:51 GMT

Thank you for your paid subscription to Stop the Presses. One of your “extras” is this weekly list in which I’ll recommend a few articles and newsletters that you might enjoy. I’ll throw in some podcasts now and then, too.

‘Actually stand for something,’ and other tips to win the midterms

Mark Jacob — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:12:57 GMT

Most voters do not study candidates’ position statements. They see a headline here and there, they hear what friends and relatives say, and they often make their decisions based on past practice or gut instincts – on what makes them feel good about themselves.

They like straight talk, or at least what sounds like straight talk. Trump has been lying to voters for more than a decade, but many people still think “he tells it like it is” because he’s blunt. He has shown us the importance of messaging.

Below are 15 tips for pro-democracy advocates preparing for a midterm election that may well determine whether you and your family live in a free country. Consider using them in your political activism and/or social media. Some of my advice applies to the mainstream media, too, but they’re not supposed to campaign for candidates. If only they would campaign for the truth, that would be enough for me.

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1. Make change part of the message.

I’m convinced that one reason Democrats lost the White House in 2024 is because they were, in essence, running to extend Joe Biden’s presidency, even after Kamala Harris took over the race. There’s a deep feeling of dissatisfaction in this country. People want change. One of the biggest mistakes Democrats could make is basing their campaigns on going back to “normal.” People don’t want to vote for the same Democrats who seem to be in the process of losing our democracy to Trumpism. To win, Democrats must trumpet a bold, new agenda. For example, there’s an illegal war going on. Oppose it.

2. Don’t waste time trying to crack the cult.

Our messaging should be aimed more at past non-voters than at current Republican voters. The majority of MAGA cult members are lost to us. Getting apathetic non-voters to show up at the polls is a more achievable goal.

3. Don’t focus only on Trump.

When Trump is your sole target, you do a favor to every other Republican who enables his fascism. Trump’s not actually on the ballot, and his political lackeys who are running this year will try to create distance from him before the midterms. We want people to vote against Republicans as a group. A good term to use is “Trump Republicans.”

4. Be a good ally.

One of the most exasperating behaviors of progressives is to attack people who agree with them almost all of the time instead of people who always disagree with them. This is not to say you have to support awful Democrats like Chuck Schumer. But keep a firm grip on who your allies and enemies are, and treat them differently.

5. Keep bringing up Epstein.

This issue has power because the regime is still covering up the truth about Trump’s former friend, sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The reason to keep the Epstein scandal front and center isn’t to get right-wing extremists to vote for Democrats; it’s to get them to have such disgust with Republicans that they stay home.

6. Martyrs matter.

Keep reminding people about Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Republican politicians are OK with masked government thugs murdering peaceful Americans in the streets. But the vast majority of voters are not.

7. Scream about Jim Crow 2.0.

The racists on the Supreme Court and in the Republican Party have turned back the clock six decades on Black political power. If white Democrats act like it’s just political maneuvering instead of moral depravity, they won’t deserve the votes of Black people or anyone who cares about fair government.

8. Do not abandon trans people.

Look at the most popular politicians today. They’re authentic. They’re not throwing marginalized Americans to the wolves in desperate attempts to curry favor with bad actors. Voters like politicians who stand for something – and who stand with people. The Republicans’ hate campaign against trans people is an attempt to distract from their indefensible positions on key issues. When they bring up trans people as a weapon, call them the bigots that they are and refocus the conversation on GOP failures.

9-11. Choose the right words.

Three bits of advice on framing:

When you’re talking about the attack on abortion rights, say, “They’re taking away women’s right to control their own bodies.” Cast it as an issue of personal freedom. Which it is.
It’s not “gun control” – it’s “gun safety measures” or even “sensible gun safety measures.”
Call it “gay marriage” or “same-sex marriage” if you want, but “marriage equality” is better.

12. Highlight the most detestable Trumpers.

Remember how Republicans used to run against Nancy Pelosi in congressional races nationwide? Democrats should do that with the worst characters in the Trump regime. They should zero in on Trump aide Stephen Miller as a supervillain, along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a blatant liar, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a religious extremist who once paid $50,000 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault.

13. It will always be the economy, stupid.

Don’t stop talking about inflation, especially gasoline prices. Remind people that Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” and called the huge increase in gas prices “peanuts.”

14. Don’t act like it’s 1956.

Never call Trump the “leader of the free world.” Mock anyone who does. Avoid language that makes this criminal presidency seem like a traditional presidency from the last century. Do not “respect the office” when a criminal is running it.

15. Be patriotic.

We know this country has done terrible things throughout its history. But it’s also been a land of opportunity that has attracted immigrants from all over the world. Don’t surrender the flag-waving to Republicans. The “No Kings” messaging is smart because it reminds people that our country was founded in a revolt against a king. And we’ve got another king to defeat this year.

This week’s media atrocity

A storied news operation, CBS News, and its most prestigious program, “60 Minutes,” have been destroyed by the super-rich to please Trump. The fascists want to do this to every legitimate news outfit around.

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Mark’s reading list: Truth under siege, Trump unhinged, and more

Mark Jacob — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 17:56:29 GMT

Republican lies come in 10 different flavors

Mark Jacob — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:27:48 GMT

Lying is a sacrament in the Church of MAGA, an affirmation of unquestioning loyalty. If you’re willing to debase yourself with outrageous dishonesty, welcome to the club.

During Trump’s first term, the president and his lackeys didn’t want to testify under oath because they might have faced perjury charges if they lied. Republicans called it a “perjury trap.” That’s as cynical as it gets: Being asked to tell the truth was a “trap.”

The news media can’t put Republicans under oath, so lying is safer. Corey Lewandowski, the “friend” of disgraced former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, was truthful about his falsehood in 2019, declaring: “I have no obligation to be honest with the media.”

I’m not suggesting that all Republicans lie alike. By my count, there are at least 10 different flavors.

1. Opposite lying

“I have some of the best poll numbers I’ve ever had,” Trump said after some of the worst poll numbers he’s ever had.

2. New-math lying

Trump’s impossible claim that he cut drug prices by 600% is a sign of mental instability. Yet some people laugh it off and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. even defended it. “President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages,” said RFK Jr. “There’s two ways of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” No… it’s… not.

3. Big lying

Trump and his media mouthpiece, Fox, spread the Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged. Fox paid a $787 million settlement for its dishonesty, but Trump went unpunished. When the Big Lie fueled a coup attempt, we heard more ridiculous disinformation, such as Rep. Andrew Clyde calling the assault on the Capitol a “normal tourist visit” and Sen. Tom Cotton saying Trump’s actions were “core political activity at the heart of our democracy.”

4. Small lying

Some Trump dishonesty seems purely for amusement. He installed a plaque at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., reading: “Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’” That didn’t happen. Totally made up.

5. Criminal lying

Trump, who became a convicted felon because he falsified business records (another form of lying) to cover up his hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, likes to keep fellow liars around him. Dirty trickster Roger Stone was convicted of lying to Congress. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and then tried to withdraw that plea. Bernard Kerik, a Trump ally and former New York City police commissioner convicted of tax fraud and making false statements, spent three years in prison. Another Trump ally, former Rep. George Santos, was convicted of fraud and identity theft.

Trump gave clemency to all four. Stone, Flynn, and Kerik received pardons, while Santos got his sentence commuted, which wiped out court-ordered restitution for his victims.

6. Righteous lying

Sometimes Republicans admit they’re lying, but say they’re doing it for the greater good. JD Vance defended his hoax about Haitian migrants eating dogs and cats by saying, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

7. Know-nothing lying

When reporters ask House Speaker Mike Johnson about a controversy, he often claims to know nothing about it. If he was really that ignorant, he should be removed as speaker. Instead he’s blatantly lying… which means he should be removed as speaker.

8. Tag-team lying

On April 30, Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Steve Scalise found two different ways to lie about the same thing.

Scott claimed: “Gas prices continue to come down.” In fact, the average price for regular gasoline on that date was $4.30 a gallon, up 27 cents from a week earlier and up $1.12 from a year earlier. Steve Scalise claimed that “two years ago, we were paying almost $6 a gallon. Right now it’s in the $3s.” Nope. It was $4.30 when Scalise said that, and two years earlier it was $3.65, not even close to $6.

When Republicans lie like this, there’s often a lack of media pushback, but after Scalise’s dishonesty, CNBC’s Joe Kernen called him out. In Scott’s case, however, Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo just ignored the lie and moved on.

9. Predictive lying

Before Trump’s election in 2024, transition co-chair Howard Lutnick denied that RFK Jr. would become Secretary of Health and Human Services. “He’s not going to be the secretary! No!” Lutnick said. Of course, RFK Jr. got the job. Lutnick also said Trump wouldn’t consider hiring people tied to Project 2025 because they were “radioactive.” Of course, Trump did hire them.

10. Lying about lying

Beware when Trump’s press secretaries promise to tell the truth.

Kayleigh McEnany pledged: “I will never lie to you.” Then she claimed falsely that the Mueller Report was “a complete and total exoneration of President Trump.” It wasn’t, of course.

Karoline Leavitt said: “I commit to telling the truth from this podium every single day.” Then she claimed fraud fighter Trump stopped about $50 million from going “out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.” Separately, Trump said Hamas planned to use the condoms to build bombs. But the condoms were not for Hamas. They were for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases in a province of the African nation of Mozambique called Gaza – a totally different place than the Middle East version of Gaza.

That’s how Republicans roll.

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When the news isn’t just slanted but disappears

Mark Jacob — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 18:40:45 GMT

Media critics like me complain a lot about slanted news. But we’re facing an even worse problem: no news.

Market forces and the right-wing assault on journalism have combined to create a crisis in America’s news industry. Some of the casualties:

The nearly century-old CBS News Radio closed in May.
The Associated Press laid off 20 journalists last month.

Nearly 40% of all local newspapers have vanished in the last two decades.
One in three U.S. counties does not have a single full-time journalist.
Corporate interests are causing local TV news to disappear in some markets.
Gallup announced in February that it would end an 88-year practice of polling on public approval of the president. The decision came as other polls showed Donald Trump’s approval ratings continuing to slide, raising questions about the timing.
Google’s AI is diminishing traffic to news websites. Some observers fear a “zero-click” scenario in which search engines no longer link to the websites that contribute to their AI results.
The Washington Post gutted its climate change reporting team in February, and it’s not the only news outlet doing that.
To fend off potential AI scraping, hundreds of news outlets are blocking access by the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine. This means consumers and journalists are denied access to important articles of the past.
Even the loss of Stephen Colbert’s show is a loss for news, since some people learned about current events that way.

I hope you find this alarming. I certainly do. But some powerful people benefit from public ignorance. Remember Trump’s 2020 comment about Covid: “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”

Even outlets with “news” in their name often hide the news.

When new incidents of the Trump regime’s corruption and incompetence are reported, I like to go to Fox News’ website to see how they’re not covering it. It’s fairly common to see the real news ignored in favor of a red-meat issue, such as the supposed peril of transgenderism, or celebrity fluff about an actress “wowing” in a bikini.

Media Matters for America, a watchdog group, has done excellent tracking of how the leading right-wing network hides news from its audience. Here are three examples:

Trump was asked if he considered Americans’ financial situation in his negotiations with Iran. He said: “Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran – they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” That dismissal of people’s struggles was significant, but it was ignored on Fox News and Fox Business over the next day, according to Media Matters’ monitoring.

News outlets reported that an Emirati sheikh secretly invested $500 million in a Trump company before Trump promised to approve the sale of advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates. Fox News did not cover the story for days.
News outlets revealed that border czar Tom Homan collected $50,000 in an FBI bribery sting and the Trump regime decided to look the other way. Nothing about it on Fox News for days afterward.

Fox has also radically downplayed other stories. In the hours after the revelation of an email in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that a victim “spent hours at my house with” Trump, CNN reported on the story for 53 minutes. MSNBC (now MS NOW) covered it for 56 minutes. Fox News’ coverage time: six seconds.

Fox also hushed up Trump’s pardoning of a former Honduran president convicted in a huge cocaine trafficking scheme. It even muted the finding of its own poll that Trump’s approval was plummeting.

CBS News, now in the hands of the pro-Trump Ellison family and busy kneecapping “60 Minutes,” is another hider of news. When Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in a money laundering case after Binance supported the Trump family’s crypto business, NBC, ABC, and PBS covered it on that evening’s news. CBS did not.

Some optimists like me had hoped the “Information Age” would promote public engagement. But instead we see access to reliable facts being diminished.

Much of the best journalism sits behind paywalls, and we’re in an era of media capture, with the enemies of democracy buying up the news industry. The Ellisons, after grabbing CBS, became part owners of TikTok through a Trump-arranged deal, and they’ve now set their sights on acquiring CNN. Meanwhile, Trump-friendly oligarch Elon Musk owns X and fellow Trump suck-up Mark Zuckerberg owns Meta.

As the right wing assaults media independence, a key source of facts – government statistics – has also come under attack. Last August, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because of a jobs report he didn’t like. In February, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said Federal Reserve Board researchers should be “disciplined” for writing a report finding that U.S. companies and consumers bore 90% of the burden of Trump’s tariffs.

In an attempt to further hide what he’s doing, Trump wants to prevent leaks to the media by requiring all federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements.

The Trump regime is at war with the truth, which is why defending it has become so important. If you can afford it, support the news organizations that have earned your trust. We need to keep them around.

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This week’s media atrocity

Many news outlets, including CNN, NPR, and CBS, called E. Jean Carroll a Trump “accuser” in stories about a Justice Department investigation related to her. But Carroll is not merely an accuser. Two juries decided that she was the victim of a sexual assault committed by Donald Trump.

Please consider a paid subscription to Stop the Presses

After nearly three years of being free-only, this newsletter is launching a paid-subscription tier and inviting you to become a founding member. In a time of relentless attacks on the press and corporate capitulation, it is critical to make independent news accessible to the public.

By becoming a paid subscriber, you will not only get access to bonus features and exclusive content, you will also be joining a community at COURIER committed to the spread of good information. Thanks for considering.

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The Future of the Democratic Party is on the Ballot

Join COURIER and MeidasTouch on Wednesday, June 10 at 6:30 PM ET for the NY-12 Primary Debate, featuring George Conway, Jack Schlossberg, Alex Bores, Laura Dunn, Nina Schwalbe, and Micah Lasher.

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Mark’s reading list: Golden horses, a $250 bill, and more

Mark Jacob — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:43:40 GMT

Thanks for your paid subscription to Stop the Presses. One of your “extras” is this weekly list in which I’ll recommend a few articles and newsletters – and even some podcasts and videos now and then.

The media’s desperate search for ‘moderate Nazis’

Mark Jacob — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:00:56 GMT

Some mainstream news outlets seem determined to downplay the right-wing authoritarian threat while they wait for our politics to magically snap back to normal – rescued by a mighty band of middle-of-the-roaders.

Instead of focusing on an increasingly radical Republican Party stealing our freedoms, they decry “our political divisions” in general, as if everyone is to blame – except for the moderates.

Centrist politicians are an endangered species in this country. In the Republican Party, they’ve been virtually extinguished. In the Democratic Party, they’ve been played for suckers over and over, and thus discredited.

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Undeterred, the media invent moderates where they don’t exist. They pretend there are responsible higher-ups in the Trump regime quietly looking out for the public interest – as if Donald Trump would allow that.

The New York Times embarrassed itself last week by claiming that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had been a moderate institutionalist before his recent support for Trump’s $1.8 billion insurrectionist slush fund and tax-cheat immunity package.

The article by Glenn Thrush (gift link here) was headlined, “Trump’s Fund Shows Blanche Choosing Loyalty Over Moderation.” It said Blanche had shown “modest moderating tendencies” earlier in Trump’s current term and was “once seen by some as the most conventional of President Trump’s political appointees.”

Reality check: With Blanche serving in a top position for the last 16 months, the Justice Department has developed a reputation for misconduct in immigration-related prosecutions. Two obviously bogus cases that fell apart last week, involving the Broadview Six and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, are among the many examples of DOJ’s violations of civil rights.

Blanche also has been knee-deep in the cover-up of the Epstein sex trafficking scandal. The Times’ story didn’t even mention Blanche’s highly suspicious meeting with Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, which led to her transfer to a nicer prison, where she is “much happier,” enjoying custom meals and access to a comfort puppy.

An early version of the headline for Thrush’s story said Blanche chose “loyalty over moderation,” but it was later changed to say he chose “loyalty over pushing back.” Maybe the Times’ editors belatedly realized how stupid it was to claim that Blanche’s work in the Trump regime was ever moderate.

Such whitewashing reminds me of this Times headline from 1935:

Ah, “moderate Nazis.” By that point in Germany’s nightmare years, rival political parties were banned, the Dachau concentration camp was operating, and Jews were expelled from civil service and journalism. The Times’ article was written two days after the announcement of the Nuremberg Laws, which revoked Jews’ citizenship and prohibited sexual relations between Jews and Aryans.

That headline wasn’t just a one-time lapse. A year later, the Times wrote about “mild Nazis” in Austria who were just as antisemitic as their German allies but didn’t want to be annexed by Germany.

It appears that some members of the media are confused about what a moderate is. You don’t become a moderate just because there is someone more extreme than you. Yet Politico reported in 2023 that Trump – the president who built the Supreme Court that took away women’s bodily autonomy – had taken a “moderate turn on abortion.”

Other regime figures sometimes receive a “moderate” tag, too. Politico wrote in 2024 that soon-to-be White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, a key enabler in Trump’s march toward dictatorship, has “in the past described herself as ‘a moderate on the political spectrum.’” That same year, MSNBC (now MS NOW) called Wiles “a self-described moderate ... well respected and liked.”

Business Insider reported that former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was “widely viewed as a more moderate member of the Trump administration because of her support for pro-union legislation.” But ideology is not what binds top regime officials together – it’s personal gratification. Chavez-DeRemer resigned last month amid allegations of an affair with a member of her security detail and other misconduct.

Then there’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He built his career as a conservative, not a moderate, but he embraced bipartisanship often enough that his fellow senators across the aisle saw his nomination as an opportunity to demonstrate statesmanship and show they would not be reflexively obstructionist toward Trump. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Rubio “a qualified nominee we think should be confirmed quickly,” and he was, 99-0.

Rubio soon showed what a mistake that was. As Politico put it, Rubio “deftly earned the president’s trust” by abandoning his past positions and doing Trump’s dirty work. Rubio has been “qualified” to support an illegal war with Iran, seize control of Venezuela’s oil, pressure Denmark to surrender Greenland, and deny food aid to impoverished people abroad.

Even so, Rubio has continued to receive fairly gentle treatment from the media, benefiting from the fact that even if he’s not a moderate, he at least appears somewhat normal. He’s not as openly Christofascist as Pete Hegseth or as blatantly dishonest as JD Vance and Howard Lutnick.

The media’s search for a political center goes on. But the right wing shows no signs of wanting to compromise, and even if it did, the left’s acquiescence would be indefensible. At this point, what would bipartisan compromise even look like?

Would the regime agree to blow up only half as many boats in the Pacific and Caribbean?

Would it agree to steal only half as many congressional seats held by Black leaders?

Would it pay off only half of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists with taxpayer money?

Many Americans who once considered themselves sincerely moderate have become radicalized in defense of democracy and basic decency.

But the media hold fast to their malpractice, mislabeling authoritarians as institutionalists – as middle-of-the-road normies.

This week’s media atrocity

After charges were dropped against anti-ICE protesters in the “Broadview Six” case in Chicago, MS NOW aired the chyron: “FEDS ADMIT TO ERRORS IN ‘BROADVIEW SIX’ CASE.” But they weren’t errors. The Justice Department violated the defendants’ civil rights on purpose. “FEDS COMMIT MISCONDUCT IN ‘BROADVIEW SIX’ CASE” would have been more accurate.

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Join COURIER and 3.14 Action on June 11 for Facts vs. Fiction: The Fight for Science in American Democracy.

Misinformation isn’t just noise. It’s shaping policy decisions that impact healthcare costs, public health, and everyone’s lives. This live conversation will examine what’s at stake when facts are ignored and what changes when experts lead with evidence. From lowering costs to protecting access to care, we will break down how science-driven leadership delivers real results and why scientific integrity is essential to democracy.

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Senator John Hickenlooper, Former Governor of Colorado
Dr. Vin Gupta, Physician + Medical Analyst
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Dr. Paul A. Offit, Director, Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
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Mark’s reading list: Election saboteurs, Epstein creeps, and more

Mark Jacob — Fri, 22 May 2026 15:56:15 GMT

Stop calling it ‘a break from norms.’ Call it Trump corruption.

Mark Jacob — Mon, 18 May 2026 20:44:40 GMT

Careful news consumers have gotten the message from mainstream media that Donald Trump is a crook brazenly cashing in on the presidency.

But what about the people who are not careful news consumers – which is most Americans?

Have major media made it clear to them that Trump is deeply corrupt, not just a “good businessman”? Have headlines been sharp and straightforward? Have news outlets consistently written hard-hitting stories that bring the full ugly picture into focus?

No, no, and no.

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The media have produced one-off stories about various aspects of Trump’s crooked financial tricks, but they rarely connect the dots into a sweeping portrait of corruption that might actually break through to the broader public.

On Monday, the regime announced a slimy scam to funnel $1.8 billion in taxpayer funds to Trump’s friends. Trump had sued the U.S. government for $10 billion over the illegal leak of his tax returns. But when a judge raised questions about the legality of Trump’s government giving Trump money, the Justice Department engineered a scheme to avoid judicial oversight: creation of a Trump-controlled “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that would presumably benefit co-conspirators in his Jan. 6, 2021 coup attempt.

Other Trump actions have more directly benefited the bank accounts of the president and his family. For example, Trump has tasked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with negotiating for peace in the Mideast while Kushner is simultaneously hunting for business deals in the region.

Last week, we learned that Trump made personal financial transactions totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, primarily in tech stocks, whose value can be affected by government policies he controls. One big purchase of Nvidia stock came just a week before Trump’s Commerce Department officially approved the sale of Nvidia chips to China.

Then there are his kids. Eric Trump’s company received a $24 million Pentagon contract. Meanwhile, Don Jr. has financial ties to two big prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket, even as his father shields the industry from regulation.

Team Trump has also launched at least five cryptocurrency enterprises at a time when Trump is dramatically weakening crypto regulation. A United Arab Emirates sheik secretly bought 49% of one Trump crypto business and months later, Trump, in his role as president, approved the UAE’s purchase of AI chip technology.

These examples go beyond “conflicts of interest” – they’re ways Trump is brazenly monetizing the government to enrich himself and his family.

There are other suspicious actions in which Trump’s motives aren’t fully understood. He pardoned the former president of Honduras on drug trafficking convictions (an odd move if you care about drug trafficking) and dropped fraud charges against Asia’s richest man (an odd move when you’ve tasked your own vice president with rooting out fraud). It probably didn’t hurt Indian billionaire Gautam Adani that he hired Trump’s personal lawyer.

There are so many examples of crooked or questionable behavior that there’s no time or space to list them all here. The New Yorker calculated that Trump’s “profiteering” in the first year of his second term netted him and his family $4 billion. But because this calculation was published by a subscriber-only outlet, its reach was limited. We need outlets like ABC, NBC, CNN, the Associated Press and others whose reports are always or often free to become far more direct and blunt. (I’ve given up on CBS.)

Timid journalists often rely on the wording that Trump’s actions are “a break from norms.” They also say Trump tests norms, bucks norms, upends norms, sidesteps norms, shatters norms, defies norms, and undermines norms.

But there’s a problem with that word: Norms aren’t always good, so bucking them isn’t always bad. Susan B. Anthony shattered norms. So did Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

Let’s also dispense with the phrase “highly unusual,” which is what the New York Times used to describe Trump’s outrageous “Anti-Weaponization Fund” scam.

I understand that the media don’t want to accuse Trump of committing crimes in the absence of charges and convictions. Trump, who is already a convicted felon, is violating the Constitution in many ways, but new charges against him are not forthcoming as the Justice Department concentrates on harassing his enemies.

Rather than talking about norms or crimes, I think the media covering Trump should use the word “corrupt” more often. Its meaning is less specific than “criminal,” but it has power. It simply means that you’re “dishonestly using your position or power to get an advantage, especially for money.”

If news outlets are afraid to be direct, they could at least raise eyebrows with headlines like:

“Trump’s windfall profits come with questions about corruption”
“Trump’s business deals: highly profitable and highly questionable.”

If news outlets feel the need to attribute the accusation of corruption to someone other than themselves, they could write headlines like:

“Historians call Trump the most corrupt U.S. president ever.”
“Corruption watchers appalled by Trump’s money grabs”

But they don’t really need to qualify things. The facts are readily available to support clear headlines like:

“Trump cashes in on presidency”
“Trump uses government to amass great wealth”
“Trump gets richer with schemes big and small”

A few outlets are getting there. Salon recently published the headline: “Trump is openly cashing in on the presidency.”

The New York Times wrote a headline in January reading “How Trump has pocketed $1,408,500,000,” but only in the opinion section. Put it in the news section!

It’s abundantly clear that a corrupt enterprise is operating out of the White House. The news media shouldn’t keep it a secret.

This week’s media atrocity

A New York Times story was headlined “Republicans Waited to Challenge Trump on the Iran War. Now It May Be Too Late.” As if they were well-meaning lawmakers who just missed their chance when, in fact, they’re co-conspirators in an illegal war.

It’s a vital time to financially support independent media — will you help?

After nearly three years, Stop the Presses is finally launching a “paid subscription” tier and inviting you to become a founding member. In a time of relentless attacks on the press and corporate capitulation, it is critical to make news accessible to the American public at the scale needed to counter the disinformation war waged by the right and enabled by legacy media.

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Join COURIER and 3.14 Action on June 11 for Facts vs. Fiction: The Fight for Science in American Democracy.

Hear directly from:

Senator John Hickenlooper, Former Governor of Colorado
Dr. Vin Gupta, Physician + Medical Analyst
Representative Emily Gregory, Florida House of Representatives (HD-87)
Dr. Paul A. Offit, Director, Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Shaughnessy Naughton, 314 Action President

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Brendan Carr is the devil

Mark Jacob — Mon, 11 May 2026 19:56:46 GMT

Key figures in dictatorships often have colorful personalities and quirks.

Saparmurat Niyazov, former leader of Turkmenistan, renamed the month of January after himself. President Francisco Macías Nguema of Equatorial Guinea banned use of the word “intellectual.” Myanmar President Ne Win had a reputation for walking backwards over bridges to fend off evil spirits.

Brendan Carr, on the other hand, is a boring American bureaucrat whose fame lags far behind the amount of damage he’s causing our country.

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As chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Carr is a close ally of two of the worst figures in American life: Donald Trump and Elon Musk. He’s the tip of the spear in the regime’s assault on freedom of speech.

If Carr has his way, you won’t see critical coverage of whatever wars Trump blunders into. You won’t hear late-night talk show hosts make jokes about Republicans. And your local news will become even more dominated by the super-rich friends of MAGA.

The FCC doesn’t regulate all media, but it does oversee international and interstate telecommunications, including local broadcast licenses. Carr has aggressively used this power to serve his dictatorial boss while avoiding the personal scandals that follow so many of Trump’s other fixers. He isn’t handing out custom bottles of bourbon with the FBI seal on them like Kash Patel did. He isn’t lying about ties to Jeffery Epstein like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did. And as far as we know, he hasn’t taken a big bag of money in an FBI sting like border czar Tom Homan did.

Carr is a straight arrow aimed directly at the heart of our democracy. Among his actions:

Blatantly threatening media outlets whose Iran war coverage displeases the regime: “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up.”
Holding Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount Global hostage until CBS News – owned by Paramount – settled Trump’s flimsy lawsuit with a $16 million payment to his presidential library. (Paramount further appeased the regime by firing Stephen Colbert.)
Harassing National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service as part of the right-wing campaign that led to their defunding.
Threatening ABC’s local licenses in an unsuccessful effort to get Jimmy Kimmel fired over his comments on the Charlie Kirk assassination. (“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said, doing his best mafioso impression.)
Ordering an early review of the licenses held by ABC’s eight owned and operated TV stations, supposedly over DEI concerns, but coming immediately after right-wing objections to a Kimmel joke about Melania Trump.
Investigating “The View” after it interviewed Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. ABC responded forcefully by accusing the FCC of creating a “chilling effect” on free speech.
Reposting Trump’s social media post calling on NBC to fire Seth Meyers.
Trying to put more local TV stations in the hands of a right-wing company by letting Nexstar acquire Tegna with a waiver of the rule prohibiting a single TV chain from covering more than half of the country.
Endorsing Musk’s transformation of X into what he calls a “free speech” outlet but I call a white supremacist propaganda platform.
And in a symbolic but noteworthy move, cutting the word “independent” from the FCC’s mission statement, an action widely seen as an expression of obedience to Trump.

Such moves have made Carr more visible than the typical FCC chair. He’s even been mocked on “South Park” and “Saturday Night Live.” But Carr says, “I never had a goal, even from a young age, of politics.” His weapon is arcane regulations, not flashy rhetoric.

Carr grew up in McLean, Va., raised Catholic by a mother who was a clinical psychologist and a father who was a defense attorney and once worked for President Richard Nixon. Carr got his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, the same school his dad attended. But a recent Bloomberg profile noted that members of a Georgetown alumni group didn’t remember him, and a hunt through a yearbook found no photo or mention of his activities – just “a single mention of his name” in “a list of unpictured students” in the back of the book.

Carr went to law school at Catholic University of America and specialized in communications law. Eventually, he became an FCC commissioner, wrote a chapter of the infamous Project 2025 as a sort of audition for the chairmanship, and won the job under Trump.

Carr may be more of a power groupie than a culture warrior. The Bloomberg piece noted that in his youth, Carr was a fan of the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Commanders (formerly Redskins) before switching allegiances to more successful teams. An FCC colleague, former chair Ajit Pai, called him “a bandwagoner.”

Carr seems like the type of fascist functionary that Hannah Arendt was thinking of when she wrote about “the banality of evil.” He faithfully executes his boss’ orders with no regard for who gets hurt, so long as his side keeps “winning.”

At a CPAC event in March, he told the friendly crowd:

“President Trump took on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning. Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR defunded. Joy Reid gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyed Chuck Todd gone. Jim Acosta gone. John Dickerson gone. Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough CNN is going to have new ownership as well… President Trump is winning.”

Carr thinks he’s winning too. And in a nation built on free speech, that makes him the devil.

This week’s media atrocity

The New York Times’ political writers often cover the assault on our democracy as if it were sports or entertainment news. Last week, the Times wrote that Republicans were “showing new bullishness” and “feel they are back in the game” by using gerrymandering to steal Black political power in the South.

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Join COURIER and 3.14 Action on June 11 for Facts vs. Fiction: The Fight for Science in American Democracy.

Hear directly from:

Senator John Hickenlooper, Former Governor of Colorado
Dr. Vin Gupta, Physician + Medical Analyst
Representative Emily Gregory, Florida House of Representatives (HD-87)
Dr. Paul A. Offit, Director, Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Shaughnessy Naughton, 314 Action President

Stay tuned for more speaker announcements, and don’t miss this conversation. RSVP today!

5 reasons we may lose our country, 5 reasons we may not

Mark Jacob — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:11:52 GMT

There are positive signs that the right-wing assault on democracy is stumbling.

Special elections have scared the hell out of Republicans. Donald Trump’s poll numbers are terrible, even on issues he once owned, such as the economy and immigration. The MAGA con game is wearing thin.

That said, we’re still in big trouble. Republicans are using gerrymandering and other pernicious practices to try to rig the midterms. They keep telling us they won’t let inconvenient things like laws dislodge them from power.

Let’s be hopeful, but also realistic. And determined.

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5 Reasons We May Lose Our Country

Trump doesn’t accept losing.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that a person who attempted a coup and started an illegal war would have no moral objections to cheating in the midterms or denying the results. Even if Democrats capture one or both chambers of Congress, Trump will surely take more illegal steps to diminish the power of the legislative branch. He might even try to run for an unconstitutional third term in 2028. There really is no bottom to what he might do.
Past safeguards against autocracy – the military and the Supreme Court – are compromised.
One of the strengths of American democracy, going back to George Washington, was a military subordinate to civilian authority. Trump, however, views the military not as a protector of the public, but as his own personal weapon. Does anyone doubt that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would order troops to fire on Americans if Trump told him to?
Then there’s the Supreme Court, dominated by Republicans. It occasionally rules against Trump, such as with his illegal tariffs, but it also outrageously granted him sweeping criminal immunity for official acts, the equivalent of handing a blowtorch to an arsonist. And its ruling last week on voting rights was Jim Crow’s dream, a blatant act to diminish Black political power.
The super-rich conspire against us.
The row of oligarchs at the Trump inauguration – featuring Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk – sent a clear signal that big business supported the would-be dictator. The sad fact is that a lot of powerful people prefer a dictatorship if they’re allowed to help do the dictating.
The MAGA cult keeps culting.
Only a third of Americans approve of Trump’s performance, but that third is locked in. Christian extremism is a major factor. Pope Leo opposes Trump’s war against Iran, but other religious leaders like Franklin Graham stick with him no matter what. After Trump posted a picture of himself as Jesus, Graham endorsed Trump’s bogus explanation that he thought it was a picture of him as “a doctor helping someone.” Apparently Graham’s Bible is missing the commandment against bearing false witness.
The mainstream media are still failing us.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was disrupted by a gunman, but that didn’t stop the media from playing footsie with fascists before and after the event. The mainstream press occasionally shows some gumption, such as pointing out the regime’s lies about the war. But would corporate media truly stand against the regime if Trump took the final steps to seize absolute power?

5 Reasons We May Save Our Country

When people vote, democracy wins.
The will of the people has been clear in recent elections, including Virginia’s vote last month for congressional redistricting to counteract Trump’s gerrymandering elsewhere. A Republican-appointed judge has ruled against the Virginia redistricting, but that decision is likely to be overturned on appeal. In any case, Democrats have a decent chance to capture the House in the midterms. And the Senate is not out of reach.
The Virginia vote was especially encouraging because it showed Democrats pushing back instead of being pushed over.
No one likes expensive gasoline.
Trump’s war in Iran has already killed 13 Americans and injured hundreds, and the toll could get much worse. But even if the human cost doesn’t escalate further, the economic damage is already clear. Trump can lie all he wants about consumer prices, but people know what they pay for groceries and gas.
Trump’s corruption can’t be ignored.
Trump and his family are leveraging the government to make themselves rich. Eric Trump bragged about his company’s $24 million Pentagon contract. Donald Trump Jr. is knee-deep in prediction markets while his father fights against regulating them. Son-in-law Jared Kushner is involved in Mideast peace talks while seeking business deals with key players in the region. And Donald Trump is suing his own administration over a leak of his tax information, raising the possibility that his government could make a huge payout to him – in effect letting him loot the Treasury. But on a hopeful note, a federal judge recently questioned the legality of the lawsuit.
Trump’s mental instability can’t be ignored.
I’ve written repeatedly about the media’s failure to sound the alarm about Trump’s unhinged behavior. Finally, the media and the public are starting to focus on it. He needs to be removed from office. While getting rid of Trump would leave us to deal with soulless fraud JD Vance, the vice president lacks the mysterious charisma that Trump seems to have.
Trump’s incompetence may be a blessing.
We are damn lucky that Trump is bad at governing and surrounds himself with fellow clowns. If he were an efficient fascist, he’d have his dictatorship by now, and I’d be scratching out this newsletter on the walls of my cell.

The bottom line

People power can win. If Trump’s tyranny grows, so will our resistance. Eight million people showed up at No Kings events in March, and many participated in May Day protests last week. Such demonstrations serve as rehearsals for a general strike, should one be needed.

We can beat back a dictatorship if we stay strong and vigilant. And vote.

This week’s media atrocity

CNN welcomed Tricia McLaughlin, the former lying Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, as a guest analyst last Tuesday. Two months earlier, CNN reported that claims by McLaughlin and other DHS officials “have fallen apart.” In other words, CNN put a known liar on its airwaves to lie to its audience.

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Join COURIER and 3.14 Action on June 11 for Facts vs. Fiction: The Fight for Science in American Democracy.

Hear directly from:

Dr. Vin Gupta, Physician + Medical Analyst
Representative Emily Gregory, Member of Congress
Dr. Paul A. Offit, Director, Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Shaughnessy Naughton, 314 Action President

Stay tuned for more speaker announcements, and don’t miss this conversation. RSVP today!

Will the White House press be even more submissive?

Mark Jacob — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:27:49 GMT

Even when the White House Correspondents’ Dinner goes smoothly, it’s a huge embarrassment to journalists. And in the wake of Saturday’s shooting that interrupted the event, the spectacle of journalists cozying up to politicians is likely to get even worse.

“We’ll do it again within the next 30 days,” Donald Trump said, “and we’ll make it bigger and better and even nicer.”

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Notice that Trump said “we.” He’s not supposed to be in charge of the event – he was a guest of the press – but he will surely use security concerns to big-foot the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) and dictate the terms of his return appearance, unless someone has the sense to call the whole thing off.

WHCA President Weijia Jiang of CBS News has been deferential to Trump despite his ongoing campaign to feed the 1st Amendment into a wood-chipper. (See my newsletter from two weeks ago with a sample of Trump’s outrageous attacks on the press.)

As Jiang wrote in a first-person piece published yesterday, she welcomed Trump’s appearance this year because she hoped it would “restore some normalcy between the Trump administration and the press. Maybe I was naïve, but I wanted it to be a room we don’t see enough of in Washington: a bipartisan one.”

Jiang said Trump told her after the shooting, “I saw a room that was just totally unified.” She added: “Unity isn’t a word we hear much these days. But that’s how I felt, too.”

Arrrrrrg. The press isn’t supposed to seek unity with politicians. It’s supposed to seek the truth. That’s easier to accomplish – and to get the public to believe – when you’re not clinking champagne glasses with the people you’re reporting on. Jiang and other WHCA members may have good intentions, but if so, they’re such myopic journalists that they don’t understand the authoritarian threat we face. Or maybe they realize it, but refuse to pass up the opportunity to wear expensive clothes, eat tasty food, and boost their social standing – democracy be damned.

In any case, it appears that the co-stars of Washington’s next buddy movie are Trump and Jiang. At his post-shooting news conference, the president had high praise for the WHCA chief, calling her “madam chairman,” and let her ask the first question.

Plans for a dinner do-over are unclear. Jiang wrote: “Trump insists we are having the dinner again in 30 days. Let’s see.” Some Washington journalists think it would be best not to attempt another dinner this year, but Trump tends to fixate on his stupidest ideas. If the dinner does happen, look for the WHCA and the White House to work in lockstep, billing it as a patriotic gesture – an act of “unity.”

Will the event return to the Washington Hilton or will Trump push for another venue? He was quick to note that the Hilton was “not a particularly secure building” and argued that the shooting showed the need for his beloved ballroom, which he has tried to ram through, despite a legal challenge.

Beyond the arrangements for an “even nicer” makeup dinner, there are more reasons to think Saturday’s gunfire will work to Trump’s advantage with the press.

The gunman’s anti-Trump political views are already being used by the right to depict political terrorism as a left-wing problem, when it’s actually more common on the right. If journalists don’t accept the right’s spin, Trump will accuse them of covering up leftist violence.

Also, I fear the shooting will create a stronger emotional bond between Washington journalists and the people in power. It’s human nature for people who go through a harrowing event together to become closer. Politicians and the press – two groups that have a naturally adversarial role in our society – shared a jarring experience in which they faced a common danger. I’m not saying the shooting is likely to make Trump more empathetic – he’s still Trump, after all – but it might lead to a less aggressive posture by the journalists of the WHCA.

And it’s not as if White House reporters were tough on Trump before the shooting. They frequently treat his comments with wide-eyed gullibility, even though he’s the most prominent public liar of our time. They regularly normalize and sanewash his unhinged behavior.

Journalists have generally avoided pushback as Trump has called them “Piggy,” “ugly,” “nasty,” “stupid,” “slime,” “scum,” “very unpatriotic,” “obnoxious,” “disgusting,” “dishonest,” “disgrace,” “loser,” “sleazebag,” “animals,” “some of the worst human beings you’ll ever meet,” “enemy of the people,” and his all-time favorite, “fake news.”

Lesley Stahl of CBS’s “60 Minutes” once recalled a private conversation in which she asked Trump why he insulted the press.

“You know why I do it?” he said. “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

If journalists accept that version of “unity,” we’re doomed.

This week’s media atrocity

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has played a key role in helping Trump trash America’s global standing, yet Politico cited his “savvy handling of foreign conflicts” in a story last week as if it were an established fact.

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It’s not media cluelessness – it’s cowardice and complicity

Mark Jacob — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:55:13 GMT

For more than a decade, I’ve struggled with the question of why major media have underreacted to Donald Trump’s fascist movement, normalizing its corruption and cruelty.

Eventually, I came up with the “Three C’s” – cluelessness, cowardice, and complicity.

Some people assume everything journalists do is intentional. But after spending four decades in a newsroom, I know there’s a lot of sloppiness, naiveté, and delusion. So I attributed the failures of some news outlets to cluelessness.

I’m over that now.

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We’re more than a year into Trump’s second term, and no one in the media is so clueless that they can’t see what’s happening. No one can watch videos of masked federal agents executing people in the streets and think this is normal. No one can miss an entire ethnic group being smeared as “garbage” and “low-IQ.” No one can ignore the illegal war with Iran, the attempted takeover of elections or the outrageous pardons for rich people who put money in the Trump family’s pockets.

Journalists – even lazy journalists – can’t miss this authoritarian rot.

It’s not cluelessness anymore. It’s cowardice and complicity. And it’s inexcusable.

THE COMPLICIT

Fox News is practically a de facto arm of the Trump regime, but rivals, including Newsmax and One America News, covet that title. There’s also an army of podcasters promoting fascism. Some made my recent list of the 25 worst people in news media.

Partisan propaganda is one thing, but the media capture of legacy outlets is even more alarming. Jeff Bezos has sacrificed the Washington Post’s credibility in hopes that Trump will spare his other businesses, including Amazon and Blue Origin. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who joined Bezos on the row of oligarchs at the Trump inauguration, helps disinform the public to placate Trump. And then there’s Elon Musk, who also joined the row of oligarchs and uses his X social media platform to spread white supremacist lies.

Meanwhile, the pro-Trump Ellison family has acquired CBS News and trashed its reputation. With Trump’s help, the Ellisons are a new investor in TikTok and appear on track to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.

The Trump regime also thinks it can benefit from consolidation of local TV. The Nexstar chain seeks to acquire Tegna’s stations, a move that would extend its reach over roughly 80% of the country. Achieving that big a footprint would require a change in federal rules, but Trump likes the idea, no doubt pleased by the rightward leanings of Nexstar’s NewsNation channel. It’s not a done deal, however, since last week, a federal judge ruled against it. Nexstar, of course, plans to appeal.

THE COWARDLY

Other major outlets have not thrown in with Trump, but they haven’t thrown in with democracy either. They’re protecting their profits instead of protecting our way of life.

ABC, for example, agreed to a $15 million settlement with Trump in a lawsuit it could have won. It was a shakedown scheme, and they submitted. ABC was also willing to take Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air at the slightest application of pressure, but then reversed that decision when it proved financially inconvenient for its parent, Disney.

NBC isn’t as bad, but has avoided the confrontation with autocracy that this moment demands. CNN, meanwhile, has claimed a bizarre middle ground where it reports on Trump’s abuses, but also pays contributor Scott Jennings to lie in Trump’s defense.

Then there’s the White House Correspondents’ Association, which seems to live in fear that its members will lose their cool gigs and therefore is willing to host Trump as the guest of honor at its dinner Saturday.

The New York Times may think it’s boldly confronting Trump’s fascism, but it’s not. It reports piecemeal on Trump’s outrageous conduct, but has yet to write a loud, sweeping story with a headline like “Trump Is Dismantling Democracy.” Such a headline would be easy to support with facts that the NYT and other major media report in isolation every day. They’re simply afraid to hit the total button. I’m not sure NYT’s editors fear Trump. They may instead be afraid of coming across as an adversary when they’d rather watch the disaster from the sidelines.

In any case, when news outlets see a dictatorship forming and refuse to sound the alarm, they are cowards.

THE THIRD “C”: THE COURAGEOUS

A few mainstream outlets tell the ugly truth. MS NOW has energetically highlighted Trump’s authoritarianism, with reporter Jacob Soboroff taking a leading role on immigration, detailing the Department of Homeland Security’s abuses.

The U.S. mainstream media do such a poor job overall that one of the most reliable outlets on American politics is the Guardian, based in the United Kingdom. Other shining lights include Democracy Now, ProPublica, and The New Republic. The Associated Press often writes more truth-telling headlines and stories than other mainstream outlets, but occasionally slips up.

The Guardian, Democracy Now, ProPublica, the New Republic, and the AP are free, but welcome donations. Same for the outfit that sponsors this newsletter –COURIER – free to the public, but in need of your support.

Energetic outlets tracking right-wing propaganda include Media Matters for America, Status, and the Media and Democracy Project.

Individual voices that deserve your support include Greg Sargent, Margaret Sullivan, Radley Balko, Jamelle Bouie, Heather Cox Richardson, Jen Rubin, Rex Huppke, Steven Beschloss, Dan Froomkin, James Fallows, Jennifer Schulze, Edwin Eisendrath, Jamison Foser, Nina Burleigh, Brian Beutler, Will Bunch, Jeff Jarvis, and Elie Mystal.

It’s obvious that Republicans are trying to end democracy and establish a dictatorship. News media that don’t tell you that are failing you.

This week’s media atrocity

A CBS headline on Friday declared: “Trump says Iranians have ‘agreed to everything,’ including removal of enriched uranium.” It wasn’t wrong. Trump did say those things. But the story’s sixth paragraph noted that Iran denied Trump’s claims. Why wasn’t that in the headline? CBS couldn't possibly have thought Iran would concede without further face-to-face talks. Soon after, Iran re-imposed restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz. That’s not cluelessness on CBS’ part. That’s complicity.

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Cancel the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Mark Jacob — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:54:51 GMT

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is shaping up as one of those rubber chicken types of events.

But when I say “rubber chicken,” I’m not talking about what’s on the dinner plates. I’m talking about journalists with rubbery ethics showing themselves to be chickens by partying with a criminal president.

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Donald Trump has agreed to be the guest of honor when the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) holds its annual dinner April 25.

Trump explained on social media why he plans to attend the dinner for the first time as president: “Because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me, FAKE NEWS ALL, right from the beginning of my First Term, I boycotted the event, and never went as Honoree. However, I look forward to being with everyone this year. Hopefully, it will be something very Special.”

Something special alright.

Trump has:

Defunded NPR and PBS
Targeted TV shows for cancellation
Shaken down TV networks for large lawsuit settlements
Threatened to jail reporters
Helped his rich supporters take over news outlets
Kicked the Associated Press out of reporting pools for refusing to use the made-up name “Gulf of America”
Attacked female reporters with insults such as “Piggy” and “ugly”
Used regulatory power as a weapon to try to get journalists to cover his Iran war more favorably, and said their failure to do so was “almost treasonous”
Tried to impose oppressive access rules for reporters at the Pentagon – rules that have been rejected twice by a federal judge
Praised a politician for criminally assaulting a reporter

Yet the correspondents’ dinner – sometimes described as a “nerd prom” – is shaping up as an embarrassing embrace of the Trump regime. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly has been invited by CBS to attend the dinner, and other news organizations are struggling with the question of whether to welcome members of the Trump regime to their satellite parties surrounding the dinner.

Some journalists, apparently grasping the fact that the dinner will make them look like toadies, will wear “pocket squares and pins with the words of the First Amendment, in a subversive gesture supporting press freedom,” according to the Status newsletter. The merch, sold by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, will feature a hand-drawn design by CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Those pocket squares will certainly show the fascists. What a crushing blow against the empire.

Even before the MAGA movement came along, the correspondents’ dinner was a terrible idea. Yes, I know – it helps pay for scholarships and education about the 1st Amendment. But it also shows journalists cavorting with the politicians they’re supposed to dispassionately cover. It undermines trust in journalism. It creates the impression that the press and the politicians are in cahoots, performing in a choreographed Washington pageant, and only pretending to be adversaries now and then.

Over the years, the correspondents’ dinner became something of a roast of both politicians and the press. But the snowflakes among the Washington elite grew uneasy when the powerful got skewered.

A memorable kerfuffle came in 2018 when Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, attended and was mocked by comedian Michelle Wolf. Referring both to Sanders’ lies and her makeup, Wolf said the press secretary “burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.”

The mainstream media rushed to Sanders’ defense. WHCA President Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News said Wolf’s jokes tainted the group’s “unifying message.” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said it was “impressive” that Sanders didn’t walk out.

I don’t know why White House correspondents liked Sanders so much. Anita Kumar of Politico and Francesca Chambers of Dailymail.com held a going-away party for Sanders when she left the press secretary job in 2019. This was two months after the release of the Mueller Report, which included Sanders’ admission that she had lied to the press.

Lately, the WHCA has tried to avoid making people uncomfortable. A departure from that came last year when the group hired comedian Amber Ruffin, a Trump critic, to provide entertainment. But before the event, the WHCA unhired her. The stated reason: “to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division.”

This year, the association is playing it safe with entertainment by Oz Pearlman, a “mentalist” who performs tricks such as mind-reading people’s personal PIN numbers. If only he would read what’s under those suspicious redactions in the Epstein files.

Some people believe the correspondents’ dinner in 2011 accelerated Trump’s quest for power. Then-President Barack Obama spent several minutes mocking Trump, who had questioned whether Obama was a natural-born citizen. Since then, the entire country has been punished for Trump’s humiliation.

But if the WHCA allows Trump to celebrate his taming of the news media, that would be especially humiliating.

And that’s why the correspondents’ association must come to its senses. It could disinvite Trump, or it could simply call off the event. There’s precedent for a cancellation, which happened in 1951 because of “the uncertainty of the world situation.” News reports got no more specific than that, but the announcement coincided with key events in the Korean War.

Now the nation is on war footing again, with Trump threatening to wipe out a “whole civilization” of 93 million people. The WHCA could call off the event because of “the uncertainty of the world situation” and avoid the certainty that its members would be forever remembered as suck-ups to a dictator.

This week’s media atrocity

Republicans are looking at a midterm disaster as they blunder through an illegal war, but Politico’s “Dems in disarray” theme marches on. “Dems’ Iran options run low,” Politico informed us last week.

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Trump’s not just pretending to be a madman. He actually is one.

Mark Jacob — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:10:01 GMT

The master of political pragmatism, Niccolo Machiavelli, wrote in the 16th century that “at times it is a very wise thing to simulate madness.”

Four centuries later, another pragmatist, Richard Nixon, made use of the “madman theory” – the idea that you can win negotiations by making your opponents afraid you’ll do something crazy if they don’t make a deal. In Nixon’s case, he tried to convince the Soviet Union and North Vietnam that he had an itchy finger on the nuclear trigger.

But we’ve never had a president who acted as mad as Donald Trump.

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I’m not the first person to apply the madman theory to Trump, of course, but I want to put it in the context of his illegal war and address the question of whether both the American people and the Iranians should be deeply frightened by his approach to warmaking.

There’s evidence that Trump consciously uses the madman theory. During trade talks with South Korea, he supposedly told his negotiators to warn their counterparts that “if they don’t give the concessions now, this crazy guy will pull out of the deal.”

There’s also evidence that Trump doesn’t care about committing atrocities. When asked on Monday whether hitting Iran’s power plants would be a war crime, he said: “I’m not worried about it.” And no one familiar with him would think he’s kidding about that. He’s comfortable with violating the law.

His messaging has been so bonkers that you’d like to think it’s just an act.

There’s the frequent rhetoric by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth casting the war as a modern-day crusade, with Christian warriors determined to smite the Muslims.

There was the Sunday social media post in which he dropped the F-bomb, called the Iranians “crazy bastards,” threatened war crimes, and mocked Islam by writing, “Praise be to Allah.”

There was his claim Monday that the Iranian people hate their leaders so much that they want their country to be bombed. “When they don’t hear bombs go off, they are upset,“ Trump said.

And there was his social post this morning warning that if Iran does not capitulate, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Perhaps he’s managed to convince the Iranians that he’s insane. But that doesn’t mean the madman theory will work.

Penn State professor Roseanne McManus, in her superb essay on the theory in Foreign Affairs, noted that while the idea sounds compelling, it’s often ineffective, as it was with Nixon in Vietnam. There are two reasons why. First off, it’s difficult for leaders to persuade adversaries that they’re truly mad. And even if they do, they may still fail. “That is because by engaging in such behavior, leaders have trouble persuading opponents that they will stand by any commitments.”

That second issue is a particular problem with Trump, who has made a career of breaking promises, both in business and in politics. Making a deal with Trump is as reliable as paying tuition to Trump University.

Also, Iran remembers that it had a nuclear deal with the United States until Trump backed out of it as part of his campaign to erase the legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

If Trump were really trying to use the madman theory to get a better deal, he wouldn’t do things that make Iran’s leaders dig in their heels, such as posting about Allah or falsely blaming Iran for the U.S. attack that killed more than 100 Iranian schoolchildren. His conduct has likely made the Iranians think that any deal at this point would be a deep humiliation for both their religion and their country.

Trump’s madman act is having a more obvious effect in the United States, where more than 8 million people protested against him last month and talk of removing him from office via impeachment or the 25th Amendment is gaining steam. Even as we watch him exhibit deranged behavior day after day, he somehow manages to shock us anew. I just wish he’d shock the mainstream media into amplifying the issue of his unfitness for office.

At a press conference Monday, a reporter – finally – asked him about public calls for an assessment of his mental health. “I haven’t heard that,” Trump lied. “But if that’s the case, you’re going to have to have more people like me.”

No, thank you, sir. This train’s crazy car is full.

The president’s actions are so beyond the norm that rational observers are worried he might resort to using a nuclear weapon to subdue an enemy he falsely claimed was “defeated” weeks ago.

Trump defends his decision to attack Iran because “you can’t put nuclear weapons in the hands of a lunatic.” But the bitter irony is that Trump’s election is what put nuclear weapons in the hands of a lunatic.

This week’s media atrocity

Some news outlets celebrated Sanewashing Sunday after Trump’s unhinged social media post threatening war crimes and mocking Islam. The Associated Press said his rhetoric was “fiery.” The New York Times gave the post a sheen of rationality, saying Trump seemed “emboldened” by the rescue of an American flier. The Times’ David Sanger remarked on CNN that the post was “unusually vivid.” Even Fox News did better, running a headline reporting that “Trump goes ballistic with profanity-laced threat.”

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Congress is a bastion of Republican bigotry

Mark Jacob — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:11:59 GMT

Mainstream media don’t pay nearly enough attention to the fact that the Republican side of Congress is a bastion of bigotry. Members who are not spewing white supremacist garbage themselves are often ignoring it or defending it when their colleagues do it.

It’s not acceptable for one side of Congress to resemble a Klan cookout, and it’s also not acceptable for journalists to treat it as non-news. Because it’s getting worse all the time.

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In 2019, back when Republicans bothered to pretend they weren’t racist, they stripped Iowa’s Rep. Steve King of his committee assignments because he defended white supremacy. But three weeks ago, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee tweeted, “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” and he faced no discipline.

Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson defended him:

There’s a lot of energy in the country and a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem. That’s what animates this. The language that people use — it’s different language than I would use — but I think that’s a serious issue. … It’s not about people as Muslims; it’s about those who seek to impose a different belief system that is in direct conflict with the Constitution.

That’s intellectual dishonesty. That’s a moral vacuum where a conscience should be.

AR-15 lapel pins come and go among congressional Republicans, but bigotry is a constant:

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said in 2022 that Democrats want reparations for Black Americans “because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said last year that Rep. Al Green, who is Black, had a “pimp cane.”
Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas said in 2024 that then-Rep. Cori Bush, who is Black, got death threats because she was “so loud all the time,” and that her husband, also Black, was a “thug.”
Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona appeared in 2021 at a conference founded by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, and Gosar once made the preposterous claim that the neo-Nazi “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 was organized by “an Obama sympathizer.”
Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin said in 2022 that Black Lives Matter “doesn’t like the old-fashioned family.”
Republicans such as Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, and Rep. Brian Babin of Texas push the Great Replacement Theory, which claims that the left is deliberately orchestrating the cultural replacement of white people with non-white immigrants as part of some nefarious power grab. The most radical promoters of this theory specifically blame Jewish elites and refer to a “white genocide.”

In some cases, MAGA bigots apologize for their offensive comments or delete their tweets – after showing their followers what they really think.

Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana helped spread the lie in 2024 that Black immigrants from Haiti were eating people’s dogs and cats, tweeting: “These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters. … All these thugs better get their mind right and their asses out of our country before January 20th.” Higgins eventually deleted the post, earning an attaboy from Speaker Johnson: “That’s what you want a gentleman to do. … We believe in redemption around here.”

Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois said in prepared remarks outside the U.S. Capitol in 2021 that “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’” After an uproar, she apologized for “using a reference to one of the most evil dictators in history.”

Miller also raised eyebrows last year after tweeting that “it’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer” in the U.S. House since “America was founded as a Christian nation.” (The Constitution disagrees with Miller on the “Christian nation” claim, and she also was wrong about the prayer leader being Muslim. He’s Sikh.)

Christian nationalists in Congress who spread Islamophobia have made a special target of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim who was born in Uganda to Indian parents and came to the United States at age 7. Here are just a few of the gems:

Rep. Randy Fine of Florida tweeted: “Zohran Mamdani must be deported immediately. The only thing I want to see him running for is his gate at JFK for his deportation flight back to Uganda.”
Rep. Brandon Gill criticized Mamdani for eating biryani, a rice dish, with his hands: “Civilized humans in America don’t eat like this. If you do not embrace Western traditions, return to the Third World.” A strange claim given that eating biryani with one’s hands is common in South Asia, and plenty of supposedly “Western traditions” involve eating food (such as pizza, wings, burgers, and fries) with one’s hands.
Alabama’s Tuberville posted a photo of Mamdani next to a picture of the 9/11 attack, with the words “The enemy is inside the gates.”

Yet Wisconsin’s Grothman said that “the idea that we have a huge racial problem is preposterous.” I think Republicans’ racial problem is what’s preposterous. And not highlighted enough.

It’s what I call “the one-off problem.” News outlets often produce small stories focusing on individual acts rather than writing sweeping stories about an overall trend. They do the same thing with Donald Trump’s obvious mental unfitness, reporting narrowly about single examples of his unhinged behavior without noting that his behavior in general is unhinged.

A few news outlets, such as the New York Times and PBS, have occasionally reported on how the Republican side of Congress is an oasis for racists. More outlets need to say it, and say it loudly.

This week’s media atrocity

The New York Times headline and summary below credit Trump with “freestyle” and “improvisational” diplomacy. Words like “disorganized,” “amateurish,” and "haphazard” would be more accurate. And what’s with saying the standoff “raises fresh doubts”? There are no fresh doubts – there are longstanding doubts. Better to say “deepens doubts.”

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It’s the ‘Worsties’ – listing the 25 worst people in news media

Mark Jacob — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:20:12 GMT

There’s a strong incentive in today’s news media to be awful. If you’re really awful, you can draw a huge audience and make big money.

But awfulness disgusts decent people. So I compiled this highly opinionated list of the 25 worst people in the news media. I cast a wide net here: Anyone who reports, analyzes, or disseminates news is eligible for this list. I call these dishonors the “Worsties.”

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Candace Owens

The queen of crackpots claims, without evidence, that French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte, was born male. Yet millions love Owens’ carny act. She has more than 24.5 million followers and subscribers on her platforms, an 80% increase since Jan. 1, 2025, according to Media Matters.

Scott Jennings

CNN pays this guy to lie. He blamed the devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires on diversity hiring in the fire department.

Jeff Bezos

There aren’t too many media owners on this list, but after his vandalism of the Washington Post, it’s impossible to leave Bezos off.

Joe Rogan

This podcaster endorsed libertarian Ron Paul in 2012, progressive Bernie Sanders in 2020, and fascist Donald Trump in 2024. Now he says he feels misled by Trump. Rogan’s lack of a coherent political philosophy doesn’t stop him from sharing his political philosophy with millions.

Bari Weiss

She’s a right-wing opinion editor masquerading as a straight-news editor, overseeing the trashing of CBS News. (And the Ellison family gets a dishonorable mention for hiring her.)

Tim Pool

It’s no wonder this podcaster was funded by Russia (supposedly without his knowledge): He spreads hate and disinformation. When Trump took office last year, Pool posted: “Trans people officially don’t exist anymore.” Last December, he amplified false claims that a Palestinian student was linked to the shooting at Brown University.

Benny Johnson

Check out the video in which this dead-souled podcaster visits the headquarters of USAID to giddily celebrate its closure – a move by the Trump regime that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths overseas. (Johnson, like Pool, was funded by Russia, supposedly without his knowledge.)

Greg Kelly

This Newsmax anchor was offended by pastels in the Super Bowl LX logo, calling it “a little bit LGBT queer-ish.” He said the NFL is “trying to destroy America.”

Chris Cuomo

CNN fired him as an anchor for a breach of ethics after he covertly used his journalism connections to investigate people accusing his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, of sexual harassment. NewsNation hired the CNN castoff. His prime-time show regularly features former Fox sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly.

Jesse Watters

This Fox host says billionaires should “make the homeless people in Skid Row fight like gladiators” to entertain the public.

Matt Walsh

This podcaster said it would be better for a child to have an arm cut off than to be raised by gay parents.

Megyn Kelly

I wrote a whole piece recently about this podcaster and former Fox host. Last year, she seemed to downplay Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, saying “somebody very close to this case” told her Epstein ”was not a pedophile” – that “he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds” but “liked 15-year-old girls.” (Which would make him a pedophile, Megyn.)

Brian Kilmeade

This Fox host had a solution to the problem of mentally ill homeless people: “Involuntary lethal injection … or something. Just kill them.” He later apologized.

Sean Hannity

This longtime Fox host said there should be a “political litmus test” for people who want to move from blue states to red states to make sure they don’t bring their “idiotic left-wing radicalized policies” with them.

Ainsley Earnhardt

This Fox host said Taylor Swift “needs to have babies” and claimed the United States defeated “communist Japan” in World War II.

Nick Fuentes

This podcaster who dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 is a Holocaust denier. In 2019, he used “cookie baking” as an analogy for Jews being murdered in Nazi death camps, saying, “Six million cookies? I’m not buying it.”

Tucker Carlson

He platformed Nick Fuentes on his podcast last year. Even some fellow right-wingers thought that was too much. Others defended it.

Lachlan Murdoch

This Fox Corp. CEO carries on the mission of his father, Rupert, to destroy our democracy.

Ben Domenech

Meghan McCain’s husband faced a plagiarism scandal early in his career, but that didn’t stop him. He later co-founded The Federalist, which until 2017 had a “black crime” tag to aggregate stories on that topic. Fox News features Domenech as a contributor.

Laura Ingraham

This Fox host declared five days after the start of the Iran war that “Trump has already won in Iran.” Eighteen days later, there’s so much winning that Mideast energy facilities are in ruins, U.S. gasoline prices are way up, and Trump is sending more troops to the region.

Kathleen Parker

How does someone keep a job at the Washington Post after writing a column before the 2016 election headlined “Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins” and following it up with one in 2018 headlined “Calm down. Roe v. Wade isn’t going anywhere”?

Bill Maher

Fox likes to call him a “liberal” when he criticizes the left, as if that means liberals know they’re wrong. Maher isn’t a liberal. He’s a tool.

Riley Gaines

She’s the perfect symbol of today’s attention economy. Finish in a tie for fifth place with a trans woman in a swim meet, get mad about it, create a career as an anti-trans crusader, and get a podcast on Outkick and Fox about politics and culture.

Elon Musk

X’s owner promotes lies and white supremacy on a massive scale. Truly one of the worst human beings alive today.

Mark Zuckerberg

The Meta CEO’s appearance in the row of oligarchs at the 2025 Trump inauguration made it clear that he’ll play nice with the president to keep making billions. Last year, Meta dropped third-party fact-checking, which no doubt pleased Trump, the most outrageous liar in public life.

Agree with me? Disagree? Think I missed anyone? Give me your comments.

This week’s media atrocity

RIP CBS radio news.

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Trump can’t handle the truth about the war

Mark Jacob — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:08:11 GMT

The most reliable measure of the quality of the news media’s war reporting is how much the Trump regime is freaking out about it.

Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, is threatening to yank broadcast licenses if news outlets don’t cheerlead for the war.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is complaining about the media’s focus on war deaths and is trying to rewrite their headlines. He’s even barring photographers from his briefings, reportedly because he finds pictures of him “unflattering.”

Donald Trump is reacting to fake online videos – including one purporting to show the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on fire – by falsely claiming that Iran has been “working in close coordination with the Fake News Media” to show the videos and that those involved “should be brought up on Charges for TREASON.”

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The regime looks thin-skinned and panicky. And indeed Trump should be alarmed because major news organizations — so far – are doing a strong job of chronicling his reckless military adventurism in the Mideast.

The Washington Post, devastated by layoffs, still managed to publish the pre-war story that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, privately warned Trump that war with Iran would carry serious risks. Trump reacted to the reporting with a highly suspect claim that Caine told him any conflict would be “easily won.”

After Trump ordered the attack on Iran, many news outlets noted his muddled rationale, including the claim that Iran’s nuclear program was an ongoing threat even though he insisted nine months ago that it was “obliterated.”

The New York Times, whose irresponsible reporting pushed the United States toward war in Iraq two decades ago, has published hard-hitting stories this time, such as:

Other news outlets have also reported aggressively. When the Pentagon was slow to disclose U.S. injury numbers, Reuters reported that about 150 servicemembers were hurt, prompting the Pentagon to offer its own number, 140.

The U.S. media were especially strong in investigating who attacked an Iranian girls’ school, killing about 175 people, many of them children. Impressive journalism on the air strike was done by Reuters, the New York Times, NPR, Bellingcat, NBC News, and the BBC. The NYT broke the news that a preliminary Pentagon assessment put the blame on the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, Trump tried to make the world believe the Iranians killed their own schoolchildren. But no one bought it. The cover-up was so lame that usual Trump apologists Megyn Kelly and Laura Ingraham demanded real answers.

Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was formerly news director at Chicago’s WGN-TV, had some concerns about early coverage of the war but thinks it has improved over time. “As the Trump administration makes more mistakes and tells more lies, the accountability journalism has ramped up big time,” she said. (Schulze’s excellent Indistinct Chatter newsletter featured an in-depth look at news coverage of the girls school attack.)

Americans have been poorly served by past war coverage, such as when the media bought the George W. Bush administration’s lies about Iraq in 2002 and 2003. I was an editor on the Chicago Tribune’s nation/world desk at the time, and believe me, we were skeptical, but not enough. There was a common feeling that Bush must have valid intelligence about weapons of mass destruction or he wouldn’t push so hard for war. Turns out, he didn’t.

The media’s strong initial performance this time is remarkable considering the news industry’s diminished financial resources. This White House is also much more hostile to the idea of letting reporters go where they can see things.

That’s important because independent close-up observation is the best way to evade government spin and find the facts. I learned that lesson one night in 2003 when I was editing a Tribune story about the invasion of Iraq. As our deadline neared, I saw a wire report that a British official in London had announced the fall of the city of Um Qasr.

We checked with our correspondents in the war zone.

“Don’t put that in,” said one reporter. “I’m a mile from Um Qasr and there’s still fighting going on. I can hear it.”

An important part of reporting is actually being there, rather than relying on what somebody told somebody who told somebody. That’s why it was alarming when WaPo laid off its entire Mideast staff in early February. CNN got a reporter into Iran for a few days recently; he was the only Western TV correspondent to secure a visa to report from the country.

While I’m praising the news coverage, I’m not saying all of it has been top notch.

Major media aren’t paying enough attention to how Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu manipulated Trump into the war. Early on, WaPo had a strong story about Netanyahu’s prodding, and the NYT has addressed the risks of the U.S.-Israel war alliance. But more must be written.

Schulze told me she was surprised there wasn’t more attention on how the Trump regime announced the war to the public. “America went to war and the POTUS didn’t bother to explain that to the country in a live nationwide broadcast,” she said. “Instead Trump posted two videos and started calling reporters on the phone to talk about the war. The press should have made a bigger deal out of all that.”

But in general, major U.S. media are covering the war well, in a departure from a decade in which Trump generally had his way with them. Let’s hope a desperate Trump doesn’t scare them back into timidity.

This week’s media atrocity

The story on Fox News’ website about Brendan Carr’s threat against TV networks made it seem normal for the government to tell journalists what they can report. Fox enables fascism.

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Zero in on Stephen Miller as a supervillain

Mark Jacob — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:08:26 GMT

Stephen Miller is the fevered brain that is pushing a Trump dictatorship.

He’s the head cheerleader for white nationalism, the architect of state terror against immigrants, and a determined enemy of the rule of law, except for the law of the jungle — the law of brute force.

He’s the 21st century American version of a Nazi.

And he has the ear of the convicted felon in the White House, which makes him one of the most dangerous people alive.

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Both the news media and Democrats need to make Miller the ugly poster child for the fascist assault on our country.

It’s in the media’s interest to do so because awareness of Miller’s influence helps the public understand the regime’s frightening goals.

It’s in the Democrats’ interest to do so because Miller is an offputting creep who can be accurately cast as a Republican supervillain during the midterms. He even looks like Dr. Evil. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis compares him to Grima Wormtongue, the sycophantic adviser to the king in “The Lord of the Rings.”

Even as a young person, Miller was an annoying punk. At Santa Monica High School in California, he’s remembered for a speech in which he said: “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash, when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”

Miller graduated from Duke, where he wrote a right-wing column for the student newspaper. He went on to work as a congressional staffer, but found his full flower selling toxic hate to Trump. When Miller’s input on early Trump policies such as the Muslim ban became clear in 2017, Miller went on TV to declare that “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” That raised eyebrows. Powers that “will not be questioned” – in a democracy?

The early overexposure of Miller prompted Trump to keep him in a mostly behind-the-scenes role, but a substantial one. When Trump 2.0 happened, Miller became deputy chief of staff and drove the campaign to deport millions of immigrants, including those with no criminal record.

Miller has set a goal of 3,000 deportations per day, but the regime’s masked agents have fallen short despite their often illegal tactics. After Border Patrol murdered Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street, Miller lied that he was “a domestic terrorist” and a “would-be assassin.”

While Trump’s racist demagoguery seems motivated by his personal lust for money and power, Miller comes across as more of an ideological hater. He declares entire groups of people to be unworthy of human rights.

Last week, he used the fight against drug cartels as an excuse to urge Latin American defense officials to commit violence against “savages” without worrying about legalities. “You’re dealing with a lot of lawyers in your own country, I’m sure,” he said. ”You have my permission not to listen to them.”

After the Trump regime’s illegal war against Iran included blowing up a girls’ school, Miller praised the military because they were “not fighting politically correct.” Miller supports the idea that the U.S. government can kill at will – pushing the old, discredited notion that “might makes right.”

Discussing the deadly raid on Venezuela that led to the United States stealing the country’s oil, he said: “You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. Those are the iron laws of the world.”

No doubt, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao felt the same way.

In 2024, Miller made it clear that immigrants from certain countries are simply unwelcome: “If you import the Third World, you become the Third World.”

Last month, he tweeted: “Various societies have tried sourcing cheap labor from non-functioning states. The West is the first to import failed-state labor with full political rights: welfare, voting, and citizenship for the migrants and their families. When citizenship is global, self-rule is impossible.”

This view goes against the entire American experience, in which people dissatisfied with life in their “non-functioning states” came here and made good – including Miller’s own great-great grandfather, Wolf Laib Glosser, who fled Russian-held Belarus in 1903.

It’s also dishonest for Miller to suggest that immigrants are a drain on welfare. A recent study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that immigrants pay more in taxes than they get back in government benefits, and it’s not even close. Another slam against immigrants – that they bring crime – is flat wrong: Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans.

Some journalists realize the destructive influence that Miller wields. Praiseworthy news outlets include the “PBS NewsHour,” NBC News, and The New Republic, whose Greg Sargent wrote an outstanding story last December headlined “Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State.”

But will Democrats make the obnoxious and unlikable Miller a key target in their midterms messaging? Will they run against Miller’s extremism and in solidarity with the vital contributions of immigrants?

One of the most cartoonishly wicked members of the Trump regime, Kristi Noem, got fired last week. Perhaps the harsh spotlight previously trained on her can be shifted to Miller.

Sen. Tillis said Sunday that Miller was a “big problem” for Trump. But he’ll be a problem only if Democrats seize the opportunity to make him a liability for the entire Republican Party in the midterms.

This week’s media atrocity

Nexstar, the nation’s leading owner of local TV stations, needs the Trump regime’s approval to merge with Tegna and become even bigger. So Nexstar curried favor last week with a reprehensible ad for its NewsNation cable channel that took the side of Trump liar-in-chief Karoline Leavitt in denouncing CNN and specifically reporter Kaitlan Collins for asking Trump tough questions. An absolutely shameful move by Nexstar.

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Hank Green, Author + Creator
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Donald Trump’s license to kill

Mark Jacob — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 17:59:45 GMT

What is the ultimate authority of a king?

It’s to decide whether people live or die, based on his personal preference, and allowing no challenge to his whims.

That’s the power that Donald Trump holds right now.

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The Trump regime’s war against Iran is illegal under U.S. law. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress – not the president – the power to declare war. The War Powers Act allows the president to send the military into “hostilities” only after Congress authorizes it or there’s “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

Neither happened here.

The United Nations Charter bans offensive warfare but allows for self-defense. The Trump regime pretended it acted defensively when it joined Israel in killing Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and scores of schoolgirls in attacks that also led to at least four American deaths. No matter what Trump says, this was a war of choice, illegal under the UN charter. British Defense Secretary John Healey said it was up to “the U.S. to set out the legal basis of the action that it took.”

But the Trump regime only occasionally feels the need to explain itself. Laws have become quaint relics. Citizens sue over the law, judges rule on the law, and fascists ignore the law. The other two branches of government have largely surrendered – the GOP-run Congress by not asserting its authority and the Supreme Court by giving the president criminal immunity for “official acts.”

Trump has long thought himself to be above all laws, even on matters of life and death. He made that clear a decade ago when he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” In 2020, he declared, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total.”

Obviously, he hasn’t reconsidered that view.

Since returning to office last year, Trump has trained the American people to accept the idea that he can kill people with no legal process and no consequences. About 150 people on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean are dead because Trump claimed without evidence that they were drug traffickers. He felt like killing them, so he did. Two of the victims survived a first strike that wrecked their boat, but were killed in a second strike. That was either a war crime or murder. Trump and his henchmen got away with it.

Also dead as a result of Trump’s decrees are Renee Good and Alex Pretti, executed on the streets of Minneapolis. Trump sent masked agents into the city and encouraged their violence. There’s almost no chance that anyone will be charged with Good’s death, and justice in Pretti’s death appears unlikely too.

It’s up to pro-democracy advocates and the news media not to accept a system based on politicians’ abuses of power instead of the law that was written, debated, and approved over our nation’s 250 years.

Many Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress are pushing for a vote on the assault against Iran, belatedly. Expect lies and other maneuvers by Trump’s congressional allies who’d prefer not to vote at all because they hate accountability. They want to keep their seats and let Trump make all the decisions.

The news media also have a huge part to play, if only they will. The rule of law needs to be explained to the public. People don’t have the Constitution memorized. Journalists need to explain that the Trump regime is repeatedly violating the law. When the media cynically accept lawbreaking as the new normal, they help normalize it.

If neither politicians nor the media will help rein in the president, the American people will have to. There’s an opportunity to display “people power” later this month: the “No Kings” rallies on Saturday, March 28. Invite your family and friends. It’s important. Because defending our democracy is a life-and-death matter.

This week’s media atrocity

The New York Times published a story Wednesday about how Trump is undermining trust in our elections and pushing dishonest schemes to rig the midterms. Yet in the middle of the story, NYT wrote: “Democrats are sounding alarms — and sometimes sounding downright alarmist — as they war-game for extreme subversion scenarios.”

By describing legitimate concerns as “downright alarmist,” they undercut their own story and pleased the people plotting to steal the midterms.

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Hank Green, Author + Creator
Dr. Mary Trump, Psychologist + Author
U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood, Member of Congress + Registered Nurse
Shaughnessy Naughton, 314 Action President
Dr. Vin Gupta, Physician + Medical Analyst

Stay tuned for more speaker announcements.

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