Throughout 2024, Donald Trump’s principal opponent was the Democratic Party’s national ticket, but the Republican often seemed equally focused on running against the free press. Voters routinely heard him refer to journalists, for example, as “the enemy of the people,” media outlets as “evil” and news professionals as “scum.”
But the offensive wasn’t merely rhetorical. As regular readers might recall, Trump also made it clear that he hoped to use governmental power to crack down on journalism he disliked. It’s why he has invested so much time and energy talking about the FCC stripping TV networks of their broadcast licenses for airing coverage he disapproves of.
After his election victory, Trump continued down the same path, even filing an unprecedented lawsuit against a prominent newspaper for publishing the results of a poll he didn’t like.
As his second term gets underway, the president is taking this campaign to new levels. Team Trump, for example, has removed major independent media outlets, including NBC News, from their Pentagon office spaces. He’s said MSNBC (my employer) “shouldn’t even have a right to broadcast.” After NBC’s Seth Myers told jokes about him that the president didn’t like, Trump wrote online, “Comcast should pay a BIG price for this!”
Some of the most unsettling elements of the broader campaign have unfolded at the Federal Communications Commission, where its Trump-aligned chairman, Brendan Carr — a Project 2025 co-author — has launched investigations into NPR and PBS, while reviving a trio of complaints aimed at NBC, ABC and CBS content.
And then, of course, there’s CBS News and “60 Minutes.” The New York Times reported:
The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday released the transcript of a ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that has been at the center of a lawsuit between CBS and President Trump. The transcript of the interview shows that Ms. Harris gave a lengthy answer to a question about Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. About 21 seconds of that answer was aired in a preview of the interview on ‘Face the Nation.’ A different seven-second part of the answer aired the next day in an episode of ‘60 Minutes.’
In recent months, few issues have animated Trump more than Harris’ pre-election interview with the longtime news magazine. The then-vice president spoke to “60 Minutes” in early October; some of her answers were edited for time — a standard practice in broadcast journalism — and her former Republican opponent has been hysterical about it ever since.
Indeed, Trump, among other things, called for CBS to lose its broadcasting license, asked for “60 Minutes” to be pulled from the air, labeled the show and the network a “threat to democracy,” described the imaginary controversy as “the single biggest scandal in broadcast history” and even characterized the non-story as “totally illegal.”
The president has already filed suit over his deeply strange allegations, and more importantly, the week after Trump’s second inaugural, the FCC requested internal materials about the Harris interview. Though CBS initially resisted, the network said in a statement last week that it was “legally compelled” to provide the material, which has since been made available to the public. The developments appear to have inspired a new round of apoplexy from the president, who published yet another ridiculous rant on his social media platform, repeating the same absurdities he’s pushed before. The problem is that the evidence points in the opposite direction. There just doesn’t appear to be any controversy here. As CBS said in a statement, the transcript shows that the “60 Minutes” broadcast “was not doctored or deceitful.” Anna Gomez, a Democratic commissioner on the FCC, added in a statement that the transcript and raw footage “provide no evidence” of wrongdoing. “Having now seen these materials, I see no reason to continue pursuing this investigation,” Gomez concluded. “The F.C.C. should now move to dismiss this fishing expedition to avoid further politicizing our enforcement actions.” If recent history is any guide, the president will claim that the evidence vindicates his conspiracy theories. Reality clearly tells a very different story.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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