Feb.26

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Today's Crazypants Roundup: Freedom of Suppress

Yesterday, we had a rundown of some of the ways that the current administration is making a mockery of the term "law enforcement." Today, it's a rundown of how Donald Trump and his minions are using every tool at their disposal to control information, and to suppress dissent:

• The Associated Press: This is the biggest story on this list, and has been all over the place, so many readers are undoubtedly aware of it. In short, as a worldwide organization, the Associated Press decided that it would continue to call the Gulf of Mexico by its proper name. The AP did accept the change of Denali back to Mt. McKinley, since that is largely only relevant in the U.S., but felt that it was better to have one name for the Gulf of Mexico worldwide, as opposed to two.
  
  Petulantly, and entirely inappropriately, the White House decided to punish the AP by denying the organization access to many (though not all) press briefings. The AP sued, and somehow—and we can't find out how—the case ended up before Trevor McFadden, who is in the running (with Neomi Rao, James Ho and Aileen Cannon) as the Trumpiest monkey in the federal judiciary. As you can imagine, he has thus far declined to intervene, and is slow-walking the case. Consequently, the only time the AP—whose coverage reaches half of all Americans—has had access to Trump since being put on time out was when the President met with Emmanuel Macron, and Macron granted access to an AP journalist.
  
  Things do not figure to get better in the short term. For generations, the White House Correspondents' Association has decided which outlets are given seats at the various White House briefings. As of yesterday, the White House is officially taking over the job, so that "the White House press pool reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025." In case you aren't fluent in bullsh**, what that means is they are going to let a bunch of bootlicking bloggers and podcasters and cable TV personalities in there, including some crazypants racists, and then they'll toss in a couple of mainstream outlets so as to claim "fairness" and will call it a day.
  
  
• Reuters: The AP is not the only wire service currently on the White House's radar. Elon Musk, who continues to make the case that he's pretty damn dumb, was angry that Reuters dared to describe the work of DOGE as "politically motivated." So, he whipped his followers into a frenzy, and told them to find some dirt. One of them came up with something "shocking," which Musk gleefully shared on eX-Twitter:

  Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for "large scale social deception".
  
  That is literally what it says on the purchase order! They're a total scam.
  
  Just wow.

  Donald Trump, who is certainly no brighter than Musk, immediately parroted the news:

  Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study "large scale social deception." GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!

  In truth, the contract was issued by the U.S. military, for the study of cybersecurity. And the recipient was not Reuters, per se, it was another division of the company, namely Thomson Reuters Special Services. Oh, and the project was funded in 2018, which means it was the work of... the Trump administration. Nonetheless, the message here is loud and clear: "Any journalist or organization who dares criticize Co-President Musk is at risk of a declaration of war."
  
  
• 60 Minutes: Just in case you think we might be overreacting to that last story, Musk also set his sights on 60 Minutes. He has apparently accepted, lock, stock, and barrel, the claim that the program somehow manipulated the 2024 election. We could have sworn Trump won that one, so we guess they manipulated it for his benefit? Guess we should check our sources. The show's journalists have also been critical of DOGE and, in particular, the attempted gutting of USAID. So, the South African is furious, and decreed that "60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election. They deserve a long prison sentence." Like many Trumpers, he only has a use for the First Amendment when it works to his advantage.
  
  
• Signal: Signal is an instant messaging service that is very strong in terms of encryption and privacy. It is often used by people who are victims of abuse and other crimes, and it's used by whistleblowers who want to remain anonymous. There is at least one activity here, and maybe more than one, that Musk does not like. So he has now ordered that all Signal links posted to eX-Twitter be blocked.
  
  
• The Dallas Morning News: This is not the direct work of Team Trump, but it's the kind of kowtowing that the White House is hoping to see. Like many newspapers, The Dallas Morning News runs Doonesbury, by Garry Trudeau. Somewhat like Saturday Night Live, Trudeau's personal leanings would appear to be lefty, but he's also an equal opportunity skewerer of politicians from both parties. That means that he's sometimes critical, even highly critical, of Donald Trump.
  
  The people who run the Morning News recognize that a political cartoonist who is a big meanie might give Trump the sads. So, they are yanking any Trump-critical strips. The paper ran a column from the public editor that explains the decision, and that should make every journalist at the paper ashamed. The quote from Managing Editor Amy Hollyfield is representative: "I don't feel like we need to be a microphone for a comic that has gone on a crusade against the president." Never mind that Doonesbury has been crusading against presidents of both parties for more than half a century.
  
  Incidentally, Gerald Ford, who was often a Trudeau target, once said: "There are only three major vehicles to keep us informed as to what is going on in Washington: the electronic media, the print media, and Doonesbury, not necessarily in that order." We guess some presidents are bigger men than others.

Looking over the above list, one cannot help but think of the observation made 70 years ago by Representative Francis E. Walter of Pennsylvania, Chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee:

The communists know that movie screens and television channels are weapons of far greater potential power than any of the nuclear devices whose secrets we guard so jealously.

Control of the media of communication and information means the control of the mind, and for the communists this would mean a victory of far greater importance than victory on a dozen battlefields of war.

If Donald Trump is indeed thinking along these lines, it's hard to imagine which person with vast experience in communist media-manipulation techniques he might have gotten it from. Yep, it's a real head-scratcher. A question for the ages. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

There were a couple of other stories this week that might have been included in this list, but we decided the weight of evidence was against it. First, MSNBC overhauled its primetime schedule, getting rid of Joy Reid and Alex Wagner, and moving around a bunch of other contributors. Second, Lester Holt stepped down as anchor of the NBC Nightly News.

It is true that the two moves, coming within hours of each other, removed the two most prominent Black voices in television news from their daily perches. It is further true that Reid is an outspoken Trump critic, having blasted him on her show many times, along with writing a book, The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story. Holt, for his part, displeased Trump with his moderation of the first 2016 presidential debate, and then with a non-softball interview in 2017. So, the President undoubtedly regards both journalists as enemies.

However, Reid was substantially replaced by Jen Psaki, who was press secretary to the hated Barack Obama and the hated Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Holt is 65, has been grinding for over a decade, and will still remain in a high-profile position with NBC as the (ongoing) host of Dateline. So we don't think these moves were undertaken with an eye to licking Trump's lifts, though readers may see things differently. (Z)