White House reporters fear a return to fire and fury
It was just a small tidbit about a seemingly trivial bureaucratic decision. But some White House reporters saw a deeper meaning last week. Like CBS news reportedpresident-elect Donald TrumpHis incoming press secretary will begin work without one of the job’s traditional constraints: a spacious, high-ceilinged office in the West Wing located steps from the Oval Office. The real estate will instead go to the deputy chief of staff, and the press secretary Karoline Levitt to more modest quarters in the nearby upper press space. Reporters quickly took it as a sign: The head of the president’s delegation to media outlets was symbolically demoted before she officially started.
The reaction shows that it doesn’t take much to turn on the president’s cover-ups. After Trump’s chaotic first term and a tense campaign over the past year in which he claimed to be out for “revenge” on his perceived opponents, journalists are sensitive with even the smallest vibrations. On the eve of Trump’s second term, they are preparing not just for his usual bombastic tirades but for much worse.
Will Trump Throw disgruntled reporters out of the White House conference room? Suspension of daily press conferences? Abandon the president’s press team, or completely close the White House grounds to the media? Will he continue to sue news organizations? Will he try to “drain” funding from public broadcasters like NPR and PBS, or usurp the television licenses of commercial broadcasters?
None of these are theoretical considerations, as Trump has done all of these things or threatened to do them before. Certainly, Trump’s attacks on the media have grown harsher and scarier since he lost power in 2020. He has sued Washington Post legendary Bob Woodward, Iowa Pollster J. Ann Selzer and her owners, the Des Moines Register and Gannett, CNN and ABC News (won a $16 million settlement from the latter in December). Trump request CBS relinquished its broadcast license as punishment for its behavior editing and promotion of one Kamala Harris clip from one 60 minutes interview. Same with ABC when its moderators fact-checked him during the debate with Harris. (Spokesperson of Des Moines Register has said the lawsuit is baseless and Selzer’s attorneys have issued a statement asserting that the lawsuit violates long-standing Constitutional principles.)
The prospect of a second Trump term seemed especially alarming to some White House reporters because the terms would be different this time. Trump will be a lame duck from day one, and thus will not need to temper his worst tendencies to position himself for reelection. “I don’t think he intended to bring reporters to Guantánamo, but who knows,” one veteran cable news journalist told me this week. “My guess is he will be in attack mode from day one. Why do we think differently?”
The journalist (who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized by his superiors to speak on the record) noted that Trump has some powerful new allies in his battle with the media. Elon Musk—richest person in the world and owner of X—frequent spread pro-Trump misinformation to his 212 million followers during the campaign (Musk will co-chair Trump’s special budget cuts committee, the Bureau of Government Effectiveness). Second technology billionaire, co-founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, banned Trump from its platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but has also recently been friendly toward Trump. After meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Zuckerberg announced last week that Facebook and Instagram would abandon independent fact-checking, further opening the doors to their distortions and blatant lies. Trump.
A second television journalist, a former White House chief of staff during Trump’s first term, said Trump could cause “serious damage” through his control of federal agencies. Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., suggested ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV, potentially weakening major financial support for network and cable news programs. Meanwhile, a politicized Justice Department could block media merger proposals, like Trump’s Justice Department tried to do in 2018 when CNN’s parent company Time Warner sought to merge with AT&T.
Even relatively obscure agencies can get in on the action. Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, a Trump appointee Brendan Carr, A second TV journalist said it “could cause misery” for broadcast companies like Disney and Comcast by delaying license renewals. During his first term, Trump attempted manipulation the work of the federally funded Voice of America; His choice of MAGA-friendly conspiracy theorist Kari Lake as the VOA director suggested he would try again.
The most dangerous character may be Kash Patel, The person Trump nominated to head the FBI. Patel, a Trump loyalist and holdover from his first administration, told the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on a podcast in 2023, “We will go after those in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden fraud in the presidential election.” Placing Patel at the head of the FBI would give him full control of the government’s investigative apparatus, potentially turning his rhetoric into reality.
