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Seated next to Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump listened as he and his guest were asked uncomfortable questions.
“Is it appropriate, Mr. President, for your family to be doing business in Saudi Arabia while you’re president? Is that a conflict of interest?” Mary Bruce of ABC News asked during a Tuesday bilateral meeting. “And your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you and the same to you, Mr. President?”
Before Bruce had finished, Trump had had enough: “Who are you with?”
Upon hearing Bruce respond, “ABC News,” Trump immediately shot back, “fake news.”
“One of the worst of the business, but I’ll answer your question,” Trump added.
Trump subsequently admonished her for bringing up the 2018 assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA claimed was ordered by the crown prince.
“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” the president said. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
The public dressing down of Bruce marks the latest instance of the administration’s attempts to browbeat the White House press corps into submission, which has led critics to claim that his actions are further eroding American democracy and represent an intimidation of the press not seen in decades. Simultaneously, the administration continues to claim to be the most transparent White House in decades.
“There is something about what the Trump administration is doing that is very much consistent with how prior White Houses in the modern age have tried to handle the press through carrots and sticks,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian who studies the modern conservative movement at George Washington University. “I think what’s different, though, is that the Trump administration, as with so much else, it’s a difference of degree, because they’re more aggressive and taking even more drastic steps to basically tell the press corps that you need to pay to play.”
Trump 2.0 cracks down on the press
An emboldened Trump has filed several lawsuits against the media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS News. His administration took control of the White House Correspondents Association pool rotation and attempted to kick the Associated Press out of the rotation before a district court sided with the news outlet. Congress, at the behest of the White House, also slashed $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which sends funds to PBS and NPR, in July.
ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was originally suspended indefinitely in September after the Federal Communications Commission seemingly threatened the company over his monologue on Trump ally Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
CBS announced it was canceling The Late Show, a shock move that prompted critics to claim it was retaliation for host Stephen Colbert’s criticism of CBS parent company Paramount $16 million settlement with Trump. The president has also called for the firing of NBC late-night host Seth Meyers.
Before the Tuesday spray had ended, Trump had another threat for ABC News.
“I’ll tell you something, I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” Trump warned. “And we have a great commissioner, chairman [Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr] who should look at that, because I think when you come in and when you’re 97% negative to Trump, and then Trump wins the election in a landslide, that means obviously your news is not credible, and you’re not credible as a reporter.”
Hours later, the White House press office sent a release further slamming the outlet.
“ABC ‘News’ is not journalism — it’s a Democrat spin operation masquerading as a broadcast network,” the release reads before listing several instances of the news organization’s mistakes. “The network’s longstanding commitment to hoaxes, character assassinations, and outright fiction targeting only one side of the political aisle is a deliberate deception to wage war on President Trump and the millions of Americans who elected him to multiple terms.”
Four days before that, Trump attempted to silence Catherine Lucey, Bloomberg’s White House correspondent, as she questioned him about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Air Force One. “Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” Trump said.
Trump’s is not the only White House that has limited the press. President Richard Nixon famously had an enemies list, which included media figures. Former President Barack Obama attempted to shut out Fox News from an interview with former executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC News were participating in. Former President Joe Biden was shielded from the press over concerns about his mental capacity.
The Trump White House insists that it is accessible to the press, far above the Biden White House.
“This is the most accessible and transparent administration in history – full stop,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said. “The Biden administration hid the President of the United States from the press, covered up his mental decline, and lied to the media’s faces about it for years. Meanwhile, President Trump answers unrestricted questions nearly every single day from the failing legacy media, whose trust from the American people recently fell to an all-time low. President Trump provides candid answers for the American people while also holding the press accountable, just as he promised, whenever they shamelessly peddle fake news.”
Trump allies emboldened in limiting the press
Other members of the Trump administration have followed his lead in attempting to silence journalists and their habit of reporting on unfavorable news out of the White House. Most Pentagon reporters rejected a media pledge imposed by War Secretary Pete Hegseth that gave the Pentagon approval of news for release. The Washington Examiner was among the news media that refused to sign the pledge.
The National Security Council barred White House reporters from entering “Upper Press,” where the offices of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and communications director Steven Cheung are located, without an appointment, according to a memorandum released late last month — a departure from traditional norms.
Leavitt claimed that reporters were eavesdropping and spying on her team during an appearance on Wednesday’s episode of Pod Force One with Miranda Devine.
“We felt it became very inappropriate for reporters to be loitering around sensitive information in our offices, and we did, unfortunately, catch some unruly reporters recording us without our permission, listening in on conversations, eavesdropping,” she said. “We’d have staff meetings in the morning, some of the reporters started to pick up on that, and we’d walk out, and they would be out there trying to listen. If Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio or the chief want to come in and brief us on something, you’d have reporters out there heckling them.”
When S.V. Dáte, a White House reporter for HuffPost, reached out to Leavitt and Cheung individually for comment on a story about Trump possibly meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, Hungary, they both had the same juvenile response: “Your mom” or “Your mom did.”
Dáte told the Washington Examiner that the Trump White House officials “are being aggressive. They are being incredibly rude,” in contrast to other former press secretaries from the first Trump term, such as Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who behaved more professionally.
“That comes from the top,” Dáte said, placing the blame on Trump and his attacks against journalists such as Bruce and Lucey. “When he does that, why wouldn’t his staff do the same thing?”
“It’ll get worse,” Dáte added about the White House’s interactions with the press. “And what can we do? Nothing, you know, hope that we still have a democracy.”
Jacob Neiheisel, an expert on political communication and campaigns at the University at Buffalo, said the juvenile remarks from the administration represent “a brave new world in some ways.”
“I think there’s not just a stomach for, but also maybe a desire among those who are really staunch supporters of the administration for a much more pugilistic style,” Neiheisel continued.
Leavitt defended Trump’s comments against the media as “frank and honest” during a Thursday press briefing with reporters.
“He gets frustrated with reporters when you lie about him, when you spread fake news about him and his administration,” Leavitt continued. “But he also is the most transparent president in history, and he gives all of you in this room, as you all know, unprecedented access. You are in the Oval Office almost every day, asking the president questions. So I think the president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is, frankly, a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration.”
The press are in a weakened spot
The war against the media represents a more sophisticated strategy from Trump’s first term, when many White House staffers were inexperienced in dealing with the press. It may also represent a weakened media that many Americans claim are biased.
“It would behoove the national media instead of trying to feel entitled, instead to just report as fairly and professionally as possible and win back public trust and confidence,” said Jeffrey McCall, a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. “Because, as you know, surveys from Gallup and the Pew Research Center show that public confidence in the press has really cratered over the last several years.”
An October Gallup survey showed trust in the media hit a new low, with just 28% of people saying they had a high share of trust in newspapers, television, and radio to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The year before, 31% of people said they had a great deal of trust in the media to report fairly.
A Republican operative close to the White House echoed those concerns in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“The reason why you hear the president go after particularly ABC, NBC, and CBS is because in his second term, since he’s been in office, coverage has been 90% negative,” the operative said. “There is nobody on earth, not even Jeffrey Epstein, who gets covered like that.”
“And yet he still wants to go out there and talk,” they added. “He still sends his team out there to talk at every single opportunity.”
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McCall said he supports former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1974 comments on press freedoms to Yale Law School, “that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, but it doesn’t guarantee any access for the press,” when discussing the Pentagon restrictions on journalists.
“I think the Trump administration is doing a lot of things that I think are unhelpful and don’t really support the free flow of information,” he added. “And I think there are ways they can manage their disappointment with the press, or their antagonism with the press in ways that are not so hostile, but on the other hand, it’s presumptuous of the press, I think, to go forward and start thinking that the Trump administration owes them anything.”