In a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump’s plans to deploy federal troops to Portland, U.S.District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, earlier this month wrote that the Oregon protests were “small and uneventful.” Immergut added, “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.” The judge’s assessment of the President’s authoritarian appetite for militarized policing and political retribution neatly captures the precarious state of the union.
By the same token, the American press corps’ reluctance to call out what Illinois Governor JB Pritzker describes as Trump’s increasingly “unhinged” behavior is a recipe for disaster. Rather than rigorously challenging the President’s gross distortions, news workers habitually repeat and amplify Trump’s purposefully misleading claims, albeit with the inadequate qualification “without evidence.”
Consider this all-too-revealing headline from ABC News: “Trump Doubles Down On Claims, Without Evidence, That Biden Aides Illegally Used Autopen.” Trump’s obsession with his vanquished opponent—not to mention an unhealthy fixation with his predecessor’s penmanship—makes a mockery of the Office of the President.
Worse yet, news workers parroting Trump’s talking points in this fashion isn’t journalism—it’s obsequious official-source stenography that emboldens the fabricator-in-chief and erodes the Fourth Estate’s ability to hold power to account.
Factual Immunity
Trump’s agnostic relationship with facts isn’t limited to the banality of Joe Biden’s autopen. It’s a matter of life and death. Early in his second term, the President attempted to score political points over a midair collision in Washington D.C. that claimed 67 lives in the nation’s deadliest aviation accident in 20 years.
Rather than serve as the nation’s consoler-in-chief, Trump offered absurd allegations that DEI initiatives at the Federal Aviation Administration were to blame for the tragedy. This Reuters headline exemplifies corporate news media’s servility to the President’s claptrap: “Trump Takes Aim, Without Evidence, At Diversity Policies Over Midair Collision.”
Likewise, the Trump administration’s belligerent stance toward Venezuela rests on unsubstantiated claims and dubious assertions regarding drug smuggling operations across the Caribbean. The New York Times said, “The U.S. military has killed at least 21 people in recent strikes on small boats that it says were smuggling drugs off the coast of Venezuela.”
But as news outlets matter-of-factly put it, Trump and his freshly-minted “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth, have yet to offer proof that the Venezuelan government has anything to do with drug runners. WBUR opened a recent report this way: “U.S. forces sank another boat last week off the coast of Venezuela that officials, without evidence, say was transporting drugs.” These provocations, clearly aimed at regime change in Venezuela, are justified by a fact-free approach to armed military conflict that flouts domestic and international law.
From Airstrikes to Autism
Amid growing concerns in Congress, CNN noted “the Trump administration has so far ducked lawmakers and provided a mishmash of public justifications that raise serious questions about the legality” of the airstrikes off the Venezuelan coast. Brian Finucane claimed, “It’s legal madlibs.” The former State Department official, who specializes in executive authority and war powers, added, “They’re throwing a lot of words out there that don’t necessarily go together or constitute a coherent legal justification.”
Reporting like this is all too rare in corporate media. Indeed, as this AP headline vividly demonstrates, “U.S. Military Again Targeted A Boat Allegedly Carrying Drugs From Venezuela, Trump Says,” official-source stenography continues apace.
Case in point: the president’s reckless statements linking autism with Tylenol. Last month, Trump and his “health experts” created a media firestorm when they repeated unsubstantiated claims that taking the pain medication during pregnancy may lead to infant autism. MSNBC’s headline has a familiar ring to it: “Trump, Without New Evidence, Tries To Link Tylenol With Autism.”
Nice try, MSNBC, but the incessant coverage of Trump’s disinformation campaign has created the desired effect: casting doubt on accepted medical science and sowing chaos and confusion for Americans in their increasingly vain efforts to get quality and affordable healthcare.
Falsification Nation
Donald Trump is the fountainhead of fact-free anarchy in the USA. But he’s not the only one spewing lies and unsupported assertions that have devastating consequences for all of us. This past summer, Bill Pulte, Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency director, accused Federal Reserve Governor, Lisa Cook, the first African-American woman to hold the position, of mortgage fraud. Pulte made the allegations—say it with me now—without evidence.
Right on cue, Trump exploited the controversy and abruptly fired Cook. For her part, Cook maintains her innocence and has launched a robust legal defense. In the meantime, Pulte’s allegations have come under scrutiny. The Raw Story headline put it best: “‘What an Idiot’: Trump’s Attack Dog Mocked as ‘Mortgage Fraud’ Allegation Crumbles.”
Nevertheless, Cook’s tenure at the Fed hangs in the balance until the U.S. Supreme Court hears the Fed governor’s appeal in January. The stakes couldn’t be much higher. For well over a century, the central bank has operated independently of political interference. Trump’s machinations would change all that, allowing a reckless felon with a talent for bankrupting businesses to dictate U.S. monetary policy.
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, no stranger to Trump’s pernicious fabrications, took a page from the President’s playbook when he declared, without evidence, that the Chinese government bankrolls state and municipal lawsuits across the country targeting the fossil fuel industry for climate disasters. Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June, the Texas Republican accused China of waging “a full spectrum assault on American energy independence.”
Weeks later, NPR reported, “Cruz’s office has not offered evidence that China or a China-linked nonprofit that Cruz identified by name has funded climate lawsuits in the United States.” Nonetheless, Cruz’s unfounded accusations have a two-fold effect: insulating the fossil fuel industry against litigation that would hold them accountable for climate catastrophe and further stoking tensions between two geopolitical rivals.
The Authoritarian Playbook
In light of Trump’s threats to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell “war-ravaged” cities like Portland and Chicago, what are we to make of such outrageous accusations made without evidence?
For some, the answer is clear. In a recent interview on Democracy Now to promote their new film, “Orwell: 2+2=5,” filmmakers Raoul Peck and Alex Gibney make a compelling case that authoritarians have long relied upon “alternative facts,” as Trump’s senior advisor Kellyanne Conway infamously put it in 2017, to tyrannical ends.
Quoting Orwell, Democracy Now host Amy Goodman observes, “Totalitarianism demands … a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” To that end, authoritarian rule calls for an unrelenting attack on our collective perception of reality—by any means necessary: distraction, deflection, denial, demonization and ultimately, decimation of the rule of law.
In the end, we’re left with an existential quandary. Journalists have an obligation to accurately record Trump’s statements. But how should news workers respond to the firehose of lies, distortions and fabrications issued by the president and his loyalists without amplifying and legitimating falsehoods? It’s a difficult question but we must answer it. Normalizing the upside down that is Trump 2.0 puts the country on a glide path to autocracy.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
