Just one day after calling for an investigation into retiring Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, Donald Trump is claiming he’s a champion of the free press.
“In order to Make America Great Again, it is very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media or press,” Trump told Fox News on Monday. He spoke about his recent meeting with MSNBC morning news hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who traveled to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to kiss the ring.
“I expect this will take place with others in the media,” Trump said. “Even those that have been extremely hostile.”
He laughably claimed that he has “an obligation to the American public, and to our country itself, to be open and available to the press.”
This is the same Trump who has declared war on the free press for years.
After becoming president in 2017, Trump called the press the “enemy of the American people.” His continuing attacks on reporting that he does not like or he feels paints him negatively has been unending since then.
According to the international nonprofit Reporters Without Borders, Trump verbally attacked the media at least 108 times in the run-up to the 2024 election.
In 2020, the Independent counted Trump’s use of the term “fake news” to describe journalists or media outlets nearly 2,000 times.
Trump has filed multiple lawsuits against media outlets for coverage he doesn’t like, including a $1.5 billion lawsuit against 20 media outlets for a tabulation mistake in reporting about his Truth Social platform. There was also a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS and “60 Minutes” for what he called deceptive editing of an interview the news outlet aired with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump has called for an investigation into NBC News and its subsidiary MSNBC (as well as the Democratic National Committee) for “treason.” In November of 2022, Trump called for the imprisonment of a journalist who ran a leaked Supreme Court early draft opinion of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. He has called reporters “the enemy of the people” countless times—including to their face.
But now, despite his yearslong history of attacking, threatening, and suing the media, he’s suddenly a big fan of the press. We’ll see how long that lasts.
