Trump’s WashingtonHow President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.Good evening. Tonight, we look at why President Trump’s attacks on the news media are so different from those he launched during his first term. We’re also covering his efforts to change the subject from the Epstein files — and have an unusual view of official Washington. We’ll start with the headlines.
Old complaints, new actions
In declaring war on The Wall Street Journal over its coverage of his yearslong friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump tapped his supporters’ distrust of his favorite foe — the news media — in an effort to put down a mutiny within his base, as my colleague Erica Green explained. It was a familiar move that might have been lifted straight from his playbook in the 2016 presidential campaign. But this is a very different moment. If Trump’s complaints about the media feel like a throwback to his first term, his actions toward the industry have gone much further than that. Over the past six months, Trump has undertaken a muscular and precise attack on the media’s pressure points. He has sought to dismantle Voice of America, the federally funded news agency that provides coverage to countries with limited press freedom, and persuaded his allies in Congress to cut funding for public broadcasting after decades of similar efforts sputtered out. The tactics go well beyond cutting government funding, with the administration seeking to find — and use — every lever it has, just as it has in its attacks on certain universities. It has flexed its power over seemingly parochial matters — like when some reporters at legacy media organizations including The New York Times lost their desks at the Pentagon to friendly right-wing media outlets, or by removing The Journal from the press pool on a coming trip to Scotland — and over bigger ones, too. When Trump took office, his handpicked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, quickly revived complaints about 2024 election coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC that had been dismissed by the outgoing chair, and he said the outcome of a “news distortion” complaint about CBS could affect his agency’s review of a merger proposed between Paramount, CBS’s parent company, and Skydance. Those moves, my colleague Jim Rutenberg observed early this year, recall Richard Nixon’s crackdown on the press after he won re-election — and they may succeed where Nixon failed, just as Trump failed in his first term. “He is using the levers of government much more effectively as he has in other ways during this administration,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a lawyer who specializes in media regulations and is the senior counselor for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. “He has learned that he can enlist the Justice Department and an extremely compliant F.C.C. chair to increase the leverage. And that is a big change.” The other change, of course, is the way media companies have reacted as they reckon with a punishing environment. ABC settled a defamation case brought by Trump before he even took office, surprising legal observers who believed it would have been difficult for the president to prove his case in court. Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, instructed the paper’s opinion operation to narrow its purview, contributing to an exodus of writers there. And Paramount, of course, agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit Trump brought over a “60 Minutes” interview on CBS — and then the network decided to take one of its most prominent Trump critics, Stephen Colbert, off the air. CBS has blamed the bad economics of late-night TV for its cancellation of “The Late Show,” but there has been broad speculation, including from Democratic lawmakers, that politics played a part. “Many people feared that once Trump started getting these unwarranted settlements — ABC, that kind of thing — these things build on each other,” Schwartzman told me. “I think it has made him feel empowered.” Trump was not able to pressure The Journal to spike its story about him and Epstein with his threats of a lawsuit. And he may not be able to goad the news organization, which is run by his billionaire frenemy Rupert Murdoch, into a premature settlement. Given his apparent success at pressuring others in the industry, Trump may be frustrated more than ever by coverage in news outlets that retain their independence.
IN HIS WORDS ‘No one is above the law’President Trump is reaching way back in time as he seeks to wrestle back control of the narrative on the Epstein files. My colleague Minho Kim explains. President Trump made a flurry of posts on TruthSocial on Sunday. But the most shocking was an A.I.-generated video in which former President Barack Obama was jailed after being forced to kneel by F.B.I. agents who handcuffed him next to a smiling Trump. “No one is above the law,” reads the video caption, a line that his political opponents repeatedly used last year to accentuate Trump’s legal troubles. Another video posted minutes earlier rehashed the misleading accusation that Obama officials fabricated intelligence reports to conclude that Russia interfered in the 2016 election — a claim that his top intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, raised last Friday. The outlandish videos appear to be part of an effort to counter the narrative around the Epstein files. Trump had struggled to persuade his supporters to rally behind him, since his Justice Department decided against releasing more files on Epstein. To cut through their suspicion, he seems to be reminding his base of their old enemies in the so-called deep state. The Obama videos were followed by a photo featuring handcuffed men in suits by the Capitol. Its caption reads “until this happens, nothing will change.” Another post showed fake mug shots of former officials including James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and Samantha Power, the former U.S.A.I.D. chief. “How did Samantha Power make all of that money?” Trump wrote, repeating the baseless claim that Power’s net worth skyrocketed during her tenure. Got a tip? THE MONEY A gap gets biggerDemocrats are lagging far behind Republicans in fund-raising. My colleague Theodore Schleifer has a quick look at the numbers. The political party in power typically is in much better financial position than the party out of power. Behold: the current situation of the Republican and Democratic National Committees. As of June 30, the R.N.C. had $80.8 million on hand; the D.N.C. had $15.2 million. That $65 million gap has been steadily growing throughout 2025. Trump and Vice President JD Vance, the R.N.C.’s finance chair, have been aggressively raising money for Republicans, while some Democrats have criticized Ken Martin, the party’s new national chairman, for what they see as lackluster work with major donors. THE MOMENT
Shoe-leather reportingWe usually use photographs of people’s faces around here — but this image tripped me up. My colleague Haiyun Jiang was photographing President Trump’s signing of a bill establishing federal rules for stablecoins. She was stuck near a pair of double doors, with few options to make interesting images of a standard presidential event, when she noticed how the legs of four powerful men at the front of the room were all arranged in a similar stance. It’s partly a picture of manspreading, the space-consuming posture that can be a scourge on the subway or an airplane, and it’s partly a picture of subtle variations in Washington footwear fashion. Vice President JD Vance, in the front row, and Representative John Rose of Tennessee opted for traditional dress shoes. Representative Troy Downing of Montana chose cowboy boots, perhaps to represent his Western roots. And Representative Nick Begich of Alaska — who is a sprightly 47 years old — opted for something more comfortable. |
