Is Trump Choking Our Freedom of Speech?
“I think you are a terrible reporter… horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.” -President Donald Trump to ABC News’ Mary Bruce.
This came after she dared to ask this:
“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.”
Today, in what can only be described as indefensible, Donald Trump welcomed Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, into the White House with open arms and the kind of pathetic reverence he has never shown toward any democratic ally, only authoritarian-aligned rulers. He’s publicly insulted leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, and France’s Emmanuel Macron, but beside MBS, he smiled like they were old friends. This is the same man our own CIA concluded gave the order to murder and dismember journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for daring to speak the truth about his regime.
But none of this is surprising. Trump doesn’t just hate the press or the First Amendment; he sees both as threats to be eliminated. And he’s waging war against them.
He’s been attacking the media for years, but now he’s doing it with the full power of the federal government. He’s suing news outlets, threatening to yank broadcast licenses, and appointing people who want to jail reporters. This is a direct assault on the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press for exactly this reason, to keep those in power accountable. That’s not democracy. That’s how dictators work.
Trump has sued nearly every major news organization in the country: CBS, ABC, CNN, NPR, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and X (formerly Twitter). Most of these lawsuits were either thrown out or quietly settled. But not because the stories were false. CBS paid $16 million to make one of Trump’s lawsuits go away after they aired a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Harris. Most Americans never heard about it. But behind closed doors, Trump’s FCC team was threatening to pull CBS’s broadcast license, the legal permit that keeps them on the air. That’s the modern version of removing a printing press from a newspaper office.
ABC paid $15 million. Meta paid $25 million. X paid $10 million. Not because they were wrong. But because they were being threatened.
Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, went after their licenses by resurrecting a vague, decades-old “news distortion” rule originally designed to stop deliberately fake broadcasts. Now, Trump’s team is using it to punish truthful reporting. Former FCC chairs from both parties have warned that this is an abuse of power. It’s a weapon, and it’s meant to control what Americans hear and see.
For those who don’t know, every major TV network must have a license from the government to stay on the air. If the FCC pulls it, the network goes dark. This isn’t just talk. It’s a roadmap for silencing dissent. And it’s exactly what Vladimir Putin did in Russia. One by one, licenses were pulled for news that didn’t follow the party line. Reporters got scared. Then they stopped reporting.
Trump’s war on the press doesn’t stop with his own insults or threats. He surrounds himself with enablers who will carry it out for him, people handpicked not for their integrity, but for their willingness to punish dissent. That’s why he installed Kash Patel as Director of the FBI. Patel wasn’t chosen for independence or experience. He was chosen for loyalty. He built his name defending Trump during the Russia investigation, stonewalling Congress in the Ukraine probe, and repeating Trump’s attacks on the media. Since taking over the FBI, he’s called out reporters, brushed off Senate oversight as “a media hit,” and told the press to “bring it on.”
Other dictators have done the same. Turkey’s president labeled journalists enemies of the state and jailed hundreds. Putin replaced real news with propaganda and shut down dissenting outlets one by one. Mussolini seized control of radio broadcasts to dictate what Italians could hear. Hitler criminalized opposition papers, imprisoned editors, and burned books in public squares. I bring these strongmen up not for shock value, but because Trump and his cronies are not inventing a new strategy. They are following a well-worn path paved by the worst men in modern history, men who understood that to control a country, you must first control the truth and those who are brave enough to tell it.
It’s not just lawsuits and threats. It’s the constant attempts at humiliating female reporters and the heaviness in the air that follows them from one press conference to the next. They never know when they’ll be next, so most of them self-censor in what they ask, what they report, what they publish. And I can’t stop thinking about the irreparable damage Trump caused when he looked a respected journalist, Catherine Lucey of Bloomberg, in the face and said, “Quiet, piggy.” And no one in the room said a word. Not the other reporters. Not his staff. Because calling him out could get you kicked off the press pool. Or worse. I’ve seen people say she should have pushed back. But against what? The most powerful man in the world, who has already shown that he can get journalists fired, sidelined, and erased.
CBS Sunday Morning’s longtime producer was quietly removed after the show aired a segment critical of Trump’s ICE expansion. Joy Reid, once the highest-profile Black woman in cable news, was pulled from her MSNBC primetime slot during a post-election shake-up and replaced with a more MAGA-friendly panel show. Katie Phang’s weekend show was abruptly canceled after two years, despite strong ratings and a loyal audience. CNN’s Jim Acosta, the face of hard questions during Trump’s first term, was offered a demotion to a midnight shift before walking away from the network entirely. Terry Moran, an ABC News veteran who had been with the network since the Clinton years, was suspended and then had his contract terminated after calling Stephen Miller a “world-class hater” on X.
These weren’t random decisions. They were consequences. Warnings. Messages to every other reporter in the room that if you speak too plainly, push too hard, or call things what they are, your career could vanish in a news cycle. And if we’re being bleak but honest, who’s to say it stops there? ICE is already disappearing people in unmarked vans. We’ve seen it. We’ve filmed it. So what happens if this continues? If Trump keeps following the dictator’s playbook, the journalists who dare to speak the truth may not just lose their jobs. They may share the fate of those who came before them, silenced not by ratings, but by force.
And here’s the pattern: Trump rarely speaks this way to male reporters. He saves his worst for women. It’s part of his playbook. He wants to break them down. Humiliate them. Control them. And he does it while filling the press pool with influencers and friendly faces who work for MAGA-backed groups. These aren’t journalists. They’re there to cheer him on, not ask questions. So when a real journalist steps up, she’s isolated. And punished.
But today, Mary Bruce didn’t back down. And that’s something we need to say out loud. Because bullies don’t retreat unless someone stands their ground. And she did. She asked the questions the public deserves answers to. She did her job with clarity and courage, refusing to play the part of a polite accessory to authoritarian theater.
When Trump invited, and then sat beside, Mohammed bin Salman, Mary Bruce asked about Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. About Jeffrey Epstein. About the Saudi ties to 9/11. About the uncomfortable truths they all want buried. These were questions about state-sanctioned murder, global trafficking, and corruption that infects power at the highest levels.
Trump lost control. He lashed out, called her a “terrible reporter,” and then did something that should alarm every American: he threatened to revoke ABC’s broadcast license. He went on to say, “I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong... And we have a great (FCC) commissioner, the chairman, who should look at that because I think when you come in and 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.”
This isn’t just about insulting reporters. It’s an attack on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
And the whole time, the Saudi prince smirked. He smiled while journalists were attacked. He smiled while a U.S. president tried to silence a reporter. He smiled as his country’s ties to 9/11 were raised, and as he was reminded that he had a Washington Post journalist dismembered for telling the truth.
That moment said everything.
Trump wasn’t embarrassed to sit beside a man who had a journalist murdered. He was embarrassed that someone brought it up. And when Mary Bruce dared to speak that truth out loud, in front of the man he so clearly admires, Trump didn’t attack the killer. He attacked the woman who asked about it.
Because this was never about national security. It was never about diplomacy. It was about control. Image. Ego. And when the truth threatens that image, Trump doesn’t confront the facts. He tries to erase the messenger.
And with all this madness coming at us in relentless waves, there’s still something stronger breaking through: resistance.
The BBC is refusing to pay Trump after he demanded a $1 billion payout over its editing of his January 6 speech. They issued a correction and then stood their ground. They told him no. And that matters. Because it shows that not every institution has lost its spine. It shows that power doesn’t always win. And if they can do it, others can too. That single act of defiance could mark a turning point, one where newsrooms stop handing over millions just to silence a bully in a red hat.
CNN stood its ground, too. A federal judge tossed Trump’s lawsuit and made it clear: calling out lies isn’t defamation. It’s journalism.
And NPR, which Trump tried to bleed dry, just won in court. A judge ruled that the government cannot cut off their funding while the case plays out. That means they can keep reporting. Keep investigating. Keep telling the truth. In a moment like this, that alone is an act of bravery.
These are wins. Not just legal ones, moral ones. They’re reminders that the entire system hasn’t collapsed. That there are still lines that haven’t been crossed.
We’ve faced dark chapters before. During the Red Scare. Under McCarthyism. When reporters were dragged in front of committees and told to name names or lose everything. When headlines were scrubbed clean and Americans were told to fear their neighbors. We came back from that. We grew stronger. And we will this time too.
But we can’t wait for someone else to do it. We need to stand with the journalists who refuse to look away. We need to stand with the whistleblowers, the editors, the interns fact-checking at 3 a.m., the people who still believe that facts matter.
Because this isn’t just about journalists. It’s about us. Our right to know what’s happening. Our right to speak freely.
And we can’t afford to let that slip away in silence.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
P.S. If you’ve made it this far, chances are we see things the same way. You can help keep this work going by subscribing to my Substack; there’s a free option, or you can become a paid subscriber for just $5 a month. Paid subscriptions help me reach more people, cover more ground, and keep telling the truth about what’s happening to our country.