President Trump speaks at a March 2025 press conference.
The capital press corps gathered at the usual place for their daily briefing by the government. They were told the topics they would be allowed to cover, and how they should write about them. Violators would pay a price for not toeing the line.
Nine decades ago, in Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, this was the drill at government press conferences.
In Trump’s America, how close are we to this nightmare scenario?
Trump has undertaken extraordinary measures to try to control the message about what his government is up to, to create a narrative favorable to him, to demonize journalists who counter his daily lies with the truth. His decision to dictate who gets to be in the presidential press pool is one example. Another is his banishing of The Associated Press — my former employer and a venerable organization that covers the news not just for Americans, but for people around the world — from the Oval Office and Air Force One.
Trump is obsessed with punishing journalists — the non-MAGA ones. And there are troubling signs that Trump’s strategy of intimidating the press is winning the day. News organizations are scrambling to come up with ways to keep their access to the White House, while at the same time preserving the legacy of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as champions of a free and independent press.
I wrote about the Nazis’ total subjugation of the press in my book Enemy Of The People: The Munich Post And The Journalists Who Opposed Hitler, which is about a socialist newspaper’s valiant but ultimately futile battles with the Nazi leader during the Weimar era. Trump’s actions at the start of his second presidency stir worries about how far he will go to muzzle the free press.
After becoming chancellor in 1933, Hitler acted quickly and mercilessly against the news media. Storm Troopers rampaged through newspapers run by opponents of the regime, smashing everything in sight with their rifle butts and arresting members of the staff. Many were sent to concentration camps. About 3,000 newspapers remained after this crackdown, and they fell into line with Nazi ideology.
Each day at noontime, the Nazis held the “Reich Press Conference,” which was run by Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. The Nazis’ idea of “public enlightenment” was issuing orders to journalists about what they could report on and what they’d better not report on. Negative articles about the war were verboten, of course, as was any hint of criticism of the regime.
The Reich German Press Association, representing journalists across the country, promptly embraced the idea of joining forces with Hitler’s expanding communications operations – banning from membership Jews, socialists , communists, and any colleagues deemed racially or politically “undesirable.” The association gave the power of hiring journalists to the Nazi state. It was an ugly display of journalists turning against other journalists.
In Trump’s America, ultra-reliable mainstream journalists are increasingly finding themselves shoved aside by MAGA-friendly figures who often pose softball questions, like, for example, asking Trump what he thinks about some positive poll numbers. That question came from Brian Glenn, a reporter for Real America’s Voice and boyfriend of Marjorie Taylor Greene. It was also Glenn who, during Trump’s tumultuous White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, lectured the Ukrainian leader that he should have worn a suit for his meeting with Trump, to show respect.
Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, dropped a bomb on Washington, D.C. press traditions with her announcement that henceforth it would be the administration, and no longer the White House Correspondents’ Association, that would decide who gets to be in the White House press pool.
“This administration is shaking up Washington in more ways than one. That’s what we were elected to do. As I have said since the first day behind this podium, it’s beyond time that the White House press operation reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025, not 1925,” she said.
It’s not just Trump’s determination to control the White House press corps that is imperiling journalists’ duty to expose lies and hold government officials accountable. News outlets across the country are taking seriously Trump’s threat to file lawsuits against them for bogus legal reasons. While Trump has endless funds for litigation, news outlets that are already struggling financially could go bankrupt because of lawyer bills.
Trump attacked the media as he campaigned for the 2016 election, when he branded the press the “enemy of the people.” The venom became even more poisonous at campaign rallies for the 2024 election, where he would point at journalists covering the event, mock them as “the fake news,” and further stoke hatred of the non-MAGA media.
After returning to the White House this year, Trump wasted no time in demonizing the non-MAGA media. His first big move was banning The AP from the Oval Office and Air Force One for refusing to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in the wire service’s widely used stylebook. Trump has continued to hack away at the independent press since then.
News outlets are left pondering how to counter Trump’s assaults. Should non-MAGA members of the Washington press corps boycott news briefings? But wouldn’t the MAGA press just step in to fill the breach, giving them more power? Or how about tactically selecting days to boycott White House briefings? Same problem there – giving an opening to the MAGA media. Executives of news outlets face perhaps a greater challenge: how to do honest journalism in the face of legal threats.
I worked for The Associated Press for 35 years, ten of them, 1987-97, as a Germany-based foreign correspondent. During my trips into Communist East Germany I was aware of being followed by the Stasi. I even had a beer with a Stasi man who had been tailing me in East Berlin. When he addressed me by my name as I was sitting in a bar on Leipziger Strasse, it was obvious who he worked for _ that and his shabby suit and scuffed brown shoes. But in my decades as a full-time journalist I never had to worry about writing stories that pleased the authorities, even on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
I’ve been retired since 2017. If I were still a full-time journalist, I’d look for ways to show solidarity with my besieged colleagues and help them defend the independent press. But retirement has its advantages. I can sit at my laptop and type words that I hope will draw additional attention to the perils faced by real journalists in Trump’s America.
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