#attacks-on-press — Trump Fail

Trump Declared Three Major News Organizations — CNN, MS NOW, and Politico — "Banned" From the White House "Effective Immediately," Explicitly Because He Dislikes Their Coverage, Which He Called "FICTION and LIES," and Threatened the New York Times and Washington Post Next — a Viewpoint-Based Purge of the Press That Federal Courts Have Already Ruled the White House Cannot Do

On September 18, 2026, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House "effective immediately," declaring that the three outlets "shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they're covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America." He threatened to extend the bans to others, singling out the New York Times and Washington Post as "crummy." The White House did not immediately clarify the scope — whether the outlets' reporters would lose their credentials entirely or be shut out of briefings, events, and the press pool. But the stated basis was explicit and disqualifying: the outlets are being punished for the content of their coverage. That is textbook viewpoint discrimination, and it runs directly into settled law. In the 1977 case Sherrill v. Knight, the D.C. Circuit held that the White House cannot arbitrarily deny a press pass to a bona fide journalist, and as recently as 2025 a federal court ruled the administration could not bar the Associated Press from covering events open to the press because it disliked the AP's editorial choices. A president gets to dispute reporting he considers wrong; he does not get to decide which news organizations are allowed to cover him based on whether their coverage pleases him. This is the government choosing the press — the precise inversion of a free one.

The Pentagon Secretly Put MAGA Social-Media Influencers — Retired Colonels With Hundreds of Thousands of Followers Who Spend Their Days Praising Defense Secretary Hegseth and Attacking the Reporters Who Scrutinize Him — on the Government Payroll as "Special Government Employees," in Undisclosed Roles With Official Email Addresses but No Stated Duties, and the Pentagon Won't Say What They Do or Whether Taxpayers Are Paying Them

According to a Washington Post investigation published August 30, 2026, the Pentagon has quietly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings into government positions — declining to disclose their assignments — where they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration. Among them: Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel with roughly 130,000 followers on X; Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel and columnist with nearly 620,000 followers; and Thomas Anderson, a retired colonel who regularly defends Hegseth to his 320,000-plus followers. They were brought on as "special government employees" or "highly qualified experts," hold official Pentagon email addresses, and at least two report to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness — in roles that the Post reports could shape policy. Yet the Pentagon refused to tell the Post what these people actually do, how long their jobs last, or whether they are drawing a taxpayer-funded salary. In other words: the Defense Department appears to have put partisan influencers on the public payroll to run domestic political messaging for the Secretary and to go after his critics, and then declined to account for any of it. The military is supposed to serve the whole country and stay out of partisan politics. This turns a slice of it into Hegseth's personal PR and troll operation, paid for — as far as anyone outside will confirm — by the public it is aimed at.

The USS Abraham Lincoln Has Been Stuck at Sea a Record 260+ Days — Its 6,000 Sailors Rationed to Corn Dogs and Tuna-and-Noodles, With Moldy Showers and a Mental-Health Crisis — Because Iran Destroyed the Navy's Main 5th Fleet Supply Base in Bahrain on Day One of the War, a Strategic Defeat Journalist David Rohde Says Hegseth Hid While Calling the Reporting "Completely Misrepresented"

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed at sea for more than 260 days — the longest modern carrier deployment on record, roughly nine months — supporting Trump's war on Iran. Its crew of about 6,000 has endured food shortages so severe that meals were reportedly reduced for stretches to tuna mixed with noodles or corn dogs, along with moldy showers, broken facilities, and 12-to-16-hour shifts without days off; families and journalists describe a mental-health crisis so acute that some sailors reportedly tried to jump overboard (the Navy denies the latter). The root cause is not bad luck. On the first day of the war, Iranian missiles and drones destroyed much of the U.S. Navy base in Bahrain — the 5th Fleet's decades-old sustainment hub for carrier operations. With Bahrain gone and the waters inside the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, the Navy fell back on the tiny, remote island of Diego Garcia, which Iran then also struck. The carrier's resupply collapsed. As journalist David Rohde and other reporters have laid out, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concealed the strategic significance of losing that base — the fact that Iran had knocked out America's main regional logistics hub — because it is direct evidence the war is going badly. Confronted with the reporting on the Lincoln's conditions, Hegseth called it "completely misrepresented" and attacked the press, as Sen. Chuck Schumer called for his firing and Sen. Ruben Gallego, a combat veteran, demanded an immediate bipartisan investigation.