Trump’s latest demands prove he’s a wannabe dictator
Every day brings a new complaint (or ten) from Donald Trump about the pesky media. This time, it’s the coverage of his war in Iran.
Last night, in a lengthy Truth Social post punctuated with words like ‘criminal’ and ‘corrupt,’ the President accused news organisations – without evidence – of knowingly spreading misinformation fabricated by Iran, and called for them to face ‘treason’ charges.
Treason, as defined by US law, means ‘levying war against [the United States], or in adhering to [its] enemies, giving them aid and comfort.’
What it doesn’t mean is publishing something the president – no matter who he is – doesn’t like.
It also doesn’t mean questioning whether one of the most important shipping routes in the world is going to close, or whether the administration underestimated Iran’s capacity to fight back.
Reporting accurately, even – especially – when accuracy is inconvenient, is not treason. It is journalism, and it’s fundamental to any functioning democracy.
So it stands to reason that any attempt by the government to control the media, police free speech and manipulate the truth should be seen for how insidious it is.
As ever with Trump, there’s nothing subtle about his strategy. What it reveals is not just the underlying truth about the war’s historically low public support, but about how the conflict itself is really going.
It might be far more productive, you could argue, to consider the riots in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, where dissidents gathered, formed a mob, and marched on the seat of government.
Trump was ultimately acquitted of the charge of inciting his mob of supporters, and while he was charged with plotting to overturn his 2020 election defeat, the case was dismissed in November 2025.
Then, for his first act back in the White House, he pardoned every convicted insurrectionist.
That is the man now pointing a finger at the press and shouting the word ‘treason’.
In his Truth Social post, Trump expressed sheer delight that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – similar to the UK’s Ofcom – chair Brendan Carr was ‘looking at the licences’ of ‘highly unpatriotic news organisations’.
This threat itself is less powerful than it sounds. The FCC does not license or regulate national networks, so channels like CNN are entirely outside its authority.
But that largely misses the point.
Carr, appointed by Trump, is the chairman of a regulator whose website states that the First Amendment expressly prohibits it from censoring content.
The real power lies in the threat. You don’t have to actually revoke anything if you can make newsrooms nervous enough to self-censor.
And right on cue is Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, calling for ‘patriotic’ reporters to write more optimistic headlines.
Hegseth suggested that instead of headlines like ‘Mideast war intensifies’, the news agenda should switch to ‘Iran increasingly desperate’.
Let’s ignore for a moment how patronising it is for a man famed for organising airstrikes via text to tell experienced war correspondents what their headlines should read.
The more important question is what the word ‘patriotic’ is doing in that sentence.
Patriotism, in the Hegseth dictionary, seems to mean blind loyalty to Trump and his version of events.
It does not mean asking tough questions about a historically unpopular war, telling the public that American servicemen and women are being killed, bases are being hit, and oil prices are rising.
All that, apparently, is unpatriotic and treacherous.
Every government that has ever lost a war has, at some point, told journalists to be more patriotic.
The Pentagon tried it in Vietnam with daily briefings so detached from reality that they became known as the ‘Five O’Clock Follies’.
Soviet state media tried it in Afghanistan, refusing to admit soldiers were dying until the war had reached its fifth year. George W. Bush tried it in Iraq, standing beneath a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner a full eight years before the end of the conflict.
In that same war, it became common to see Muhammad Saeed Al-Sahhaf, known as comical Ali, cheerfully telling reporters there were no US troops in Baghdad, even as the city collapsed around him.
Demanding upbeat headlines does not change what is happening on the ground. It just means the government is the last to admit it.
What follows is always a climbing body count.
Two weeks into the conflict, Trump has struggled to explain either why he started the war or how he plans to end it.
As his personal poll numbers continue to be volatile and support for the war slides further still, even some of his own supporters are confused about where this is going.
The ‘unpatriotic’ press did not cause those numbers. The war did.
That is the annoying thing about reality. It’s terribly pervasive, no matter how many licences you threaten or how much you try to strongarm the media into following orders.
When a leader demands journalists shut up and show personal loyalty, when he reaches for the treason alarm, when his defence secretary tries to dictate optimistic headlines as bombs fall from the sky, that is not strength.
That’s a sign they’re attempting to assume control.
In the end, it is the clearest possible proof of what Trump truly is and what he really wants: not democracy, the other one.
And if journalists comply, the slippery slope becomes even steeper.
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