8chan/8kun QResearch Posts (1)
#22538730 at 2025-02-08 16:07:14 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #27546: Revoking Manchurian Security Clearances Edition
Donald Trump 's Battle With The US Media
US president Donald Trump has long had an antagonistic relationship with mainstream news outlets, deriding them as the "enemy of the people."
Agence France-Presse
World News
Feb 08, 2025 15:27 pm IST
Washington, United States: Armed with multimillion-dollar lawsuits and regulatory threats, Donald Trump is taking his long-standing battle with the US media to a new level – targeting the finances of organizations already struggling in an increasingly tough commercial climate.
The president has long had an antagonistic relationship with mainstream news outlets, deriding them as the "enemy of the people." A notable exception is the powerful conservative broadcaster Fox News, some of whose hosts have taken on major roles in his administration and where his daughter in law Lara Trump is set to start as a primetime host.
Trump now appears to be doubling down on his anti-media rhetoric in his first month in office, focusing on cutting government agencies' news subscriptions in what observers call a case of manufactured outrage.
News outlet Politico was at the center of a social media storm, with Trump supporters including Elon Musk posting screenshots that falsely purported to show more than $8 million was funneled from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the site.
The humanitarian agency has been the target of a sweeping cost-cutting campaign by billionaire Musk, a key Trump advisor, with the president calling for its closure.
Records on USAspending.gov, an online tracker of government payments, showed that federal agencies paid about $8 million to Politico for subscriptions, including to its Politico Pro service.
Payments from USAID were a small fraction of that total, the records showed.
But the facts did not stop Trump from falsely claiming that billions of dollars from USAID and other agencies had improperly gone to the "fake news media as a 'payoff' for creating good stories about the Democrats."
"We have never received any government funding – no subsidies, no grants, no handouts," Goli Sheikholeslami, Politico's chief executive, and John Harris, its editor-in-chief, wrote in a note to readers.
"Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes – just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient. This is not funding. It is a transaction."
'Punish the media'
The White House has said it will cancel its Politico subscriptions.
more…
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-s-battle-with-the-us-media-7663777