For some, journalism is the cornerstone of democracy. For U.S. President Donald Trump, it has long been an “enemy of the people.”
That phrase, the hallmark of his 2016 presidential campaign, has become far more serious in his second term as he cracks down on media that opposes him.
Trump has cracked down on any media that opposes him in his second term as president
Highlights
- The House approved $9B in cuts, including $1.1B for public broadcasting, threatening NPR, PBS, and member stations’ survival.
- Paramount paid Trump a $16M settlement; and cancelled Colbert’s show amid controversy over Trump-friendly corporate merger.
- Late-night hosts like Colbert and Kimmel face fallout amid Trump’s media crackdown and corporate mergers tied to his allies.
Image credits: The White House/Flickr
In recent months, Trump has escalated his war on the media, not only with rhetoric but through lawsuits, funding cuts, and executive orders aimed squarely at outlets he deems hostile.
He has called for nearly every major American network to be punished for coverage he dislikes. “Because they are crooked. They’re dishonest, and frankly, they should have their licenses or whatever they have… Take it away,” Trump told a crowd in New Hampshire during his 2024 campaign.
Last week, the House approved Trump’s $9 billion spending cuts package under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in efforts to cut funding. They rescinded allocated funds, including $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This move cuts all federal support for NPR, PBS, and member stations.
The network has warned that many of those stations depend on federal funding and could be forced to shut down as a result of the funding rollback.
Image credits: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
A few months ago, Trump characterized them as “Radical left monsters.” One of the current projects NPR is working on, ‘The State of the First Amendment: The Right From Which All Other Rights Flow,’ explores the shift in freedom of speech under Trump’s presidency.
There are many such “left” media organizations that Trump has openly disapproved of, and the cuts are part of a broader pattern. He has filed lawsuits against CBS and The New York Times, and banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool for not following his order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
In December 2024, ABC News settled a $15 million defamation lawsuit filed by Trump over anchor George Stephanopoulos implying that Trump had been found liable for rape.
Disney, the owner of ABC News, paid the settlement amount as a charitable contribution towards Trump's future presidential library, an additional $1 million for legal fees, and a public apology.
In March, Trump signed an executive order that effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which supervises Voice of America. Trump’s executive order also terminated grants for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, which broadcast news to Eastern Europe, Russia, China, North Korea, and Central Asia.
Most recently, he filed a $20 billion lawsuit against The Washington Post and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, for printing a story about an alleged birthday card that Trump sent to Epstein. The publication alleged that in 2003, Trump wrote a birthday note to Epstein with a crude sketch of a naked woman, signed with a squiggle, “Donald,” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
A large portion of U.S. media does lean liberal. Pew Research showed in a May 2025 study that left-leaning outlets significantly outnumber openly conservative ones. Trump has long framed his actions as a fight against what he sees as a hostile and biased press.
A large portion of the U.S. media is left-leaning, which Trump views as hostile
Image credits: Pew Research Center
His dislike extends beyond journalists to satirists, particularly late-night hosts who mock him. Trump has demonstrated a thin skin when it comes to being the butt of a joke, often lashing out with outsized indignation in response to late-night comedy shows. He has lashed out at Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and others, seeing late-night comedy as part of the liberal media “machine.”
Trump’s latest clash with CBS’ parent company, Paramount, serves as a telling microcosm of his broader war with the media. Earlier this month, Paramount agreed to pay Trump a $16 million settlement over the editing of a 2024 60 Minutes interview with then–Vice President Kamala Harris.
The settlement came shortly before CBS announced it would cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the top-ranked late-night program and frequent platform for Trump critics.
Image credits: Scott Kowalchyk/Getty Images
“The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this week.
“These are people with absolutely NO TALENT, who were paid Millions of Dollars for, in all cases, destroying what used to be GREAT Television. It’s really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it!”
While CBS called it a “purely financial decision,” Colbert and his supporters saw the cancellation as corporate appeasement. Amid the move, Paramount’s proposed $8.4 billion merger with Skydance, a production company tied to Trump-friendly billionaire Larry Ellison, was approved.
Image credits: The Late Show/CBS
Variety reported that the Writers Guild of America has urged New York state’s attorney general to investigate Paramount for bribery, citing “significant concerns” that Colbert’s firing was intended to bribe Trump into sanctioning the Skydance merger.
Colbert himself leaned into the controversy. In an elaborate segment spoofing the cancellation on Monday, Colbert blasted the settlement as “a big fat bribe.”
He modeled it after a recent viral incident at a Coldplay concert where a jumbotron exposed a corporate affair. He was supported by fellow TV show hosts Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Andy Cohen, John Oliver, and Jon Stewart, alongside an animated Donald Trump embracing a Paramount logo in the audience.
Recently, Stephen Colbert, a critic of Trump, faced the cancellation of his TV show
Image credits: The Late Show/CBS
“I think the answer is in the fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America’s institutions at this very moment, institutions that have chosen not to fight the vengeful and vindictive actions of our pubic hair doodling commander in chief,” Stewart said on The Daily Show. “This is not the moment to give in.”
For critics, these episodes form a single story: Trump is weaponizing federal power and corporate pressure to silence dissent.
As Keli Dailey of the Austin American-Statesman put it, “In a country where telling the truth can get you deported, comedy remains one of the few safe spaces to say something our government hates, like, ‘Donald Trump has little felon hands.’”