A Full List Of The Trump Administration’s Efforts To Intimidate, Silence Or Otherwise Harass Journalists | EUROtoday

Donald Trump will attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as president for the primary time on Saturday.

It’s not utterly clear why Trump selected now to finish his boycott of the annual occasion devoted to celebrating the significance of the free press he so repeatedly scorns. Maybe he’s hoping to intimidate journalists within the room, however they’ve gotten used to that. Here’s a listing of a number of the present Trump administration’s most notable makes an attempt to browbeat the press.

In October, when HuffPost White House Correspondent S.V. Dáte reached out to administration spokespeople with an innocuous query about who selected Budapest as the location for a gathering between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to reply. Instead, she replied with a weird schoolyard joke.

“Your mom did,” she retorted.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung had extra so as to add shortly after: “Your mom,” he repeated.

Leavitt fired off a spherical of insults when Dáte requested if she thought the “your mom” quip was humorous.

“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal [sic],” she wrote again. “You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and bullshit questions.”

The Trump administration has filed quite a few lawsuits in opposition to media shops over reporting the president deems unflattering, typically in search of huge damages within the hundreds of thousands and even billions.

Some of the most important sums he demanded got here in lawsuits in opposition to The Wall Street Journal ($10 billion) and The New York Times ($15 billion). The courts tossed out each of these circumstances, with the choose within the Times case accusing Trump of utilizing lawsuits as “a megaphone for public relations.” A $10 billion lawsuit he filed in opposition to the BBC is about to go to trial subsequent yr.

Trump additionally has energetic lawsuits in opposition to CNN, the Des Moines Register and the Pulitzer Board for awarding prizes to protection of Trump’s Russia scandal. And earlier this week, Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel sued The Atlantic for reporting on allegations he was behaving erratically and abusing alcohol, demanding $250 million.

Trump has efficiently gotten some media operations to settle with him, nabbing $15 million from ABC shortly earlier than he began his second time period and $16 million from Paramount final summer time.

Lawsuits aren’t the administration’s solely intimidation techniques.

Last yr, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into watchdog outlet Media Matters for America in reference to its courtroom battle with then-Trump ally Elon Musk, who’d accused the group of orchestrating advertiser boycotts of X.

Media Matters mentioned final summer time that it had racked up $15 million in authorized charges to defend itself in opposition to the FTC probe, Musk’s lawsuit and one other investigation by Republican state attorneys normal, forcing it to slash employees, cut back its criticism of Musk and the FTC, and ponder shutting down fully.

Then, in January, federal brokers arrested unbiased journalist and former CNN host Don Lemon over his protection in a Minnesota church of a protest in opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lemon was charged with conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of the church’s congregants. Agents additionally arrested unbiased journalist Georgia Fort.

That identical month, the FBI raided the house of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, seizing each her private and work laptops, her cellphone and her watch. A month prior, she’d co-bylined a deep dive on how Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and the White House “broke the federal government.” The raid got here after then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rolled again a coverage banning the usage of search warrants and subpoenas to grab reporting supplies.

The month after Trump began his second time period, Leavitt rolled out a brand new coverage for press protection entry, ending a decades-long system wherein the White House Correspondents’ Association decided the rotation of reporters who fill spots devoted for radio, tv, print and wire service reporters every day.

Instead, she mentioned, the White House would take management in order that it may guarantee newer shops had entry, nevertheless it rapidly turned clear the White House may probably use its newfound management over press scheduling to retaliate in opposition to shops.

Hours after the announcement, the White House kicked Dáte and a Reuters reporter out of their spots within the pool the following day. Axios ― an outlet centered on temporary, easy protection ― and two right-wing shops ― The Blaze and Newsmax ― got spots that day as a substitute.

The timing was suspicious. Weeks earlier, Dáte had sparred with Trump aboard Air Force One.

HuffPost’s removing from the rotation got here on the heels of Trump’s spat with The Associated Press over its choice to proceed calling the Gulf of Mexico by its long-standing title as a substitute of utilizing Trump’s new moniker: “the Gulf of America.”

The transfer outraged Trump, prompting the White House to bar the AP from a number of protection occasions. So the AP sued, setting off a back-and-forth authorized battle.

Later in 2025, Trump’s Defense Department introduced that if reporters wished to maintain press entry to the Pentagon, they need to comply with a sequence of calls for, together with an settlement to not get hold of any data not expressly allowed by the Defense Department. HuffPost, together with a number of different information shops, refused to conform, and a choose overturned the coverage final month.

Trump’s disdain for reporters is well-known, however his vitriol towards feminine journalists, particularly, has been excessive throughout his second time period.

The president’s hostility towards ladies within the press room started ramping up final fall when he began making extremely private assaults on them after they requested him questions. Perhaps most infamously, in November, he scolded Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, a veteran White House correspondent, with a jaw-dropping “Quiet, piggy!” and finger wag when she pressed him about Jeffrey Epstein.

Later that month, he slammed the feminine creator of a New York Times story about him as “ugly” and a “third rate reporter,” saying completely nothing in regards to the man who co-wrote the story.

It didn’t cease there. In latest months, he’s excoriated feminine journalists, typically to their faces, as “horrible,” “insubordinate,” “terrible,” “stupid and nasty.” In February, he lobbed a clichéd insult at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins for not smiling sufficient. Just on Thursday, he instructed NOTUS’s Jasmine Wright she was a “disgrace” after she requested him about his Iran timeline.