The Witness Chronicles, 2/26/25

Muzzling the press

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The Crackdown on the Press

The White House just changed 100 years of press access

I’ve been waiting for this. The White House Press Secretary just announced that they would choose who gets to cover the President in the White House, ending the tradition of the White House Correspondents organization choosing those who can attend the limited space in person.

And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox broadcaster, took a Fox News correspondent with him on a trip to Guantanamo, without inviting any other journalists.

It’s obvious that they will limit coverage to those who Trump views as loyal, yet another blatant politicalization of a function critical to keeping the operations of the Executive Branch open and transparent. Their messaging is out of control. They’ve been bungling practically everything, contradicting each other, and often simply refusing to answer direct questions, in part because of those contradictory statements coming from DOGE and various Cabinet Secretaries.

I’ve talked about how they have been generating clouds of chaos and confusion intentionally as cover for what they are doing. That, combined with sheer incompetence, means that simply finding the reality has been extremely challenging, even for experienced journalists. Now those journalists who ask the hard questions will be banned outright.

This is strangulation of free speech in direct violation of the First Amendment, only the latest alarming refusal to follow the rulings of the Courts and the Constitution.

It took the willful ignorance of many voters to get them elected, and voters whose only news source was from highly biased sources like Fox, which has legally admitted they are not legitimate journalists, paying an over eight hundred million dollar fine for lying about the 2020 election results.

Now Trump is likely to make sources like Fox into the official state news organization, which is exactly what Vladimir Putin did in Russia, effectively ending freedom of information for millions of people. If anyone needs solid proof that they are creating a totalitarian dictatorship, this is it.

A lot of children fantasize about being a king or queen. For a kid that means control over things you don’t like. For a child of abuse who has grown into an adult, holding onto that childhood fantasy is a sign of serious mental illness. Is this Donald Trump’s fault? To become a mature human we are required to find a way to overcome childhood issues. But he has never done so. He is the eternal victim.

It is not a coincidence that I have been revisiting the history of the Third Reich in pre WWII Germany during these times. Hitler offers a playbook for what Putin accomplished and what the Trump people are pursuing, and it extended deep into German society. The German people were looking for someone to blame for the decline of their economy and they found it in the Jews.

Trump found it in the democrats and liberals and he made us the enemy and we gave him his message of woke and DEI. Those concepts were only intended to level the playing field for all after hundreds of years of prejudice. It was not intended to create a class war between the right and the left, the whites and the other.

But it was the perfect choice for a politician looking for something to blame for perceived injustice. After all, look, they (us) are changing the rules to exclude white people from everything with our woke crap. A completely made up issue but easy to hammer home. And Trump hammered, hard.

Now, in power again, he is seeking to kill any dissent by muffling the press and the next step, manipulating the truth, by manipulating the media he allows access. With Trump, and Musk, everything is transactional. If the media wants access, there must be quid pro quo, and the quid is telling only Trump’s vision of things.

It is hard for me as a communicator to write the words ‘Trump’s vision’ because there is nothing visionary about any of this, it is entirely self serving. That is the nature of a narcissist and it does not change. Certainly not in a man who has lived his entire life and is now an old man.

So, think about this: What happens if Trump drops dead or becomes more obviously demented? Who picks up the mantle? Vance? Don’t make me laugh, the guy is nothing more than an idiotic opportunist, though as I wrote those words I realized they fit his boss.

But it is a good question and one that offers hope. The Project 2025 movement requires a Donald Trump. Elon Musk is not a viable replacement because he is widely unpopular. A dictatorship requires some kind of charisma, and he is annoying and arrogant in a way that simply says “ugh”.

There’s a lot to digest right now. But strangling freedom of the press creates an entirely different game. To me, as a news junkie, it means that we will create even greater distrust of the media, which means more ignorance and more opportunity for propaganda.

What can I say? Look for the truth. You will know it when you see it or you would not be reading this. And talk about what they are doing. If they shut down journalism, only an informed underground can keep the truth alive.

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Martin Edic