Trump 2.0 Ramps Up Media Battles

President Donald Trump is stepping up his war with the media in his second term, shaking up the White House briefing room, blasting his favorite adversaries, and even trying to cut off government funding streams for certain news outlets.

“I can confirm that the more than 8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer’s dime will no longer be happening,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Wednesday. “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”

Trump vs. Politico: The Trump administration has opened another front in its war with the media by aggressively cutting back government agencies’ news subscriptions to outlets like Politico Pro and The New York Times.

In the process, several X users have advanced the false claim that the government was subsidizing these outlets—a conspiracy that gained so much traction that Politico’s John Harris and Goli Sheikholeslami felt compelled to explain the nuances of their business model to readers. The more forceful rebuttal came from Mathias Döpfner, the C.E.O. of Politico’s German parentco, Axel Springer. “People are paying for [Politico Pro] because they need the service,” he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “It’s not subsidies, it’s capitalism.”

But the Politico payment spat — the company says the money was for subscriptions to its “Pro” product — is just one part of a larger effort within the Trump administration to battle with large portions of the news media, according to The Washington Examiner.

Conservatives have long decried the national press as a bastion of left-wing groupthink, dating back at least to Vice President Spiro Agnew’s 1969 speech blasting “quarrelous criticism” of his boss, Richard Nixon, by the unelected news media.

Trump, as is typical, is taking that rhetoric to another level and has much of the Republican Party joining him.

The right-wing Media Research Center released a report last week alleging that Wikipedia has effectively blocked 100% of right-leaning news outlets from being used in its citations, while blocking just 15% of left-leaning sources, saying it’s another example of bias in the press.

Also, the House subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency invited NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who was formerly the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, to testify before the committee about “systemically biased news coverage.”

“This hearing is an opportunity for you to explain to Congress and the American people why federal funds should be used for public radio — particularly the sort of content produced by NPR,” subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said. PBS is also in the subcommittee’s crosshairs.

A third front in the debate, and another that involves government funding of news, is the Trump administration’s abrupt overhaul of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Trump had success suing media outlets during the 2024 campaign, with ABC News paying out a $15 million defamation settlement and CBS News releasing the unedited 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris amid a federal investigation.