Donald Trump expanded on his threats to the media on Friday, suggesting actions of the press should be deemed illegal and subject to investigation.
“I believe that CNN and MS-DNC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat [sic] party and in my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal, what do they do is illegal,” the president said during a contentious speech at the Department of Justice.
“These networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative,” Trump continued, claiming that CNN and MSNBC are corrupt.
“And it has to stop, it has to be illegal, it’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other,” he added.
On Saturday, government-employed journalists at Voice of America (VoA) were put on administrative leave, a day after Trump signed an order eliminating the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), VoA’s parent company, along with six other federal agencies.
Reporters at VoA, which broadcasts news, information and cultural programming in nearly 50 languages to a global audience, were placed on “administrative leave with full pay and benefits until otherwise notified”, according to an internal memo obtained by the Hill, adding that it is “not being done for any disciplinary purpose.”
The decision to place VoA employees on administrative leave came a day after its parent moved to terminate contracts with the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse, and told its journalists on Friday to stop using material from the wire services.
Kari Lake, the former broadcaster turned Republican politician who was selected by Trump to run VoA, estimated the move would save $53m and said: “We should not be paying outside news organizations to tell us what the news is.” Lake is a Trump loyalist and immigration hardliner who endeared herself to him with dogmatic commitment to the falsehood that both she and Trump were the victims of election fraud.
The latest moves come as disputes between media outlets covering the White House and the administration have grown more numerous in recent weeks, with the White House moving to take control of the press pool away from the White House Correspondents’ Association.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said last month that members of the White House press pool will now be selected by administration officials.
That came after a highly publicized dispute between the White House and the Associated Press over the wire agency’s decision not to adopt the name Gulf of America instead of Gulf of Mexico into its stylebook.
The White House has since restricted the AP from access to the Oval Office and Air Force One. In a court challenge seeking to overturn the White House ban, an attorney for the AP described the ban as a “constitutional problem”.
“We’re not arguing that the president of the United States has to answer the Associated Press’s questions,” said Charles Tobin. “The issue is that once he lets the press pool in he can’t say, ‘I don’t like you. You’re fake news. Get out.’”
But the White House argues that access to the president in the Oval Office and onboard Air Force One is a privilege, not a legal right. Last month, a federal judge refused to immediately restore the AP’s access, saying the news organization had not demonstrated it had suffered any irreparable harm.
A subsequent hearing on the issue is set for next week, but Trump has said he plans to keep the AP out “until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America. We’re very proud of this country, and we want it to be the Gulf of America.”
