Trump Threatens CNN For Very Basic Reporting On His Shitty, Unpopular War
In case you’ve been asleep, what appears to be an increasingly mentally unstable Donald Trump has further destabilized the middle east with a war nobody asked for or wanted. Most U.S. media coverage of Trump’s disastrous Iran war hasn’t been great, but they’ve still occasionally managed to communicate the pointlessness of the endeavor to the electorate (which speaks more of the unpopularity of the war than their reporting chops).
Trump recently announced a “cease fire” with Iran (which apparently isn’t even a cease fire), but refused to state what the conditions of the cease fire or long term peace actually are. The Iranian Security Council issued a list of ten demands that, if agreed to, would leave Iran in a stronger position than when this whole idiocy started:
Some news outlets, like CNN, simply reported directly on what Iran had claimed. This, as you might expect, upset Donald Trump and his top FCC censor Brendan Carr, who are now threatening an “investigation” of CNN for simply repeating what was publicly stated:
Not mentioned (of course) is the fact that Fox News also reported the Iran statement, yet avoided being called out by the president:
Trump later would issue another statement over at his right wing propaganda website, calling for criminal action against CNN (and CNN only), while making up a whole bunch of nonsense (he may or may not believe is actually true):
Trump’s sensitivity here suggests they’re well aware that a massive, superior military has been getting dog-walked by Iranians because Trump and his advisors were too stupid to understand modern, cheap drone warfare and how shipping in the Straight of Hormuz actually worked. The shipping logjam is driving up gas prices and making life difficult for Republicans ahead of the midterms.
There is, of course, absolutely zero basis for any meaningful criminal action against CNN here of any kind that wouldn’t be laughed out of court on free speech grounds. As we’ve seen with corporate media that doesn’t mean they won’t still capitulate embarrassingly, but so far CNN is standing its ground. As it should, since again, all it did was report on an Iranian statement in a very basic way alongside dozens of other news outlets.
The bigger threat, as I keep noting, is CNN’s looming acquisition by Larry Ellison as part of the Paramount Warner Brothers merger. CNN under current management is already very friendly to right wing ideology (see its enthusiastic platforming of MAGA bullshitter Scott Jennings). Under Ellison’s ownership (see: Bari Weiss at CBS) there’s little doubt CNN will be converted into yet another Trump agitprop network.
At which point, Trump will move on to threatening any remaining U.S. corporate media outlets that haven’t either embarrassingly capitulated or been purchased by a right wing billionaire. This is, as I keep repeating, an exact copy of Victor Orban’s autocratic media policy in Hungary, which involves having party-loyal oligarchs buy up all corporate media outlets and pummel the public with propaganda while the government strangles what’s left of real, independent reporting just out of frame.