Trump’s War on Media, Truth, and the Constitution
The article was originally published on Daily Kos.
By Alan Singer
There may not be much left to celebrate on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the new country and a year and a half into Donald Trump’s second term a President. Trump’s deluge of questionable executive orders and his pronouncement that he is above the law because he wants to make the country great again, threaten the basic principles that have governed the United States since its inception. To beat his critics into silence, Trump has launched a war against the media, truth, and the Constitution. As George Orwell recognized in his 1949 dystopian novel 1984, Big Brother’s control over the public’s perception of realty required complete control of the media allowing him to “extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.”
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution ratified in 1791 incorporated freedom of speech and of the press into the founding document of this country. It declares “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
The First Amendment was a direct rebuke to British sedition and libel laws dating back to the colonial era that outlawed criticism of the monarchy or government. Donald Trump, who recently crowned himself King in a Truth Social post, does not believe he is restricted by this constitutional mandate and he has launched an all-out war to silence the media reminiscent of similar campaigns in Germany under Adolph Hitler and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
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Alan Singer is a historian and teacher educator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. His most recent books are Social Studies for Secondary Schools, 5th edition (Routledge, 2024) and Class-Conscious Coal Miners (SUNY Press, 2024). Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present his views and not those of Hofstra University.