“The press is the people’s window to the truth, and we need that window to be clear and unobstructed.”
—Ronald Reagan, White House briefing for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 17, 1986.
Donald Trump doesn’t hate the media because it lies. He hates it because it tells the truth—and the truth frightens him. Despite nonstop lying, he’s managed to stay ahead of reality. But his grip is slipping. (See Epstein, Jeffrey.)
When he sneers, “The press is the enemy of the people,” he’s not showing strength—he’s revealing weakness. A truly strong man doesn’t need to crush dissent. That’s what weak men do.
Still, witnessing Trump taking a chainsaw to democracy, it’s understandable if you feel despondent, so it’s helpful to focus on his criminality one issue at a time to blunt feeling overwhelmed. Championing a free press is a good place to start.
“The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy,” Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote in 1971 in the landmark Pentagon Papers decision. The role of the press is “to serve the governed, not the governors.”
Trump’s posturing—from praising tyrants to bombing Iran—isn’t a sign of a judicious application of power. It’s a sign of performing a tired, old masculinity based on dominating others.
Real leadership welcomes transparency. Accountability. Listening. All traits Trump loathes, especially in the media.
Trump’s disdain for journalists isn’t just political. It’s personal. Deep down, he cannot tolerate the vulnerability that comes with being held accountable. His war on truth is a war on empathy, on nuance, on the kind of integrity that sees power not as a weapon but as a responsibility.
He calls CNN (and other outlets) “fake news,” bans reporters from the briefing room, threatens public broadcasting. This year alone, he’s trying to defund NPR and PBS, and blocked the AP’s access to the Oval Office.
That’s not strength. That’s fear. That’s not leadership. That’s a tantrum.
Trump cannot coexist with a free press because a free press exposes his Achilles heel—lying. It shined a bright light on his big beastly bill and his attacks on immigrants and women, his admiration for dictators. He’s posturing as America’s strongman, but like all strongmen, he can’t survive the truth. His ego is too brittle, his delusions too grand.
A free press printed commentaries calling him out for praising Vladimir Putin as a “genius” after the Russian despot’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. It reported denunciations of him when he stood mute in the face of China’s human rights abuses. His behavior doesn’t just betray American ideals; it celebrates his admiration for unchecked patriarchal power. The kind that silences dissent, jails critics, and persecutes the press.
What more blatant example of patriarchal power is there than unidentifiable, masked ICE raiders violently plucking mostly brown-skinned immigrants off U.S. streets?
That brutish expression of so-called manhood is what the antisexist men’s movement has been challenging for a half century.
Four decades ago, when President Reagan described the press as the “people’s window to the truth,” it’s unlikely he anticipated someone like Trump in the White House.
Today, that window of truth is being shuttered—by executive orders, by Truth Social tirades, rallies where chants of “fake news” drown out questions. This is not the behavior of a confident leader. This is the behavior of a man looking over his shoulder at a public beginning to question his leadership.
It’s time to call Trump’s war on journalism for what it is: a panic response from a man who cannot bear scrutiny. A patriarch clinging to a version of manhood that’s long past its expiration date.
But the press is not going away. And neither are the rest of us. We were in the streets on No Kings Day, and will be again on July 17, Good Trouble Lives On.
There are a lot of groups to stand with today: immigrants, Medicaid recipients, transgender citizens, climate justice activists, to name a few. Let’s also remember to stand with journalists—not just to protect democracy, but to reclaim its distorted view of manhood from men like Donald Trump. To show that real strength is found in truth-telling.
As veteran journalist Walter Cronkite said in a speech at the University of Texas in 1996: “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy.”
Rob Okun ([email protected]), syndicated by Peace Voice, is editor emeritus of Voice Male, a magazine chronicling the antisexist men’s movement for more than three decades.
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