Concerns over Trump’s attacks on individual journalists

During his first term, President Donald Trump derided mainstream outlets such as The New York Times and CNN—calling them “enemies of the people” and “fake news.” His confrontation with 54‐year‐old Cuban-American former CNN reporter Jim Acosta sparked considerable attention. Acosta’s father had fled Cuba in 1962 as a refugee to escape the Cuban Missile Crisis and the oppressive regime of Fidel Castro.

At a 2016 press conference in Havana, Acosta faced Raúl Castro—Fidel’s brother and Cuba’s top leader at the time. He lobbed pointed questions about the Castro regime’s dictatorship and human rights abuses. Later, Acosta recalled that moment as the brightest of his career, saying, “There is never a time to bow to a tyrant.”

A second‐generation immigrant, Acosta has been a vocal critic of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. In January 2018, the president disparaged Haiti and several African nations by referring to them as “shithole” countries. At a White House briefing, Acosta challenged him with, “Why did you use that term?” Trump retorted by shouting, “Get out,” prompting his aides to escort Acosta out. In November of that year, when Acosta questioned the caravan of illegal immigrants from Latin America, Trump again lashed out—calling him a “rude and despicable human being.”

After Trump’s November electoral victory last year, CNN reassigned Acosta—then hosting a 10 a.m. program—to a low-rated late-night slot. In protest of the demotion, Acosta resigned on the 28th of last month, declaring, “It is the duty of the press to hold power accountable.” His departure, however, appeared driven more by CNN’s self-conscious internal maneuvering than by direct pressure from Trump’s camp.

The concern now is that in his second term, President Trump and his aides continue to apply overt firing pressures on journalists who criticize his administration. On the 7th, Trump took to Truth Social to single out Eugene Robinson—a Black columnist for The Washington Post—insisting, “He is incompetent. He must be fired immediately,” a day after Robinson penned a column criticizing controversial appointments in Trump’s administration, including the attempted abolition of USAID and the selection of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Robinson, who won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in commentary for a column on former President Barack Obama’s initial campaign, was further denounced by Trump as a “pitiful radical left.” On the same day, Elon Musk, head of the Government Efficiency Department (DOGE), targeted Catherine Long—a white female reporter for The Wall Street Journal who had highlighted racist behavior by some DOGE employees—writing, “Disgusting and cruel. She must be fired.”

The Trump second-term administration has canceled subscription contracts with outlets such as The New York Times and Politico and is reportedly considering cutting support for public broadcaster PBS. While such actions are unacceptable, clashes between power and the press are hardly new. Yet directly singling out individual journalists—and effectively threatening their livelihoods—is an entirely different matter.

One must wonder whether politicians, whose authority is limited by time, truly grasp that attempts to muzzle the press rarely succeed and only serve to debase their own character. I want to remind President Trump of the words of Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s three great presidents: “If you must choose between a government without a newspaper and a newspaper without a government, I would choose the latter.”