July 24, 2026 – After years of the mainstream media lying to the American public, they blame Trump for their demise

In Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations, Featured Timeline Entries by Katie Weddington

Here was how Chris Hayes opened the 8pm Eastern hour of MS NOW’s coverage of the #WHCD.

Chris, show me on the doll where Trump hurt you…

“Donald Trump famously has been hostile to the free press, almost implacably so. He believes it to be the enemy of the people and literally says as much almost every chance he gets. He thinks critical, accurate coverage of his presidency is tantamount to treason. He’s bullied and harassed reporters individually and gone after them in a million different ways. The last time he went to one of these things, he got roasted so bad it forever altered the political trajectory of our entire country.”

“There’s a significant amount of reporting to indicate that our very thin-skinned President was so humiliated that very night that he decided to run for president in 2016. And, well, we’ve been forced to live with the consequences of Trump’s vanity and thin skin for the past decade, day in, day out, night in, night out. Tonight, 15 years later, he will be back. He appears to be there on the dais, ready to show his face at the Correspondents Dinner once again. Of course, why are we doing this in the middle of the summer, which we don’t usually? He wanted to do so back in April. That event, as you might remember, was cut short when Trump was rushed off stage. Journalists took cover under tables, and shots were fired after a man identified by law enforcement as 31-year-old Cole Allen. You see him there sprinting through that security checkpoint, tried to storm the event, which is being held at the Washington Hilton, with a gun and other weapons. Prosecutors say the suspect fired a shotgun and struck a Secret Service agent’s protective vest. Thankfully, no one suffered any serious injuries. Allen has pleaded not guilty to federal charges, including attempting to assassinate the president. He faces life in prison should he be found guilty. But the president and the White House Correspondents Association decided the show must go on, that they weren’t going to be cowed by this awful act of attempted violence. The dinner rescheduled for tonight, and it is underway. As you can see as we speak now, we expect some really fantastic reporting to be acknowledged against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s war on the free press and against the backdrop of the man himself, sitting there and glowering at everyone. Just yesterday, his Department of Justice was excoriated by a federal district court judge who successfully, basically pushed them to quash their ill-conceived and harassing, I might say, subpoenas against journalists from The New York Times. The administration was trying to intimidate the paper for covering that private jet he was gifted by Qatar. One of those times reporters who was subpoenaed, Tyler page [sic] will be accepting an award tonight in recognition of courageous reporting by him and his colleagues. Trump, as you won’t be surprised, for his part, remains unrepentant.”

“I mean, that was just today, just a few hours ago. There he is at the White House Correspondents situation up on the dais. It’s gonna be a weird room tonight, I think it’s fair to say. And of course, I mean, the intimidation campaign doesn’t end there, right? This has been one of the most consistent themes of Trump’s whole political life, but particularly second term. I mean, attempting to coerce the press, threatening the First Amendment, acting like an authoritarian at every turn. His FCC is currently trying to shake down broadcast networks for refusing to air his low-energy White House address about fake voter fraud allegations last week. That might be top of mind for networks when deciding whether or not to take the President’s remarks tonight. He’s also suing the BBC for 10 billion — with a B dollars — over a documentary on his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election that he claims was deceptively edited. That might be headed to discovery soon, which will be pretty interesting. And that’s in addition to the lawsuits he’s settled with other networks like ABC and CBS, the latter of which is now run by his buddies, the Ellison family, who are big Trump supporters and donors. Trump’s DOJ is also trying to clear the way for them to buy CNN. He’s been almost explicit about the fact that he wants CNN under the aegis of his friends and supporters, so he can control the reporting there, although that today is facing some legal hurdles. We got an announcement that that’s going to stop moving forward for now. Tonight, I think it’s important to acknowledge the real courage of many, many journalists just to sort of line reporters and editors and producers in the face of Trump’s intimidation campaign, like those Times journalists who were harassed and subpoenaed, and The Times management that went onto war footing immediately to push back vigorously in the courts. And also all those folks at CBS, we’ve seen a bunch of high profile producers and reporters quit in protest, follow their conscience after they said that the new Trump friendly leadership again sort of installed after Trump allies took over the network with the regulatory blessing of the Trump administration, that that leadership of the network was stifling their editorial freedom, in some cases directing them to report things that weren’t true. And also, we should give some kudos to reporters at the well, the conservative Murdoch-owned Wall Street journal, a great newspaper, I gotta say, even if I don’t really like its editorial page, because they beat back a defamation lawsuit after they reported on a big scoop. Remember that? That thing there, you’re never going to get that out of your mind the rest of your life. As long as you live that insanely unnerving and creepy birthday card that Trump apparently sent to his old pal Jeffrey Epstein, making jokes about secrets and about how some things never age. Trump denies it was him. He sued over it. You can judge the signature for yourself. In fact, get this those Wall Street Journals who broke that story, stuck to that story, stared down the lawsuit? They’re going to be honored at tonight’s ceremony. In that very room. They’re all there together. We may dip in to listen to their stories. The larger context here is what the evening is about, as far as I can tell. As you can see there, this is sort of a perfect tableau of my next line. Trump seems to both love, attention and hate the press, right? There it is.”

“He enjoys public scrutiny from journalists about as much as he enjoyed being roasted by Obama back in 2011. He wants people to pay attention, but he wants to dominate and control the fourth estate, so it only reports on him positively and turns a blind eye to his flagrant, increasingly impossible to ignore historic corruption, his disregard for democracy, his flirtations with violence and the politics of violence. Now, he has seen, I think it’s fair to say, some real success at eroding, and cowing the press at the level of ownership. This is important. He has gotten corporate suits to kowtow to his demands, but what he cannot do and what he is unable to do, and what drives him crazy, and what you’re going to see tonight in that room, is that he cannot quash the regular reporters and journalists who refuse to be intimidated. And these are not like people with, you know, household names or a lot of money, a lot of cases. These are — these are just everyday folks, reporters, editors whose names you don’t know in newsrooms, big and small, lots of incredible local reporting we’ve seen through this age who’ve been working tirelessly to report on this administration accurately and fairly, despite the threats. That’s who is in the room tonight, along with Donald Trump sitting there on the dais.