This reporting presents it as a debate with reasoning on both sides, rather than a brazen act with no defence supplied. It's not good journalism to legitimise a position that didn't even attempt to legitimise itself.
Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, summarises its mechanisms and intent quite succinctly: “This is the path that Viktor Orbán took in Hungary, where you use the power of the state to ensure that the media is compliant, that outlets are either curbed and become much less willing to be critical, or they are sold to owners who will make that happen."
- Do something wildly unacceptable
- Media writes an article declaring the action is indefensible
- Those involved complain publicly about the unfair nature of the story; their supporters back them up
- Next time to avoid controversy media writes a slightly more fair story
It doesn’t even require state power because technically in the US they cannot. There is clearly threat of power kicking journalists out of the pentagon is a clear example. But it’s much more about creating a permission structure through public airing of grievances.
Counter to what? Most news sources are owned by people who support this administration’s positions, and are glad they don’t have to do this whole charade of pretending to care about the truth or normal people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/us/politics/trump-fake-vi...
What should I expect from the same administration that also altered the (tiny fraction of) Epstein files before releasing them.
Why don't more people feel insulted when lied to?
Please don’t misread: I am genuinely curious how I one may have read this another way and how that could have been helped with rewording.
1. "Defends" suggests some level of explanation and justification; the White House did not present any here.
2. "AI image showing arrested woman" could mean a fully-generated image of a woman, rather than editing an image of an existing person under law enforcement control to disguise the actual facts. The first one would be bizarre, the second one is much more problematic.
The image is AI, whether AI added a tiny cloud in the upper corner, or completely fabricated it from a prompt.
Your example shows two things that are obviously different from a moral standpoint. The first would not be news and the second would.
Independent of your views on immigration, or law and order, or anything. Juvenile shit like this does absolutely nothing to advance any policy goals.
Even worse, why should you average normie trust any image that comes out from the White House? If there's a serious national security issue, why are we going to trust a group of people who are willing to doctor a photo for such stupid ends?
Their voters wanted exactly that tho. Although they did not wanted harm for themselves, conservatives and republicans actively wanted this kind of "owning the libs" and insulting "the libs".
This part is literally what the vote was about.
This is precisely the thing they voted for.
> I'm sure some people were motivated by animosity, racism, misogyny.
A lot of them were, in fact. But that was not my claim. Above all, they wanted to see this kind of behavior. That is what was Trumps main attraction the whole time.
> Our oversea imperialism does not benefit average Americans.
Trump is pure imperialist. His international politics is literally imperialism.
> We need to "drain the swamp".
Trump is the swamp and made corruption much much worst.
> Our trade policies are hurting average Americans.
Trumps and republican politics in general hurts average Americans even more. And it was the plan the whole time, Project 2025 is all about hurting average Americans.
"The government... the American government - they're sneaky, they're very deceitful, they're liars, they're cheats, they're rip-offs. I mean, the American government is one-- is one systematic government that... that nobody can trust. I don't trust them myself"
Trump did not have enough pay the money from his rape case. Now a year later through bribes and making Americans poorer with tariffs he personally has earned over a billion dollars. Greenland conquering gave him a couple extra weeks to break the law and only release the 1 percent of photos from the Epstein files that had Clinton in them.
That's some post-constitutional anti-democracy bullsh*t right there that should have zero tolerance because that means everything else is likely a lie.
It's like a virus since he came down the golden escalator, first every single thing he said was a lie or wild exaggeration, and then he recruited exclusively only people around him to do the same.
There's good reason the highest power positions in the government are HIS PERSONAL LAWYERS with legal obligation first to him beyond anything else.