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War is when the country most needs journalism relentlessly focused on reporting the facts, without fear or favor. Without it, Americans would not have learned of My Lai, or the truth about Watergate. That is just what Hegseth fears, and what Trump's determined to prevent by coopting the press.
“The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.” — Pete Hegseth, war minister, speaking of CNN today. In public.
Orbánization of the media is having a moment because of Hegseth's performance.
Read Greg Sargent's interpretation. bsky.app/profile/greg...
I agree @gregsargent.bsky.social, but I think we’re missing something important: the Secretary of Defense is panicking, we all can see it, & it’s quite unsettling to see.
I don’t remember Rumsfeld ever showing the slightest bit of panic even when the war wasn’t going well. This guy? Full panic mode
"You can draw a direct line from Hegseth’s disdain for rules of engagement right to his contempt for the role of an adversarial press." @gregsargent.bsky.social
yeah, @jayrosen.bsky.social, check this out
Hegseth -- like the president -- just doesn't think the press should provide scrutiny. They want the propaganda Hegseth's old colleagues do at Fox. And they hope that's what Ellison seizing CNN will do to that network. They don't believe in the 1st amendment. www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump...
Not all surprising but deeply concerning.
This is how the job of reporting the news becomes increasingly perilous in countries.
You can draw a direct line from Hegseth’s disdain for military rules of engagement right to his contempt for the role of an adversarial press:
newrepublic.com/article/2077...
Hegseth wants media to be "patriotic" by elevating US successes. But coverage of school bombing has been a model of careful, nuanced reporting. He says he won't let media rush govt investigation. But we *want* media to put pressure on official probes like this one!
newrepublic.com/article/2077...
Pete Hegseth lashed out at a CNN story on the failure to adequately plan for Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz.
But I looked at the story he's criticizing. He's full of shit. He's mischaracterizing the reporting:
newrepublic.com/article/2077...
Pete Hegseth wants to live in a world in which the US military can drop bombs on scores of children and face no serious media scrutiny for it. His vile claim that he can't wait for David Ellison to run CNN shows he pines for oligarchic control of media.
New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2077...
The MAGA-coded 27-year-old Rob Rausch wearing an "ICE OUT" pin and talking this way about immigrants sure confirms the point below about young men getting turned off by ICE brutality and not being in thrall to MAGA civilizational emergency rhetoric.
(via @meredith-blake.bsky.social)
Here @davidrlurie.com outlines Trump's "long-burning desire to turn urban America into a theater of war" and "visceral desire to foment violence between city residents and police," and how that links to his Iran war.
As always the lifeblood of MAGA is sadism.
Over at @atrupar.com's place:
Savage from @mjtoma.bsky.social on WH's war-as-football-game post:
"For them, justice is exactly the advantage of the stronger; nothing more and nothing less...that’s how people can decide war has no more gravity than a football game...what a sick bunch of people."
newrepublic.com/post/207741/...
ICYMI, @gregsargent.bsky.social had a great article just out about the unpopularity of the war in Iran. The war is also, unfortunately, entirely consistent with MAGA’s "vocabulary of civilizational Armageddon" and its fragile hypermasculinity (here he cites FURIOUS MINDS). Check it out!
The Iran war and global energy markets are beyond Trump’s control. Like COVID in term 1, except this crisis is entirely of his own making.
In Minnesota too, bullying and a show of force didn’t work like he wanted, and he couldn’t BS it away.
Great to talk about this with @gregsargent.bsky.social.
About a week ago
"If they rise, they rise"
Great point from @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social: From Minneapolis to the Mideast, Trump keeps discovering that he can't bully and bullshit his way through. Failure to grasp real-world complexities keeps blowing up in his face.
On the pod, Nick is so illuminating:
newrepublic.com/article/2077...
[nods]
Four more Americans just died due to Trump's war
masculine coded violence as a spiritual project of national rebirth
where have we heard that before?
Seeing war as am antidote to alleged civilisational decline and a recipe for civilisational renewal is a thoroughly fascist worldview
I generally agree, but I also think it's significant that some of those voices are turning on ICE raids. It shows they're not buying the hallucinatory western civilizational emergency rhetoric about immigrants and I think that's good
Maybe the way to put this is there's kind of a through line from the Rogan-bros alienated by ICE violence to the large percentages of young people who oppose Iran war. Vast majority of youth are not on board with MAGA delusions about civilizational total war from Minneapolis to the Mideast
we're seeing *most young people* getting pushed the other way, I mean
totally, I'm not really talking about rifts in MAGA, I just mean that the *overall* pool of reactionary youth is actually pretty small, and we're seeing Trump's failures push huge amounts of young people the other way
Oh yeah, I get this. I just meant that the overall pool of reactionary youth, the ones that continue to get more radicalized even as Trump reigns, is extremely marginal, and we're seeing most of them getting pushed the other way...I think what I reported on there is good news
In short, I think what we're seeing from young people right now is somewhat encouraging. Look at these numbers!
I talked to youth pollster John Della Volpe. His interviews w/young men find something different from what @michellegoldberg.bsky.social reports. The combo of Trump's economic failure/Iran war has alienated precisely those who expected MAGA to provide stability. 2/2
newrepublic.com/article/2076...
