Ideas

Trump’s Campaign to Crush the Media

The president has launched a frontal assault on the journalism business. So far, he’s winning.

First published in The Atlantic on July 21, 2025

by Paul Farhi, The Atlantic

July 24, 2025 | reading time: 8 Min.

President Donald Trump’s latest assault on the news media came in the form of another lawsuit last week. After The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had allegedly written a birthday note, complete with “bawdy” doodling, to the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, Trump boiled over with indignation. He denied writing the note and filed a libel suit the next day, demanding $10 billion in damages from the Journal, its parent company, and its principal owner, Rupert Murdoch, a sometime Trump ally.