On The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses how Trump’s attacks on reporters “create a culture of self-censorship” in the media
Carusone: “This guy is an autocrat consolidating control. And the vehicle for doing that is to have control over the media”
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From the March 16, 2026, edition of MS NOW's The Weeknight
SYMONE SANDERS (CO-HOST): So he's claiming that the journalist here in America and western journalists -- really, that includes, I guess, the French media as well, every western democracy -- are "parroting," I'm using air quotes, Iranian propaganda. But what he really is trying to say is, no, I just want you to just repeat what I said. It's a bunch of BS.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, he wants the rest of the news media to act like everybody else on Fox News is acting, right? To backfill his lies for him, something we've talked about many times. And I think to your point, right, I mean, Pete Hegseth sort of demonstrated that when he went so far as to tell reporters how they should be covering the war, what their chyrons should be on the screen, what their headlines should be. I mean, he basically functioned like an assignment editor, really demonstrating to Trump, you know, that he's the guy to really be leading this. Because this is an information war as much as it's an actual war in Trump's mind.
But there's a larger thing here that we shouldn't lose sight of. I don't even think -- he wants to win the battle for propaganda and the narrative over this war, but he also wants something bigger, and we shouldn't lose sight of it. And that is that he wants control of the entire news media, because there's something much bigger here to him than issues of war and peace. He wants to steal the next election or beyond. This guy is an autocrat consolidating control. And the vehicle for doing that is to have control over the media. And so these sort of broadsides that he's doing is to create a culture of self-censorship. He's not losing sight of that. That's why he's having his administrative agencies go in there and sort of put extra weight to those threats.