Donald Trump claimed: “Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections. Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election.” In fact, he has no power to pardon Tina Peters, since she was convicted under state law. His claim is an illegal usurpation of power.
The news media have a long tradition of yielding to sitting presidents, and they’re doing it again.
New York Times: “President Trump said on Thursday that he would pardon Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who was convicted of tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election. But the pardon would be symbolic, because Ms. Peters was convicted of a state crime that falls outside the president’s traditional clemency powers.” He said nothing about his action being “symbolic.” The correct description is “null and void.”
The Hill: “President Trump on Thursday pardoned former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted of election interference in state court in August 2024.” Only at the very end of the article does it quote Colorado’s Attorney General as saying, “He doesn’t have authority to undermine how we operate our judicial system here in Colorado.” Using a quote from an interested party carries the suggestion that it’s an open question whether Trump has that authority.
The US government’s murderous attacks on unarmed boat crews has gotten similar treatment. AP says, “Adm. Frank ‘Mitch’ Bradley appeared for a series of closed-door classified briefings at the Capitol as lawmakers conduct an investigation after a report that he ordered the follow-on attack that killed the survivors to comply with Hegesth’s demands. Legal experts have said such a strike could be a violation of the laws of military warfare.” What that doesn’t say is that no “military warfare” was involved; killing unarmed people who aren’t involved in any military action is not military warfare but a massacre. Similarly, US News has said that “Democrats have questioned whether the campaign is illegal,” implying it’s an open question.
There has been outright censorship, including the government’s pressuring Apple and Google to take down legitimate applications to track ICE activity. They gave in without a public fight.
This kind of deference isn’t new, just more blatant than usual. News outlets want favored access to top government officials, and all kinds of businesses want to avoid unfavorable regulatory treatment, so they try not to annoy the president. Paramount/CBS let Trump extort millions of dollar from them and then fired Steven Colbert to placate him.
It’s going to continue. Corporations that run news services consider it a business decision to rein in their coverage. It’s hard to measure, but coverage of ICE’s brutal actions also seems to get the back-burner treatment. If Trump can control how the news is reported, his party could gain an advantage in future elections.
To get reliable news, it’s increasingly important to go beyond the big news outlets. The only catch is that the sources that are most resistant are often the ones that have a strong viewpoint, and they range from reliable but possibly biased to utter nonsense. You have to find the best ones and follow several different ones. I highly recommend using a news feed reader to track them. If you aren’t familiar with feed readers, here’s an introductory article. There are many options for readers; you can install an application or use an aggregator website.
Most sites don’t mention that they have feeds. The URL for the feed is buried in the HTML source. Fortunately, if you give a site’s home URL, it will search the page for links to an RSS or Atom (they’re the same as far as the normal user is concerned) feed. If you don’t like a feed, you can remove it.
Finding out what’s really happening in the face of Trump’s intimidation campaigns takes work. Fortunately, we’re still far from a state that can actually suppress the publication of facts. If enough people stay informed, maybe we won’t land there.