He wished he could do in the US what Putin has done in Russia: Hound journalists with assassination attempts, threats to their lives, use poison in assassination attempts, etc... As we speak there is no opposition to Putin. That is a dream for Donald Dumb: to extinguish opposition. Which he is doing by constant harassment, threats, verbal abuse and lawsuits.
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A Full List Of The Trump Administration’s Efforts To Intimidate, Silence Or Otherwise Harass Journalists
Lydia O'Connor
Sat, April 25, 2026
Donald Trump will attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as president for the first time on Saturday.
It’s not completely clear why Trump chose now to end his boycott of the annual event dedicated to celebrating the importance of the free press he so regularly scorns. Maybe he’s hoping to intimidate journalists in the room, but they’ve gotten used to that. Here’s a list of some of the current Trump administration’s most notable attempts to browbeat the press.
The ‘Your Mom’ Incident
In October, when HuffPost White House Correspondent S.V. Dáte reached out to administration spokespeople with an innocuous question about who chose Budapest as the site for a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to answer. Instead, she replied with a bizarre schoolyard joke.
“Your mom did,” she retorted.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung had more to add shortly after: “Your mom,” he repeated.
Leavitt fired off a round of insults when Dáte asked if she thought the “your mom” quip was funny.
“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal [sic],” she wrote back. “You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and ******** questions.”
President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters in October. via Associated Press
A Whole Bunch Of Lawsuits
The Trump administration has filed numerous lawsuits against media outlets over reporting the president deems unflattering, often seeking massive damages in the millions and even billions.
Some of the biggest sums he demanded came in lawsuits against The Wall Street Journal ($10 billion) and The New York Times ($15 billion). The courts tossed out both of those cases, with the judge in the Times case accusing Trump of using lawsuits as “a megaphone for public relations.” A $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the BBC is set to go to trial next year.
Trump also has active lawsuits against CNN, the Des Moines Register and the Pulitzer Board for awarding prizes to coverage of Trump’s Russia scandal. And earlier this week, Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel sued The Atlantic for reporting on allegations he was behaving erratically and abusing alcohol, demanding $250 million.
Trump has successfully gotten some media operations to settle with him, nabbing $15 million from ABC shortly before he started his second term and $16 million from Paramount last summer.
Trump speaks to the press aboard Air Force One in April. JIM WATSON via Getty Images
Outrageous Searches, Investigations And Arrests
Lawsuits aren’t the administration’s only intimidation tactics.
Last year, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into watchdog outlet Media Matters for America in connection with its court battle with then-Trump ally Elon Musk, who’d accused the group of orchestrating advertiser boycotts of X.
Media Matters said last summer that it had racked up $15 million in legal fees to defend itself against the FTC probe, Musk’s lawsuit and another investigation by Republican state attorneys general, forcing it to slash staff, scale back its criticism of Musk and the FTC, and contemplate shutting down entirely.
Then, in January, federal agents arrested independent journalist and former CNN host Don Lemon over his coverage in a Minnesota church of a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lemon was charged with conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of the church’s congregants. Agents also arrested independent journalist Georgia Fort.
That same month, the FBI raided the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, seizing both her personal and work laptops, her phone and her watch. A month prior, she’d co-bylined a deep dive on how Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and the White House “broke the federal government.” The raid came after then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rolled back a policy banning the use of search warrants and subpoenas to seize reporting materials.
Trump speaks to a crowd of reporters in April. Anadolu via Getty Images
Outright Blocking Of Press Access
The month after Trump started his second term, Leavitt rolled out a new policy for press coverage access, ending a decades-long system in which the White House Correspondents’ Association determined the rotation of reporters who fill spots dedicated for radio, television, print and wire service reporters each day.
Instead, she said, the White House would take control so that it could ensure newer outlets had access, but it quickly became clear the White House could potentially use its newfound control over press scheduling to retaliate against outlets.
Hours after the announcement, the White House kicked Dáte and a Reuters reporter out of their spots in the pool the next day. Axios ― an outlet focused on brief, straightforward coverage ― and two right-wing outlets ― The Blaze and Newsmax ― were given spots that day instead.
The timing was suspicious. Weeks earlier, Dáte had sparred with Trump aboard Air Force One.
HuffPost’s removal from the rotation came on the heels of Trump’s spat with The Associated Press over its decision to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico by its long-standing name instead of using Trump’s new moniker: “the Gulf of America.”
The move outraged Trump, prompting the White House to bar the AP from several coverage events. So the AP sued, setting off a back-and-forth legal battle.
Later in 2025, Trump’s Defense Department announced that if reporters wanted to keep press access to the Pentagon, they must agree to a series of demands, including an agreement not to obtain any information not expressly allowed by the Defense Department. HuffPost, along with several other news outlets, refused to comply, and a judge overturned the policy last month.
Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in 2011. Bloomberg via Getty Images
Relentless Personal Attacks On Female Journalists
Trump’s disdain for reporters is well-known, but his vitriol toward female journalists, in particular, has been extreme during his second term.
The president’s hostility toward women in the press room began ramping up last fall when he started making highly personal attacks on them when they asked him questions. Perhaps most infamously, in November, he scolded Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, a veteran White House correspondent, with a jaw-dropping “Quiet, piggy!” and finger wag when she pressed him about Jeffrey Epstein.
Later that month, he slammed the female author of a New York Times story about him as “ugly” and a “third rate reporter,” saying absolutely nothing about the man who co-wrote the story.
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