How Trump turned American media into a safe space for MAGA
Since returning to The White House, Donald Trump has demanded total loyalty from US news outlets – and threatened those who don’t fall in line with serious retributions. His plan has worked, and now puts America’s First Amendment under threat.
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What’s the story?
America’s media is now a safe space for MAGA, under Donald Trump, and his billionaire buddies.
The president’s control over the media, and how his rule in America is being reported to the US population, has anti-Trump journalists and broadcasters terrified for their future, and the future of the industry.
Mehdi Hasan, owner of left-wing news outlet Zeteo, tells The News Agents Trump has taken this control by permitting his billionaire friends and supporters to buy up the news networks, and report positively on his actions, while the rest of the world looks on in horror.
What Trump has done, Hasan says, is the same as far-right rulers in Hungary, Turkey and India.
“That is the playbook in the US,” he tells Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel.
“You have David Ellison buying CBS, he's about to buy CNN, Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. You have a bunch of right-wing billionaires controlling much of the mainstream media that people have relied on for years.
“That is a very scary prospect when you have a president who makes it very clear that he expects loyalty, he expects people to fall into line.”
Not only is this a “very dark moment” for America’s free press, Hasan adds, it’s a threat to the First Amendment.
“This is the kind of thing you hear about in a tin-pot dictatorship,” he says.
“There is a lot of retribution going on here, a lot of targeting of the press that we see in authoritarian countries.
“It's a very worrying time for the media. Instead of the bosses of these companies standing up for journalistic principles and their staff, you have these billionaire owners either rolling over for Trump, like Bezos, or enthusiastically backing him, like Ellison.”
The ‘shocking’ decline of CBS under Bari Weiss
The most evident example of this was the appointment of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief at CBS – a role he says simply does not translate from written journalism, to television.
Hasan describes her politics as "centre-right, anti-woke, anti-DEI, very pro-Israel."
Since she was appointed in October 2025, the network (one of the biggest legacy media outlets in America) has been dogged with sackings, resignations, plummeting ratings and widespread criticism for decisions made by its new boss.
Former CBS White House correspondent and 60 Minutes anchor was recently fired from the channel, and has since claimed that Weiss demanded that reporting of the ICE killings in Minneapolis earlier this year was framed to present protesting civilians as acting "aggressively" towards Trump's law enforcers.
“She's completely out of her depth for TV. She's just messed it all up,” Hasan says.
“CBS couldn't get their correspondent into China with Trump the other day because they didn't get the visa in time. That's basic stuff, because she fired the person who used to run that bureau.
“The whole thing is chaos, separate from the politics of it. The firings, then hiring people back, the internal politics, the griping, the inability to run an evening news channel that has any ratings.”
There has been speculation that Weiss's shocking management of CBS and its rapid decline could result in her losing her job. But strong viewing figures, Hasan argues, was never the reason for her appointment.
“She's not there to make CBS win in the ratings,” Hasan adds.
“She's there to make CBS a safe place for Trump and MAGA, and that is the ideological project. So, it doesn't matter if it loses money.”
The Washington Post, he adds, has also seen a huge decline in online viewers and readers, but believes that doesn't matter so long as Jeff Bezos can share its positive Trump coverage with the president himself.
Who’s next on Trump’s hit-list?
Since returning to The White House in January 2025, Trump has waged a legal war against broadcasters and news providers he feels has portrayed him poorly.
Journalists in the US have been arrested, their homes raided, respected outlets have been replaced in the White House briefing room with YouTubers and far-right conspiracy theorists, national broadcasters threatened with defunding, and he has launched lawsuits against several outlets, including the BBC in the UK.
Hasan believes Zeteo could be next on the list.
“It's not paranoia when the president is saying that this is what they want to do, when the FBI director says they have an enemies list, when they're arresting journalists like Don Lemon,” he says.
“This is all about chilling any kind of dissent. They haven't come after me, touch wood, they've got a lot of other bigger fish to fry.”