The Real Witch Hunt

Anyone who dares to use their First Amendment privileges to criticize Donald Trump is at risk of being burned at the proverbial stake. But not if they stand up to the guy doing the burning.

For many years, Trump’s favorite excuse, when anyone took him to task about anything, was that it was a “witch hunt.” Rape charges? Witch hunt. Instigating an insurrection? Witch hunt. Anyone calling attention to one of his multiple failures as president? Witch hunt.

That’s clearly the lens (or at least one of the lenses) that Trump looks at life through. Someone is always on the hunt. Someone is always the predator and someone is always the prey. And if you’re not the predator, then you’re the prey.

It sure seems like he uses that mindset to turn himself into the ultimate predator. His most recent witch hunt is against the media. In reality, he’s been going after the media for years, but he’s been severely ratcheting up the rhetoric lately. He’s been using the power of his office to go after anyone he disagrees with or, more specifically, anyone he perceives is saying anything that he thinks makes him look bad.

He has whined about Jimmy Kimmel in the past. He has even tried to get Disney to cancel Jimmy Kimmel more than two years ago. But only recently has he accrued enough leverage to make sure that Kimmel lost his job. He put an FCC Commissioner in place who is only too happy to advance the extreme MAGA agenda.

With the right-wing Sinclair’s affiliates poised and ready to take Kimmel’s show off their stations, Trump also leveraged the willingness of Nexstar to do the same to help ensure the pending merger between Nexstar and Tegna. Instead of standing by Kimmel’s First Amendment rights, ABC capitulated and unceremoniously yanked him from his job with no notice, solely to assuage the owners of TV stations around the country.

Less than a week later, ABC has now come to an agreement buckled and, as of this writing, Kimmel will be back on the air this evening (09.23.2025). The combination of a spontaneous boycott, a tumbling stock price, and — not coincidentally — pressure from actors’ and writers’ unions (the very people they need to create their “product”), forced ABC to make a U-turn and put Kimmel’s show back on the air.

But Kimmel’s firing or suspension did not happen in a vacuum. It is just the latest episode of a larger ongoing authoritarian project to suppress any media coverage Trump considers undesirable or unfair to him. There are any number of targets of Trump’s witch hunt:

• This is not ABC’s first time at the First Amendment rodeo. Trump managed to extort $15 million from ABC for his presidential library (purportedly) for a statement made by George Stephanopolous on “This Week,” the network’s Sunday morning newsmaker interview broadcast. The settlement agreement was reached — conveniently for Trump — shortly before sworn testimony would have to be given in court under oath, which earned Trump the TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) moniker.

• CBS — the other television network that “obeyed in advance” rather than protect their First Amendment rights — shelled out $16 million to Trump rather than follow through with available legal remedies, thereby drastically tarnishing their reputation as the “Tiffany network” and bringing into doubt the integrity of their premier newsmagazine, 60 Minutes.

• Speaking of obeying in advance, the Washington Post (or perhaps I should call it the “Amazon Post”) capitulated to Trump even before the election. They were set to endorse Kamala Harris as their choice for President but a suspicious change in a 36-year-old policy at the direction of new owner Jeff Bezos caused them to withdraw the endorsement. That move by Bezos spawned several resignations and retirements of long-time WaPo journalists who knew enough not to obey in advance. Bezos had several large contracts pending with the U.S. government that he didn’t want to put at risk if Trump were to win the election. (That slow grinding sound you may still hear is the last throes of Kathryn Graham spinning in her grave.)

• More recently, Trump filed a $15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times, the long-time target of his ire. This past week, a federal court judge threw out the filing for being “florid and enervating.” Without ruling on the merits of the case, the judge has allowed Trump and his attorneys to refile the case within 28 days and the filing must be 40 pages or less, instead of the 85 pages of “vituperation and invective” they had originally submitted.

• The Times lawsuit came on the heels of Trump’s similar lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. Despite his long-standing friendship with Rupert Murdoch (whose Fox Corporation owns the WSJ), Trump filed a multi-billion dollar law suit against the Journal for having published an investigative article about a seamy birthday letter Trump was reported to have written to Jeffrey Epstein. Trump initially denied that it had been written, but it was soon verified by the Epstein estate. Trump quickly switched his story to say implausibly that it was a forgery, despite the fact that it would have to have been written decades earlier to be bound in a volume honoring Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump failed to explain how some leftist extremist or perhaps an Antifa operative would have been prophetic enough to know more than 40 years ago that they’d need damaging evidence some 40 years later.

• Having already shown their soft underbelly to Trump, CBS was seemingly a sitting duck for Trump’s next pressure campaign, this time against Stephen Colbert, a frequent critic of Trump on his late night talk show. CBS used the excuse that the Late Show wasn’t making any money — a questionable claim, since Colbert consistently led in the ratings for his time slot and since online clips of the show regularly commanded millions of views. CBS not only ended Colbert’s contract but also removed the Late Show from its lineup.

• Using and abusing the judicial system to exact First Amendment revenge on his enemies is hardly the only method Trump uses. Just ask anyone who worked for the now defunct Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which Trump pressured Republicans in Congress to defund. Even Big Bird wasn’t immune to Trump’s wrath.

• Not long after Trump returned to office, he was determined to control access to the White House filling the room with friendly and sometimes utterly unqualified reporters and going so far as to ban the Associated Press (AP) from the White House Briefing Room.

• Though one of Trump’s favorite pastimes seems to be mocking others (especially women), he has no tolerance for others (especially women) mocking him. Just ask Kathy Griffin or Rosie O’Donnell, both of whom have suffered both personally and professionally from Trump’s juvenile fury.

In another era, any one of these attacks on the First Amendment would likely have triggered a swift punitive response from both political parties and may very well have ended a presidency. But we’re living in a different world now.

It would be naive to think that Trump’s efforts to silence his critics will stop simply because he loses a court case or two, or because the public blowback becomes too loud or costly. His well-documented history of attempting to prevent speech or press protected by the First Amendment should remind us of that.

But we can count on a couple of other things:

• As noted above, Trump Always Chickens Out. He’s been in a position for his entire life in which almost no one ever pushes back. But he’s proven over and over that, when someone does, he backs down like an overcompensating playground bully.

• More than anything, he really wants to cover up the Epstein files, and many — if not all — of his actions of late have been intended, in part or in full, to redirect media attention away from the Epstein matter.

That tells us that people in a position to challenge him should do so. It also reminds us not to let up on pressure around Epstein. There are too many unanswered — and sometimes unasked — questions, and people on both sides of the aisle want to know the answers.

No matter how much Trump attempts to redirect our attention elsewhere, whether it’s through more suppression of free speech or through some newly-concocted chaos that he creates, we should never let up. The more he tries to obfuscate and obstruct, the more it confirms he has plenty to hide.