President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, July 25, 2025.

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Donald Trump is aggressively escalating his pressure campaign on media he doesn’t approve of.

When The Wall Street Journal — whose parent company is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire and powerful Trump ally — published a news story about Trump’s ties to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein last week, the president openly admitted that he had tried to get the story killed.

“I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story,” Trump posted on Truth Social, the social media app he owns. “But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”

“Mr. Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but, obviously, did not have the power to do so,” Trump wrote in another post.

The story in question reported that Trump had apparently sent a crude letter to Epstein on his 50th birthday in which he alluded to things the two men had in common and included the phrase, “may every day be another wonderful secret.” When the paper didn’t kill the story as Trump had asked, the president filed a libel lawsuit claiming that the story would cause him “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” and demanding $10 billion in compensation.

Not even Murdoch, whose media empire (which includes Fox News) has been of great political benefit to Trump, is safe. He, along with the Journal and the reporters who worked on the story, were named in the suit.

It’s no secret that the president is notoriously thin-skinned and can’t handle even mild criticism, nor does he hide that he’s particularly litigation-happy — Trump has long filedlawsuits, including spurious ones, against negative media coverage. But this time is different.

“It’s unprecedented to have a sitting president file a lawsuit against a newsroom,” said Tim Richardson, the journalism and disinformation program manager at PEN America, an organisation that advocates for free speech rights.

If Trump can control the media, he will be free to enact whichever policies he wants — without anyone to hold him accountable for the harm they may do. It’s all a part of his effort to control what Americans can say, think, or engage with.

The Trump........

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