'What They Do Is Illegal' - President Trump Calls Out 2 TV Networks
03/14/2025 05:16 PM
President Donald Trump has always had a contentious relationship with certain news outlets. Though after years of merely dismissing them as "fake news" or bad journalists, he's gone so far as to declare that two of them are downright "illegal."
Speaking at the U.S. Justice Department on Friday, Trump took a moment to rail against the CNN and MSNBC news outlets, accusing them of writing almost exclusively bad things about him and being "political arms of the Democratic party." While some context is missing from the clip itself, he made it very clear that he considers the two outlets to be "really corrupt and illegal."
"You can't allow yourselves to be deflected. You just can't allow it to happen. You have such a higher calling and I believe that CNN and MSDNC (an abbreviation referring to MSNBC) who literally write 97.6-percent bad about me are political arms of the Democrat party, and in my opinion they are really corrupt and they're illegal. What they do is illegal. It makes no big a difference how big a victory I had, the biggest victory in history, it makes no difference what kind of a failure the other side has..." Trump said.
Trump declares at the DOJ that he believes CNN and MSNBC are ILLEGAL pic.twitter.com/4jtPS891tY
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 14, 2025
It's a sentiment that many of Trump's supporters have shared for a very long time. The two networks have long been viewed as deliberately adversarial to Trump dating back to before he was even elected.
His opponents, on the other hand, feel that making an assertion like that is only proof that he is unfit for the office.
"Guess the first amendment means nothing now," one user remarked on X in response to the above clip.
"Democracy is illegal. Republic is illegal. Constitution is illegal. Working class, veterans, senior citizens, disabled people and students are illegal too. Did I leave out anything, Mr. President?" another mocked.
"Trump's attacks on the media are just more desperate attempts to control the narrative. Freedom of the press is not illegal."
"Whenever the GOP claims to be pro 'free speech' show them this clip and laugh in their face."
The role that media has in government has always been a deeply contentious subject. Other than granting or revoking certain press credentials though, there really isn't much that politicians can do to limit what people say about them.
Maybe Trump is just speaking that way to get it off his chest, or maybe he means to turn it into written law. We can only wait and see.
Related: President Trump's Threat To College Students Might Be 'Illegal'
