Pentagon Announces New Right-Wing Press Corps
Trump Admin Announces New, Bootleg, Right-Wing Pentagon Press Corps After Mainstream Media Rejects It
Last month, the Defense Department reinforced the widespread belief that the Trump administration is a paranoid, free-speech-defying, authoritarian regime by unveiling a new policy that reporters cannot obtain or solicit any information unless it is pre-approved by the DoD itself, and that all news outlets are required to sign an agreement to adhere to the new policy by the now-past deadline of October 14. Virtually every mainstream media outlet based in the U.S., including Trump-humping networks like Newsmax and Fox News, responded to the department and its leader, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, with a resounding hell no.
So, now that every media outlet most Americans get their news from has refused to play this administration’s game—which is nothing more than another propaganda-reliant attack on the free press—the Pentagon has put together a whole new press corps, and it’s packed with bootleg, Bargain Basement, Dollar General, Party City, Great Value-brand right-wing “news” sources that no one even knows about unless they get all of their news from white supremacist podcast bros who claim to be all about “facts over feelings” but get really upset when lying right-wing troglodytes get fact-checked.
According to the Washington Post, which obtained a draft of the announcement made by Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, the outlets that agreed to the Defense Department’s terms, earning their way into the no-news-but-MAGA-fied-fake-news echo chamber, include The Gateway Pundit, the Post Millennial, Human Events, the National Pulse, Turning Point USA’s media brand, Frontlines, influencer Tim Pool’s Timcast, a Substack-based newsletter called Washington Reporter, and Lindell TV, started by Trump ally Mike Lindell, the idiot MyPillow CEO who, in June, was found liable in a defamation lawsuit accusing him of spreading President Donald Trump’s 2020 election fraud lies. According to The Guardian, the Gateway Pundit also recently settled a defamation suit after promoting Trump’s “big lie.”
Seriously, though. Apparently, Newsmax and Fox News refused to play ball, so the Pentagon scoured the bowels of the internet to find the Temu and Wish versions of Newsmax and Fox News.
The Guardian reported that spokesperson Kingsley Wilson justified the new MAGA bootlicking press corps by making the absurd claim that journalists who refused to agree to new rules were “self-righteous media who chose to self-deport.”
Bro—you are talking about EVERY MAJOR ACCREDITED MEDIA OUTLET IN THE COUNTRY!!!
These people are really trying to convince us that all of these news sources, many of which have existed in the world of journalism for well over a century, are all telling the same lie about the “perfectly innocent” media policy that is like nothing any other federal administration in modern history has implemented.
And they’re not even willing to be honest about which parts of the new policy these outlets collectively have a problem with.
“They walked out because they refused to sign an agreement that was simple. It was common sense. It said, wear a visible press badge. Don’t go in classified spaces, stay in the correspondence corridor and follow the building’s rules,” Wilson said.
Yeah, nobody refused to sign that policy agreement because they had to wear press badges and stay in the Pentagon’s press area. They refused to sign an agreement to only report news that has been pre-approved by the government. This isn’t complicated.
Y’all, we are dealing with a cowardly administration that is paranoid about being exposed and held accountable. Filling the Pentagon press corps with third-rate broadcasters who wouldn’t know journalism if it came draped in a Confederate flag and holding a tiki-torch is not just embarrassing, it’s a b*tch move. This administration would rather lower itself by blatantly allowing access only to the yellowest of yellow journalists rather than consider—even for a second—that if every single established mainstream media outlet, including the MAGA-friendly conservative ones, is telling it that its policy is wrong and unethical, there might be something to that.
Sad.
SEE ALSO:
Media Rejects Pentagon’s Restrictive New Press Policy
