The larger American establishment's ongoing surrender to Trump and his fascist regime is a story with many high-profile cowards, culprits, and collaborators. But given the frequently self-declared role of American media to speak truth to power, and protect our "democracy," I think it's entirely fair that corporate news outlets paving the way for Downmarket Mussolini to install a fascist dictatorship come in for extra vigorous criticism by honest observers who understand what they're doing. Take for example this recent piece for the Intercept by Natasha Leonard, examining how corporate media outlets reported the Department of Justice's outrageous plans to prosecute Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver on wholly fabricated assault charges, after she attempted to conduct legal oversight on a privately-run ICE facility in her district.

https://theintercept.com/2025/05/20/trump-prosecuting-democrat-mciver-ice-media/

Trump Is Prosecuting a Congressional Democrat for Doing Her Job. The Media’s Response: No Big Deal.

“Democratic Rep. McIver charged with assault after skirmish at ICE center, New Jersey prosecutor says,” The Associated Press reported. “Rep. LaMonica McIver charged by DOJ over incident with ICE agents,” read the ABC News headline. “The Justice Department charged a New Jersey congresswoman with assaulting federal agents during a clash outside a Newark immigration detention center,” began the New York Times’s coverage.

All of these are technically accurate: Alina Habba, Trump’s sometime personal lawyer and the interim federal prosecutor for New Jersey, announced on X that the administration was charging the member of Congress with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” after an incident when McIver and two other House members went to view ICE’s privately run Delaney Hall detention facility.

News organizations should, however, have long ago stopped affording the Trump administration such credulous coverage. Even the most bare-bones, facts-only reporting here fails the basic task of truth-telling if it doesn’t lead by pointing out that these charges are manufactured, malicious, politically motivated attacks."

I've written a bit about both the (now dropped) charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and the pending charges against Congresswoman McIver so I won't rehash all the details here again; needless to say I agree wholeheartedly with Leonard's assertion that the charges against McIver are trumped up fascist nonsense, a clear case of attempted political intimidation, and part of a seemingly racist pattern of targeting its political opponents with the Justice Department, by the Trump administration. Furthermore, given that the incident that motivated interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba to file assault charges that each carry a maximum sentence of eight years was captured entirely on video, I don't think it is at all reasonable to pretend the Trump regime might have a point, or that this is a "she said, they said" kind of issue. Yet as Leonard documents, that's exactly how subservient media reported not only the story of McIver's targeting, but also the attempted prosecution of Baraka as well.

Look folks, this isn't a question of partisan political coverage; I'm no friend of the Democratic Party, and based on the significant quantity of her writing I've read, I'd be willing to bet neither is Leonard. There is something fundamentally wrong, and actively dangerous, about a US corporate media complex that can watch a fascist, white nationalist, and openly nativist regime engage in a clear act of authoritarian political intimidation against its duly-elected political opposition, to protect a nightmare mass deportation scheme built on legal arguments you know are extremely dubious, and report it as a "clash" while accepting Alina Habba of all people's arguments at face value. This isn't bad journalism, this is paving the way for the fascist repression of Trump's political opponents in real time and whether its a result of cowardice, or open collaboration, is absolutely fucking irrelevant. The United States is speedrunning a descent into a fascist dictatorship run by a brainwormed septuagenarian racist and his openly white nationalist toady Stephen Miller, and these chucklefucks are out here pretending just maybe a Congresswoman should do a couple decades of hard time for bumping into an ICE murderpig while literally being prevented from doing her job; even though we have the entire interaction on fucking video.

If this is the kind of coverage corporate media outlets intend to provide during the second Trump administration, then Downmarket Mussolini doesn't need to suppress the media. After all, they're already happy to work for him and his fascist agenda right now, and Der Leader is rather busy tearing what passes for American democracy apart as we speak.