After Donald Trump announced that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico would no longer be allowed to cover anything at the White House, because they report facts Trump doesn’t like, something truly surprising happened. Other media outlets announced that, in solidarity, they would no longer participate in the White House press pool. With CNN excluded from the White House TV pool, the other four participating pool networks — CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, and even Fucking Fox News — announced they would no longer provide live video of White House events.
Everybody Out Of The Pool
The effect was immediate, because without the pool cameras and microphones, the rest of the media had no source for live audio, as Newsmax hilariously acknowledged Monday while covering Trump’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for his beautiful new helipad, the best helipad ever built. Trump was talking, but couldn’t be heard.
In fact, not even the White House YouTube channel was prepared for losing the network cameras and audio, so its video also missed whatever Dear Leader said. We know a lot of you don’t watch videos of Trump because you can’t stand that man’s voice, but go ahead and click this: all you’ll hear is Marine One’s engines idling loudly in the background. (Video cued to the ribbon-cutting moment.)
Also hilarious: The AI-generated transcript of the nearly 10-minute video looks like this.
This is absolutely the best way to watch Trump. Maybe something similar can be arranged for all his TV appearances. How about some of you computer geniuses create an app that dubs in Marine One noise over anything Trump says in a video?
Not State TV, Just Stale TV
Not to worry, though! The White House announced Monday the creation of an all-new alternative to the Fake News: something it called “Trump TV,” which would be so exciting that everyone in the nation would surely watch. To make the point, the White House rushed out a teaser trailer featuring clips — apparently used without permission of the copyright holders — showing various TV and movie characters rushing to watch!
Holy crap, was this going to be the fulfilment of Roger Ailes’s dream, back during the Nixon administration, of a state TV news channel controlled by the White House, a 24/7 source of friendly propaganda like you’d see in North Korea? California Gov. Gavin Newsom warned that it sounded like “truly autocratic behavior” and fretted it would be “quite literally state-run TV. ” But he said that before the new YouTube channel, “Trump TV Essentials,” actually came online Monday evening.
Newsom forgot, as did others who worried this would be a live feed of pro-Trump reports and talking points about the day’s news, that everyone in the Trump administration is a fucking lazy grifter with the work ethic of a failed Delta House pledge.
Instead of pro-Trump news programming, the new YouTube channel, apparently thrown together in hours, is nothing more than an automated stream of old content — Trump speeches, press events, signing ceremonies and appearances with foreign leaders — that’s already been posted to the White House YouTube channel. No anchors, no schedule, no ability to search or “rewind,” and not even the option to turn on automated closed captioning, we guess because deaf people are DEI.
Apart from the robo-filled titles of the YouTube clips — “President Trump Participates in a Rose Garden Club Dinner with American Farmers” or “President Trump Participates in a Trilateral Signing Event” — the stream doesn’t offer even a hint of context about when the video was originally taken or what it’s about. You might happen upon a ten-minute presser with the Japanese prime minister, or one of Trump’s two-hour rambles at some White House event from months ago, whatever its news value was at the time.
“Trump TV” doesn’t even carry new Trump events live. While Trump spoke at the United Nations Tuesday morning, “Trump TV Essentials” was showing Trump’s speech to the 2026 white House prayer breakfast back in February. The UN speech eventually showed up — hours after it happened — so at least the feed is set up to replay newish uploads, but you have no idea what will be on at any given moment.
It’s a complete failure, even as propaganda. Like a Trump speech, there’s not a pretense of coherence. So far, the White House YouTube channel hasn’t even added a permalink to the new mess. (If you click “videos” you can find the trailer we embedded above, but not the actual “TrumpTV Essentials” stream.)
Predictably and hilariously, Trumphumpers on social media proclaimed Trump TV an instant success, an unedited, direct-to-voters alternative to the fake news so you won’t even have to watch Fox anymore! Skip the MSM filters and lies, and bring down the media oligarchs! Or see a July speech by JD Vance that nobody watched at the time. To really get the full experience, the influencers tell followers to download the spyware-filled White House app, too.
It’s certainly possible that “Trump TV” might become a full-time propaganda outlet, but its viewership quickly fell right after it went live, from around 8,000 viewers at launch (a July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore) to fewer than 4,000 viewers after just 90 minutes. As we wrapped this story up Tuesday afternoon, only about 1,250 people were watching Trump’s August announcement of how healthcare is affordable for everyone, although affordability is a hoax.
Trump Needed To Be On TV, So He Visited Zohran Mamdani
By Monday afternoon, Trump had to decamp to New York City to get his face on camera in advance of his UN appearance, and even then he needed to rely on a joint presser with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who people actually like seeing on TV. He bragged that he had beaten the boycott that he had himself provoked, because he’s just too smart for the liberal media. “They said they’re going to boycott me, but they never boycott me, so I wasn’t very worried about that, he bloviated as he visibly shrank in size. “Look at all that press,” he squeaked. The New York Times (gift link) pointed out that CNN didn’t have a crew at the joint appearance, relying instead on a local feed from Spectrum 1.
Mamdani was all too happy to tell reporters that unlike some people, his administration welcomes coverage from all members of the media.
Trump just wants to be on TV, and if he has to get there by riding the coattails of s genuinely popular mayor, he doesn’t mind.
The whole affair made Trumpy lunatic Laura Loomer very very sad and frustrated, the poor dear. In a dozen or so posts on at the Bad Social Media Network, Loomer frothed about communists and jihadists sapping Trump’s precious bodily fluids or something, and how Trump had totally betrayed loyal fluffers like her. She said she’s still going for Republicans, to save America from communism, but pouted that “We should be working to remove the communists, not breaking bread with them.” And she just kept going.
Loomer also threw up her hands at one point and wailed that all was probably lost, but that Americans would just have to learn the hard way why they should have stopped Islam and communism before the two (diametrically opposed) ideologies take over. You’ll see! You’ll see! If only from President Mamdani’s prison camps!
Well of course Mamdani might become president after Democrats have their way with America. After all, she noted, Barack HUSSEIN Obama had already become president, so don’t think Mamdani, another “Muslim from Africa,” can’t take the office.
As things stand now, of course CNN, Politico and MS NOW have filed a whopping lawsuit against Trump’s press ban. In a beclowned response last night, Trump’s yapping pomeranian at the Department of Justice filed a response, explaining that they needed to ban those outlets because NATIONAL SECURITY! just like his ballroom and his arch, because everything with fascists and tyrants is NATIONAL SECURITY!
Also Trump had a tantrum at the United Nations in response to the presence of CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that you simply must watch:
“You should not be here!” he whined. “You should not be here covering me.”
“You said you weren’t going to cover me, you shouldn’t be covering me.”
Collins calmly explained that they were credentialed by the UN, and continued to ask her question about how the American people think Trump is losing his Iran war. Sbe noted in the report additionally that CNN never said they weren’t going to cover him.
That is of course now evidence in the lawsuit the news orgs filed.
Trump also had a late-night tantrum at Collins on Truth Social, who he says has a “TRUMP” addiction.
He’s not mad. Don’t write in the newspaper that he’s mad.
[NYT (gift link) / Guardian / Daily Beast]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d like to make a one-time (or recurring) donation, you can click this here button.
The cruelest thing the press could do to Trump is to continue the boycott of the press feed. Silence for him is not golden; it's hell.
I noticed Mamdani spoke to the importance of a free press and welcoming all viewpoint. Trump, of course, spoke about himself.