On social media, Trump targets the press on average once a day — for 10 years and counting

From the launch of his political career, Donald Trump has used social platforms — first Twitter, then Truth Social — to attack, belittle and discredit journalists, news outlets and the industry as a whole, branding the media “the enemy of the people.”

Even ChatGPT, when asked to write Truth Social posts in his voice, recognized attacks on the press as an indelible element of Trump’s platform.

Requests for posts about the artificial intelligence chatbot’s choice of topics produced the humorous (“There’s nothing like a great, luxurious bathtub to soak away the fake news and tired losers”) as well as the startlingly plausible:

To better understand the scope and impact of Trump’s anti-press rhetoric, we have systematically cataloged his posts attacking the news media.

This dataset spans from June 16, 2015, the day he launched his winning campaign, through his removal from Twitter in January 2021 in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. It picks back up on Nov. 15, 2022, when Trump officially launched his latest campaign, and will continue through his tenure in the White House.

With 10 years since Trump descended the golden escalator in his eponymous tower in New York City, the collection of now nearly 3,500 social posts provides not just a historical archive but also an urgent warning. These posts form a revealing portrait of a political figure whose polarizing messaging has undermined press freedom and endangered journalists.

The blustering bully

While a combative relationship with the journalists covering them isn’t unique among U.S. presidents, Trump’s use of social media has enabled him to broadcast his hostility toward the press with unprecedented frequency and reach.

Above all, he has wielded his social platforms as a cudgel against outlets and journalists he claims have reported on him, his administration or his allies unfairly. But Trump hasn’t just criticized coverage: He has branded swaths of reporting “fake news,” called respected journalists “disgraceful” and accused entire networks of lying to the American people.

Like any bully, he often relies on derisive nicknames, be it the standards from his first term — “The Failing New York Times,” “MSDNC” and “Fredo” (in reference to reporter Chris Cuomo) — or the newly minted — “Washington Compost,” “The Globalist Street Journal” and “Fake Tapper” (CNN host Jake Tapper). The schoolyard jabs are often snappy and have been adopted by his supporters both in and outside the government.

In some cases, the insults paved the way for concrete action. In April 2024, Trump posted that NPR was a “TOTAL SCAM” and “LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE,” and called for the elimination of federal funding for the broadcaster.

Nearly a year later, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene led a hearing titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS accountable,” in which she accused NPR of having a “communist agenda” and PBS of being “one of the founders of the trans child abuse industry.”

“NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives who generally look down on and judge rural America,” Greene said in her opening remarks.

Public broadcasters now face threats to their funding on multiple fronts.

Individual journalists have also felt the impact of targeting by Trump. In November 2019, Trump trashed Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig, Josh Dawsey and Matt Zapotosky as “lowlife reporters” and the Post as a “garbage newspaper.” Leonnig told the Committee to Protect Journalists that the post triggered “a significant uptick” in hate mail.

“Some of the hate mail is a bit vitriolic and describes me as part of the evil Deep State and stupid as a rock,” she said. “I was tweeted at by people who called me garbage and repeated the president’s low-life description.”

For other journalists, being singled out by Trump has led to real-world harassment and threats.

Whether calling for boycotts of particular outlets, demanding that a journalist be fired or lobbing threats of civil or criminal action, Trump has routinely used his social platforms to intimidate and chill reporting, with his supporters often in lockstep behind him.

The conditional friend

Ostensibly mainstream or liberal news outlets are far from the only ones on the receiving end of Trump’s ire: In August 2023 alone, Fox News was the target of 27 of the then-candidate’s negative posts about the press. And when reporting reflects favorably on him — even when it comes from outlets he often rails against — it’s received warmly.

“The ABC News/Washington Post Poll originally came out at a 9-point lead for your favorite President, but that was immediately corrected by them, to 10 points,” Trump wrote in September 2023. “The only Network that didn’t correct it was Fox News, they left it at 9 points. Gee, I wonder why?”

Rupert Murdoch’s network and the journalists it employs are actually the second-most targeted by Trump just behind CNN, with 451 posts to CNN’s 460. The “failing” Times is a distant third, at 369.

Other conservative-leaning news outlets have also come under fire over the years, ranging from the National Review to Drudge Report, the New York Post to Blaze Media.

The pattern is clear: While campaigning in a primary, Trump does not hesitate to turn the beam of his outrage onto conservative journalists and newsrooms that, in his view, have strayed from unwavering loyalty. Indeed, nearly 75% of the posts targeting Fox News and all of those naming the conservative-leaning outlets above were made in the lead-up to the 2016 and 2024 elections.

Once in office, Trump’s attacks on conservative outlets slow if not stop entirely. That is, unless other journalists from less favored outlets are involved.

In March 2025, it was Fox’s White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, whom Trump belittled for her support of the White House Correspondents’ Association. Two months later, Trump urged Howard Kurtz, host of Fox’s “Media Buzz,” to retire because he has “Every Woke Anchor in the Business” as guests on the show.

Trump has in turn bolstered new conservative media — particularly Newsmax and One America News — both online and through selection for the press pool that accompanies him. This tactic of elevating allies and punishing perceived betrayal has reshaped the conservative media landscape, rewarding partisanship and punishing dissent.

The calculated critic

Trump’s bluster against the press is deliberate, and he has directly said as much. During an off-camera conversation with CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl after winning the 2016 election, he began to attack the press.

“I said, ‘You know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this?’” Stahl recalled at an event in 2018. “‘You’ve won the nomination. Why do you keep hammering at this?’ And he said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’”

She later told CPJ that she had underestimated how effective it would be: “When you say something over and over, it’s had a huge impact. Repetition is part of its impact.”

Trump has attacked the press in social media posts an average of once a day since declaring his candidacy in 2015. He has used the phrase “fake news” or described particular reporting, polls or outlets as “fake” nearly 1,500 times, and has referred to the media as the “enemy of the people” in 70 posts.

As Trump repeated this rhetoric day after day, Americans’ faith in the news media — especially among his supporters — dropped sharply. Pew Research Center polling found that, from 2016 to 2024, Republicans’ trust in national news organizations declined from 70% to 40%. Trust in local news outlets also declined, albeit not as dramatically.

While Pew’s most recent research shows a significant shift in this trend, with polling from May 2025 finding that more than half of conservatives have at least some trust in national news media, Trump’s attacks on the news media have continued at a steady pace.

The eager litigant

In recent years, Trump’s willingness to take legal action in response to reporting he disagrees with has notably increased.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump and his attorneys threatened or initiated lawsuits against ABC News and The New York Times, and in December filed a suit against an Iowa pollster and the Des Moines Register for alleged “election interference.”

Trump also took particular issue with an interview CBS broadcast with Vice President Kamala Harris on its program “60 Minutes,” condemning and demeaning the outlet more than 20 times in just two weeks.

Attorneys representing Trump sued the outlet Oct. 31, alleging it “doctored” the interview to tip the election in her favor and violated a Texas consumer protection law meant to curb false advertising in the process.

Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, appears poised to follow in ABC News’ footsteps and is preparing to settle with Trump, according to news reports. The move has prompted condemnations and threats of shareholder lawsuits if it follows through, including by Freedom of the Press Foundation, of which the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is a project.

A mounting crisis

Trump’s social media use has not just changed the political landscape, but redefined the boundaries of what a president can say and how they can say it. The inflammatory language that once seemed shocking has become routine.

The impact of Trump’s words can’t be measured by likes and reposts alone. Less than six months into his second term, the consequences can be seen unfolding in real time. Officials in his administration and his allies in Congress have joined him in an unprecedented, coordinated effort to undermine, defund, sue and silence independent reporting.

Trump’s anti-press rhetoric has also contributed to a global trend of rising hostility toward journalists, as authoritarian leaders abroad have echoed his language to justify their own crackdowns. Domestically, the Tracker has documented an increase in physical and legal threats against the press during and after his first term.

In democracies, a free press functions as a check on power. But when a head of state repeatedly undermines that role, the public’s trust in independent information erodes and those holding power to account become targets, not just of criticism, but of violence.

Our dataset of his posts, the Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, serves as both a record and a warning: Democracy depends on facts, and facts depend on the freedom of those who report them.

The language used by leaders matters, and when it threatens the foundations of a free press, we have a responsibility to pay attention — and to remember.