The MAGA Media Takeover

David Karpf: “American mass media has been transformed in these early months of President Donald Trump’s second administration. We’re about 35 weeks into a term that will last for 173 more, and in that time, we have seen a tech titan gut a once-great newspaper in an apparent act of capitulation to the commander in chief, government accounts gleefully spreading hateful memes on X (the far-right platform owned by a billionaire tech oligarch), a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump against The New York Times (and quickly dismissed by the judge as “superfluous”), and, of course, the assault on free speech carried out by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman. Big things can happen very quickly.”

“Here is what seems to be next: TikTok’s U.S. operations are reportedly on the cusp of being sold to a group that includes Trump allies, led by yet another tech baron, Larry Ellison.”