In a dark speech on Friday, President Donald Trump called to jail his opponents and reiterated claims that negative press coverage of him by CNN, MSNBC and major newspapers should be “illegal.”
Speaking at the Department of Justice, Trump argued that overwhelmingly negative coverage of him on the two mentioned cable channels — which he put at “97.6%” — was “corrupt and illegal,” repeating his longstanding contention that they “operate as political arms” of the Democratic Party. (He again referred to MSNBC as “MSDNC,” which he frequently uses to imply the connection.)
Trump also spoke of the “bad people” who had taken action against him, promising to “restore the scales of justice” while saying, “The people who did this to us should go to jail.” Trump made dark threats toward political opponents during his campaign, but this was the first time he has done so since taking office for a second time in January.
Trump extended his media critique to newspapers, saying, “These newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop. It has to be illegal … It just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal.”
Although the First Amendment would seem to be a shield to Trump taking action against those outlets, the nature and venue of the speech caught the attention of media commentators, with MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace calling the speech “brazen” in articulating Trump’s goal of “replacing the rule of law with Trump’s political hit list.”
During another portion of the hour-long remarks, Trump repeated his debunked claims that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was “rigged,” while expressing his intention to “expel the rogue forces from our government.”
Trump lobbed accusations against current and former DoJ employees who worked on the multiple criminal investigations against him, while referring to himself as the “chief law enforcement officer in our country.”
Watch footage from the speech below:
Trump also compared himself to Al Capone, saying the notorious gangster from the 1920s had only experienced a “small fraction” of what he had faced in terms of attacks from the government.
Prior to his unexpected victory in 2024, Trump was federally indicted for his incitement of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, as well as for his illegal retention of classified documents. He was also prosecuted in New York for fraud over his attempts to keep hush money payments to Stormy Daniels secret in 2016, a case in which he was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in June 2024. He was also sued for defamation and found liable for sexual battery.
