IN FLIGHT – NOVEMBER 25: President Donald Trump speaks to the media aboard Air Force One on November 25, 2025 in flight en route to Florida. The Trumps are traveling to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday. (Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images)
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The Trump Administration is intensifying its war on the “fake news media” by launching a “Media Offender of the Week” page on the official White House website. The page, which names journalists from CBS News, The Boston Globe and The Independent, carries the subtitle “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.”
Named as “media offenders” are Boston Globe politics producer Alyssa Vega, Independent White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg and senior Washington correspondent Eric Garcia, and CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes.
The journalists are accused of misrepresenting and exaggerating “President Trump’s calls for Democrat accountability,” the page claims. “The media misrepresented President Trump’s call for Members of Congress to be held accountable for inciting sedition by saying that he called for their “execution.”
JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” airs every weeknight at 11:35 p.m. ET and features a diverse lineup of guests that include celebrities, athletes, musical acts, comedians and human interest subjects, along with comedy bits and a house band. The guests for Tuesday, November 25 included Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard (“Nobody Wants This” and “Hit & Run”), Sen. Mark Kelly and musical guest De La Soul. (Disney/Randy Holmes)SENATOR MARK KELLY, JIMMY KIMMEL (Photo by Randy Holmes/Disney via Getty Images)
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‘That’s what they do. They try to suppress speech’
The reporters singled out by the White House had reported on six Democratic senators who featured in a video released last week reminding members of the armed forces that they don’t have to follow illegal orders–even if those orders come directly from the president.
“The threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here right at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders,” the senators said in the video. “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
President Trump blasted the video, suggesting that the lawmakers were guilty of sedition and saying they should face consequences. One of the six senators in the video, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, told ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Tuesday that the administration’s reaction to the video–including calls from the Pentagon to investigate Kelly–was intended to sow fear and shut down criticism.
“It is right out of the playbook, you know, the playbook of authoritarianism. That’s what they do. They try to suppress speech,” Kelly said. “Every one of us has First Amendment speech rights, and I think the president is infringing on those and he is sending, he is sending a pretty strong message. You do not want to cross him, and your loyalty should be to him. It should not. It should always be to the Constitution.”
NEW YORK – OCTOBER 1: CBS News hosts a vice-presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz moderated by Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City. Pictured: Nancy Cordes. (Photo by Michele Crowe/CBS via Getty Images)
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‘President Trump called for them to be held accountable’
On the White House “media offenders” page, the administration suggested that “the Democrats and Fake News Media subversively implied that President Trump had issued illegal orders to service members. Every order President Trump has issued has been lawful. It is dangerous for sitting Members of Congress to incite insubordination in the United States’ military, and President Trump called for them to be held accountable.”
While the White House claimed the senators in the video were “calling for service members to disobey their chain of command,” the actual content of the video said that federal law does not allow members of the military to break the law, even if they’ve been ordered to do so by a superior officer–or the commander-in-chief.
“Don’t give up the ship,” said Sen. Elissa Slotkin in the video.