Two days of confirmation hearings show that President-elect Trump's Cabinet nominees are taking no prisoners, and are determined to quickly reverse President Obama's most controversial policies, including his immigration actions.
At the same time, Trump himself showed in an unprecedented press conference that his rhetoric against the media wasn't just a campaign stunt, and that he's willing to fight reporters who don't see it his way.
The combination has been a shock to the system, one that has left Democrats with little else to do but warn against Trump's plans, and left the media struggling under the weight of trying to fight Trump and cover Trump at the same time.
On Wednesday, what could have been a substantive first press conference since Trump won the election quickly devolved into a fight about the press. Trump told a CNN reporter he wouldn't let him ask a question because "you are fake news," which prompted CNN and BuzzFeed to defend their decisions to report on and publish (respectively) an unverified report about Trump's links to Russia.
CNN said its report was fair, and the National Press Club complained, but none of that seemed likely to tamp down Trump's criticism of a media that has criticized him since he won the GOP nomination.
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05.13.2025