THE NEW YORK TIMES: Trump says critical coverage of him is ‘really illegal’

President Donald Trump said Friday that news reporters who cover his administration negatively have broken the law, a significant broadening of his attacks on journalists and their First Amendment right to critique the government.

A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting reporters were lawbreakers.

“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”

Trump did not cite a specific law he said he believed had been violated. It remained unclear Friday why Trump believed negative news coverage, which every president has faced and is protected by the Constitution, would be “really illegal.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening.

The president and Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chair, have escalated their threats to punish broadcasters since ABC suspended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel after pressure from Carr over some of Kimmel’s comments on Monday’s show related to the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Carr has argued that he can withhold licenses that aren’t being used in the public’s interest to crack down on speech that doesn’t serve local viewers, which includes coverage that is biased against conservatives, a standard that many telecommunications experts and Democrats say is too broad.

Trump’s comments Friday came a day after he suggested that protesters who called him “Hitler” to his face inside a Washington restaurant should be jailed.

The president, who has accused the protesters of being paid agitators and said such people “should be put in jail,” told reporters on Air Force One that he believed the protesters were “very inappropriate” and “a threat.”

The Trump administration’s actions have faced intense pushback both from Democrats and some Republicans, who accuse the White House of attacking free speech.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Friday harshly criticized Carr, accusing him of mafia-like tactics and saying his threat to retaliate against media companies for speech on their airwaves was “dangerous as hell.”

The senator’s remarks were the latest evidence that some on the right are deeply uncomfortable with their fellow Republicans’ efforts to clamp down on free speech by their political adversaries following Kirk’s death.

In the Oval Office Friday, Trump told reporters that he disagrees with Cruz.

“I think Brendan Carr is a great American patriot,” he said.

The president tried to justify his pressure campaign against broadcasters and journalists as a response to overwhelmingly negative coverage of his administration, claiming that because “97% of the stories” about him were negative, “that’s no longer free speech. That’s just cheating. And they cheat.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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