Donald Trump railed against the Pentagon’s press crackdown, even as he’s called some anti-MAGA reporting “illegal.”
The president addressed a report that the Department of Defense, headed by Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth, planned to pre-approve information before it could be gathered or published by reporters.
Trump was asked about the move while outside the White House on Sunday, moments before he departed for Charlie Kirk’s memorial service at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
“Should the Pentagon be part of deciding what reporters can report on?” a journalist asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Nothing stops reporters, you know that,” Trump responded.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the Pentagon had drafted a 17-page document spelling out new restrictions on the press. Under the new policy, journalists would be required to sign an agreement to the restrictions; those who refuse will have their Pentagon credentials revoked.
The document states that the Department of Defense—given the secondary name of the Department of War by Trump—“remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust,” the newspaper reported.
“However, DoW information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified,” it continues.
The White House and Department of Defense did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Trump’s pushback on Hegseth’s new policy stands at odds with his recent statements about the press.
At a conference on Friday, he said that the press had gone beyond the point of free speech and were instead “cheating” and creating “illegal” content.
Trump first called himself a “very strong person for free speech,” but questioned whether disagreeable media counted as legal.
“97 percent of the people are against me in the sense of the newscasts are against me,” he said. “The stories are 97 percent bad. They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal, personally.”
He then suggested that members of the media reporting “bad” stories were in fact working against him as “offshoots of the Democratic National Committee.”
“Again, when somebody is given, 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, that’s no longer free speech… that’s just cheating, and they cheat," Trump claimed.
