Trump administration punishing the Associated Press (AP)

Get the Point!

On any given day, any number of President Donald Trump's executive orders or speeches that he or his surrogates give serve to irk me to the depths of my soul, but every now and then, just when I think that the administration can't get any lower, they surprise me with a new variation on their bottom feeding tendencies!

Yesterday, when the Trump administration announced that Associated Press (AP) journalists would be removed from key aspects of the presidential press pool all because it refuses to change the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America" per Trump's recent executive order—as if Trump is some linguistic god whose divine (more like devious) will "trumps" several centuries worth of maps which depict the “Gulf of Mexico” worldwide—such provided me yet another "I can't believe what I'm seeing" moment!

As my longtime readers know, I have worn three professional hats over the past three decades—historian, journalist, and lawyer; by academic training (and experience as an avid reader), I've ALWAYS considered the AP to be at the vanguard of disseminating real facts in real time about ALL of the major news stories of our present age—and a critical catalogue of knowledge about the people, places, and events in ages past!

Founded in 1846 as a collective to provide updates to U.S. newspapers about the then raging Mexican-American War, in the 179 years since, many of the major news events, from the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 to the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898; from both World Wars to the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, the Space Race and beyond, if it was newsworthy, AP journalists and photographers were (and remain) front and center providing just the FACTS—and the photos—to the world for private and public contemplation!

Indeed, to put it plainly, the AP quite literally IS American/World history! Consider the following iconic pictures from the past century:

AP photo of U.S. soldiers on the Western Front in France during World War I…

AP photo of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 when the Black Greenwood section of the city was attacked by racist white mobs that left hundreds of Blacks dead—and over $100 million in property destroyed or taken…

AP photo of U.S. Marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima during World War II…

AP photo of a 16 year old Black boy being attacked by Birmingham police dogs during Dr. Martin Luther King’s peaceful march in 1963…

AP photo of U.S. soldiers being evacuated after a firefight during the Vietnam War…

AP Pulitzer Prize winning photo of a group of Vietnamese children running from a deadly napalm attack in June of 1972…

AP Pulitzer Prize winning photo of President Ronald Reagan moments after he was shot by John Hinckley in 1982…

AP photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding in January of 1986…

AP photo of Black motorist Rodney King being beaten by LA Police officers in 1991…

AP photo of the World Trade Center Twin Towers on fire following the 9/11 terror attacks…

AP photo of Barack Obama, the first Black President of the United States, embracing Kamala Harris, the newly sworn first Black, Indian, and female Vice President of the United States…

AP Photo of the January 6th MAGA rebellion at the U.S. Capitol…

Despite its laudable history, one in which the AP has won 59 prestigious Pulitzer Prizes and counting, in announcing the collective's ban, Trump's deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich said:

"The Associated Press continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America...This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press' commitment to misinformation. While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One. Going forward, that space will now be opened up to the many thousands of reporters who have been barred from covering these intimate areas of the administration."

To quote my late father, “what a crock of shit!”

In his dystopian classic novel 1984, George Orwell reminds via fiction what the world already had witnessed in fact during the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazi Germany prior to World War II, which was the need for an authoritarian government to control the press to bend "facts" according to its controlling perspective. Yes, I know that billionaire Elon Musk, Vice President J.D. Vance, and a host of other MAGA men and women stomp their feet and blow a fuse when their pernicious acts are compared to fascists from days gone by, but the similarities are too profound and we ALL should be alarmed when one of the main arbiters of "just the facts," or, good old fashioned "who, what, when, and where" journalism if you will, is now kicked off of Air Force One in favor of lesser known (and less scrupulous) "independent journalists" who will focus solely on the "why"— with the why being whatever "Big Brother" Musk, Trump, or their designated minion of the day deems it to be at that given time!

Such is why I continue to suggest on social media that my followers choose to obtain "the facts" directly from, you guessed it by now, the AP wire—as well as from foreign media outlets like the BBC, Al Jazeera, and independent American journalists like legendary journalist Dan Rather's Steady on Substack, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich via Substack, historian Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American on Substack, and my Morehouse Brother and former Arkansas Democratic Gubernatorial nominee, Dr. Chris Jones, via Everything is Rocket Science on Substack. Oh, and whenever I want to balance my progressive mind with insight from the conservative right of center, I read Jonah Goldberg's The Dispatch. While each of these journalists provide their opinions in their pieces, you surely won't ever have to question whether the underlying facts from which their opinions are based have been manipulated by the West Wing at the White House!