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Trump Is Neither God nor King: Why His Rewriting of History Must Be Stopped
Every time Trump attempts to rewrite January 6 or parrot Putin's propaganda about Ukraine, we must respond not with outrage (after all, this was all written in Project 2025), but with unwavering commitment to truth.
Feb 26, 2025
When U.S. President Donald Trump declared on February 19 that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—not Russian President Vladimir Putin—was the real dictator, he wasn't only spouting inflammatory rhetoric. He was launching a calculated assault on our collective memory and shared reality. From our reality-star king-in-chief this is not just another chaotic distraction that we slap the word unprecedented on—it's an active threat that puts millions of Ukrainian lives at risk and fuels violent instability across Europe.
But it's also a direct insult to the American people, who witnessed these events unfold in real time just two years ago. Most voters can recall the horror of watching a sovereign nation be invaded by an army. Trump's audacious attempt to rewrite current events follows the authoritarian playbook to the letter: Deny reality, rewrite the narrative, and weaponize chaos and confusion until the public's grip on truth begins to slip. The end goal is crystal clear: total power, sacrificing democracy and millions of lives in the process.
The strategy is painfully familiar because we've already lived through it. Within hours of his inauguration, Trump continued his rewriting of January 6—yet another event we all witnessed in real time. The pardon he issued is far from popular or celebrated by voters, as 83% of Americans disapprove of this decision, disapprove of this rewriting of history. We watched his supporters, inflamed by his lies, storm the Capitol to block the peaceful transfer of power. That poll indicates that the American people know what we saw no matter how many executive orders he signs. We recall how the violence was methodical: smashed windows, destroyed barricades, ransacked offices. The human cost was devastating: lives lost, lawmakers running for safety, democracy itself under siege. For 187 excruciating minutes, Trump—then still the sitting president—ignored pleas to stop the violence, instead making calls to senators urging them to object to the election while watching the chaos unfold on Fox News. When he finally spoke, it wasn't to condemn the violence but to validate it: "We love you... I know your pain... the election was stolen." He watched democracy burn and poured gasoline on the flames. And now, he's reaching for the gas can again.
Fact-checking isn't just a journalistic practice—it's an act of civic resistance that each of us must embrace.
This pattern isn't just about misstatements or confusion. This is about the systematic dismantling of shared reality—a tactic many authoritarian heads of state have relied on. In Romania, where I was born, the brutal dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu didn't just control the present; he rewrote the past. His regime banned books, silenced histories, and maintained lists of names that couldn't be spoken aloud. The goal wasn't just censorship—it was the eradication of collective memory. It was also necessary for his attempts to target specific communities. If our histories were not honored it was easier to deny our human rights.
Putin's Russia shows us this same pattern. He claims Ukraine has no legitimate history as a nation, that it was "entirely created by Russia." These aren't just words—it's the groundwork for invasion and occupation. When Trump echoes these lies about Ukraine and Zelensky, he's not just parroting Putin's propaganda. He's signaling his allegiance to the authoritarian practice of bending reality itself to serve power.
And of course, we need to talk about Hitler's Germany. Not only because the Nazi salute is suddenly being flaunted before conservative audiences in the U.S., but because that is exactly what we are seeing unfold right here in the United States. When the White House posts an ASMR video of an undocumented person in chains being taken to a concentration camp, we need to talk about Nazi Germany. Like Trump, the Nazi regime didn't begin with death camps; they began with propaganda, with book burnings, with the systematic rewriting of history to support their white supremacist ideology. North Korea too maintains its grip on power through absolute control of information and historical narrative. These aren't distant cautionary tales—they're blueprints being followed by Trump.
The architects of alternative facts fear one thing above all: truth told boldly and repeatedly. Since 1848, when the Associated Press was founded with an emphasis on factual reporting, journalism has served as a check on power. It's no coincidence that Trump has now banned AP reporters from the White House press corps for their factual reporting about the Gulf of Mexico. When facts become the enemy, we're watching authoritarianism in action. But defending truth isn't just the job of journalists, though their freedom remains essential to democracy's survival. The front line in this battle runs through every conversation we have, every social media post we share, every time we choose to speak up rather than stay silent. Fact-checking isn't just a journalistic practice—it's an act of civic resistance that each of us must embrace.
The more chaotic and overwhelming these attacks on truth become, the more essential it is that we refuse to normalize them. Speak up. It matters. It makes a difference. Each book banned, each journalist silenced through intimidation or exile, each historical event rewritten—these are not isolated incidents. They are coordinated strikes against our collective power to resist.
It often feels like we are at the point of no return, especially when we look at the complicity of Congress. Congress' willingness to surrender its constitutional role has become apparent to many Americans. Rather than draft legislation or serve as a check on executive power, Republican lawmakers have chosen to let Trump rule by decree. Why bother with the messy work of democracy when you can simply allow a demagogue to issue orders? This isn't just institutional failure—it's institutional surrender and they are betraying every American by doing so. The Republicans in Congress have traded their dignity and our democracy for positive tweets from Elon Musk and Trump.
Though this is undeniably bleak, I don't believe it means defeat. It means we must make a collective decision: Will we perform what Timothy Snyder calls "anticipatory obedience" (especially since a majority of the orders are unjust, unconstitutional, and illegal), or will we hold onto our shared reality with fierce determination? History isn't just a record of what happened—it's a guide for resistance. When we allow our past to be rewritten, we surrender the lessons that could save our future. When someone thinks they can rewrite the past, they believe themselves to be God in control of events. We have to make sure we declare that Trump is no King nor God.
The path forward isn't through individual action or protecting our personal freedoms. This moment demands collective resistance, a tall order in a country that is being told it must destroy its neighbors to survive. But we know better. We love our neighbors. We see the labor and care our national park service workers are investing and we believe the firing of the 100,000 federal workers who maintained our freedom is unjust and needs to be reversed. We know that in a democracy, an unelected billionaire does not have the right to treat Americans as pawns. We are smarter than Elon and Trump are acting like we are. Every time Trump attempts to rewrite January 6 or parrot Putin's propaganda about Ukraine, we must respond not with outrage (after all, this was all written in Project 2025), but with unwavering commitment to truth. We must refuse to let our shared reality be negotiated away in service of authoritarian ambition.
History is clear on this point: When leaders wage war on truth itself, silence equals surrender. We cannot afford to surrender now. Read the books. Refuse to obey in advance unjust, unconstitutional, and illegal executive actions. Gather with your neighbors and friends and speak the truth. Refuse to believe in the lie that we are now against one another, for our individual survival. We must gather and speak the truth in unison: Trump is no King nor God.
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'Stuff of Parody': Trump Taps Election-Denying Ally Kari Lake to Run Voice of America
"Authoritarians love to control and instrumentalize media organizations, especially state-funded ones," journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in response to the news.
Dec 12, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has chosen Kari Lake, a far-right election denier and failed U.S. Senate candidate, to lead the federally funded international broadcast network Voice of America, a move that critics said underscores Trump's effort to transform government entities into vehicles to advance his own interests.
In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that as director of VOA, Lake would "ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media."
Lake, a former television news anchor in Arizona who has echoed Trump's insidious attacks on journalists, wrote in response to the president-elect's announcement that she was "honored" to be asked to lead VOA, which she characterized as "a vital international media outlet dedicated to advancing the interests of the United States by engaging directly with people across the globe and promoting democracy and truth." VOA, which is supposed to have editorial independence, has long faced criticism for its coverage and treatment of employees.
Though the VOA's Charter states that the outlet will "present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions," Lake made clear that she views the network as a propaganda channel for the United States.
"Under my leadership, the VOA will excel in its mission: chronicling America's achievements worldwide," Lake, an outspoken Trump loyalist, wrote Wednesday.
Hours after Trump's announcement that she's his pick to lead VOA, Lake applaudedTIME magazine for naming Trump its "Person of the Year" and gushed that he "should have been the Person of the Year every year for the last decade."
Journalists and watchdogs expressed a mixture of alarm and mockery in response to Trump's attempt to elevate Lake to VOA director.
"Kari Lake as (head of) Voice of America is the stuff of parody. Or tragedy," Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, wrote on social media. "VOA matters."
Zeteo's Mehdi Hasan added that "authoritarians love to control and instrumentalize media organizations, especially state-funded ones."
"Good luck to the VOA," he wrote.
VOA is the largest federally funded international broadcaster and is overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
It is not clear whether Trump will be able to easily install Lake as VOA director. The Washington Post noted that "under rules passed in 2020, the VOA director is appointed by a majority vote of a seven-member advisory board."
"Six members of the board are named by the president and require Senate consent, and the seventh member is the secretary of state," the Post explained.
During his first term in the White House, Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media worked aggressively to influence VOA coverage.
"In 2020, Mr. Trump appointed Michael Pack, an ally of his former aide Stephen K. Bannon, to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media," The New York Timessummarized on Thursday. "Mr. Pack was accused of trying to turn Voice of America into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration, and a federal judge ruled that Mr. Pack had violated the First Amendment rights of the outlet's journalists. A federal investigation later found that Mr. Pack had grossly mismanaged the U.S. Agency for Global Media, repeatedly abusing his power by sidelining executives he felt did not sufficiently support Mr. Trump."
The far-right Project 2025 agenda, which some members of the incoming Trump administration helped craft, includes a section that proposes placing the U.S. Agency for Global Media "under the supervision of the [White House National Security Council], the State Department, or both."
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The FCC as Trump's Right-Wing 'Speech Police'
Brendan Carr pretends to be a defender of free-speech rights when it suits his right-wing agenda but disappears into the ether when he should be protecting expression that doesn’t align with Trump’s authoritarian aims.
Dec 06, 2024
President-Elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Federal Communications Commission has an on-again/off-again relationship with the First Amendment.
Brendan Carr pretends to be a defender of free-speech rights when it suits his right-wing agenda but disappears into the ether when he should be protecting expression that doesn’t align with Trump’s authoritarian aims.
His mind-bending inconsistencies on free-speech rights would sound alarms under normal circumstances, especially for someone tapped to lead the federal agency that oversees the media sector. But these aren’t normal times. And Carr’s dodgy doublespeak on government censorship seems designed to please an incoming president who’s intent on undermining the essential freedoms that flow from the First Amendment.
Carr vs. the facts
During a September hearing before the House of Representatives, Carr refused to speak out against Trump’s suggestion that ABC should lose its broadcast licenses because two of its journalists had fact checked the former president during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. Instead he told members of the House Commerce Committee that the law and the First Amendment guide all of his decisions — an assertion that doesn’t withstand even the slightest scrutiny.
Carr has already weaponized his future role as the government’s top media regulator by threatening to shut down the speech of anyone who questions Trump’s leadership.
In an October Fox News interview, Carr came after CBS for airing an edited interview with Harris during 60 Minutes. Editing interviews is a standard practice of television journalism, but Carr suggested that CBS violated the FCC’s seldom-invoked news-distortion policy, adding that the government could punish the network. In particular, he said that the 60 Minutes interview could factor into the agency’s review of the Skydance-Paramount merger (Paramount is CBS’ parent company).
Carr then took to Twitter to attack NBC after Kamala Harris appeared on Saturday Night Live, wrongly calling it “a clear and blatant effort to evade the equal time rule” — even though NBC did provide Trump equal time later that same weekend. Carr suggested on a subsequent Fox News appearance that the FCC should “keep every remedy on the table,” including revoking the broadcast licenses of local television stations owned by NBC and Telemundo, subsidiaries of Comcast.
“The FCC traditionally avoids regulating broadcast radio and television content except in extremely narrow circumstances, such as indecency,” Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González wrote in a commentary for The Hill. “ … Carr has shown that he is willing to break with [this] longstanding and bipartisan FCC precedent to punish Trump’s detractors.”
America’s top censor
In November, Carr went on the attack again. In a letter addressed to the CEOs of the world’s largest technology platforms, he argues that they are facilitating “censorship” by allowing fact checking on their sites — something they as private companies have an unambiguous First Amendment right to do. In Carr’s distorted view, however, such fact checking violated Americans’ right to be misinformed.
Carr is “rushing to be America’s top censor,” Mike Masnick, a widely read champion of the First Amendment, wrote at Techdirt. “Threatening to revoke broadcast licenses over unfavorable coverage is a blatant First Amendment violation. The government cannot use its licensing power to control or punish the speech of private actors. Carr surely knows this but doesn’t seem to care.”
It’s hard to comprehend how anyone who’s read the 45 words of the First Amendment could come away with such a blatant misunderstanding of its intent. Carr’s recent actions have made it necessary to repeat the obvious: The First Amendment protects people from government censorship; it does not protect government actors like Trump and Carr from criticism and fact checking.
Turning the FCC into the ‘roving speech police’
Carr has already weaponized his future role as the government’s top media regulator by threatening to shut down the speech of anyone who questions Trump’s leadership.
But it wasn’t long ago that Carr was preaching from a different pulpit, although with the same aim: to silence opposing views and advance his highly partisan agenda.
In March 2020 — as the global pandemic set in — Free Press called on the FCC to offer guidance on its interpretation of the agency’s “broadcast-hoax rule.” At the time a number of licensed broadcasters had aired false and misleading information about the COVID-19 crisis without providing the kinds of context or disclaimers the rule suggests.
Rather than take up Free Press’ good-faith suggestion, Carr went on the attack, making the false claim that our media-democracy organization “want[ed] to turn the FCC into a roving speech police empowered to go after the left’s political opponents” (emphasis added).
In actuality, the Free Press petition merely asks the FCC to issue guidance on the broadcasting of disinformation about COVID-19 at a time when thousands of Americans had already succumbed to the disease.
Violating his First Amendment oath
Carr auditioned for the lead part at the FCC by repeatedly threatening to do what he once falsely accused Free Press of doing: turning the agency into the “roving speech police.” And his anti-free-speech stridency has captured the attention of Elon Musk, who has leveraged his control of X’s algorithms to amplify Carr’s tweets — while positioning his broadband access company Starlink to benefit from potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants that flow through the FCC.
As Masnick wrote: “Carr is smart and he knows exactly what he’s doing here. He is couching his extreme censorial desires in the language of free speech, knowing that most people won’t know enough or understand the details and nuances to recognize what he’s doing.”
Free Press is tracking Carr’s First-Amendment flip flops very closely, and exercising our right to call out Trump’s pick to chair the FCC whenever he fails to honor his sworn oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Carr is duty bound to ensure that government forces don’t restrict the speech of private individuals and entities. As the recent past shows, however, he routinely fails to protect free speech with any consistency, preferring to wrap himself in dishonest rhetoric about the First Amendment as he pursues his — and Trump’s — desire to censor others.
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