This sure doesn’t bode well! Our new authoritarian overlords barred an Associated Press reporter from an event in the Oval Office on Tuesday, after the news agency declined a demand to use proper NEWSPEAK term for the Gulf of Mexico, which has now been decreed to be called the Gulf of UHMURICA followed by an eagle-screech sound effect. The offending guidance:
The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.
Oh, the stupid of it all. Trump can executive-order name changes to whatever federal lands and bodies of water inside the US that he wants to. He can call Denali Mount McKinley, or rename Mount Rushmore Mount MAGA or rename Lake Michigan The Kid Rock Basin of Liberal Tears. But the Gulf of Mexico, which has been called that even before there was a USA, borders two other countries, and international waters only extend 12 miles out to sea.
The International Hydrographic Organization sets the standard for charting the seas by the agreement of its 100 member countries, and they aren’t changing the name. So calling the gulf a name that exists only in Trump’s box of whims and notions is a purity test based entirely in the Magalandia mind.
And allowing journalists access to cover the government is some basic First Amendment stuff! How else will we know that Poppy Trump had to babysit Elon’s son X Æ A-Xii while the kid dug for treasures in his nostrils and told Trump to shush? (Why does Musk never rotate in any of his other kids?)
The Associated Press is a nonprofit cooperative news agency sustained by licensing its content, and they’ve always taken great pains to remain politically neutral, no matter how criminal or batshit members of any particular party may appear. But neutral is no longer good enough!
BTW Apple has now also followed Google in sucking up and updating its maps. But MapQuest is staying strong. Who ever would have pegged them to be leading the cartography resistance? We should all go print out 12 pages of directions to grandma’s house in solidarity!
The AP failing the MAGA purity test also follows a Department of Defense memo announcing that the new politburo is taking desk space away from Pentagon Press Corps reporters from NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio, and Politico, and giving their space to the New York Post, Breitbart News Network, and HuffPost instead.
HuffPost is “left-leaning,” does not have a Pentagon correspondent, and did not request any space, though spokesperson Lizzie Grams said, “If the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are interested in more hard-hitting coverage of their stewardship of the Defense Department from HuffPost, we are ready to deliver.” In the memo, Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot explained that this was part of an “annual media rotation program.” As in, anyone who won’t go along with Trump’s impulsive, pointless demands can sit and rotate!
NBC News has held its dedicated Pentagon “booth,” as they are called, for decades, and their space is hardwired with technical equipment, phone lines and a camera installed by NBC, which they’re clearing out.
White House spokes-whatever Karoline Leavitt has also announced they will “restore the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration,” an accusation that appears to be entirely made up. The only press pass that almost got revoked was Simon Ateba, correspondent for Today News Africa, who got a warning letter that his credentials could be revoked after he repeatedly interrupted people to scream. Trump administration 1.0 sure revoked a lot of press passes though! Always projection, every time.
Right-wingers have been seething and crying victimized ever since Obama snubbed Fox News’s Chris Wallace by not appearing on “Fox News Sunday” one time, and in 2010 told Rolling Stone that:
Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.
HOW DARE HE!!
Then Obama called Fox the “enemy of the people” and Tweeted a gif he’d ripped from Reddit of himself clotheslining their logo and wrestling it to the floor. Just kidding, that was Trump and CNN, Obama never did that, nor was he a 15-year-old trapped in a septuagenarian’s body.
And neither Obama nor Biden ever barred Fox News from press briefings, no matter how many times Peter Doocy asked Karine Jean-Pierre trollish questions like “How long have you guys known that Vice President Harris does not think that President Biden is effective with his border?”
In other politburo purity-test news, the administration has deployed teams of MAGA commissars to comb through the backgrounds of job applicants, searching their social media and reportedly asking interview questions like who they voted for, and “What part of President Trump’s campaign message is most appealing to you and why?” and “when did your first moment of MAGA revelation occur?”
Ronald Reagan once said, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and ally, not a 20 percent traitor,” and in today’s GOP that kind of attitude wouldn’t even get him an internship.
UHMURICAAAAA!!!!
[AP/ NBC/ Washington Post archive link]
