“For the next half century, even as American politics grew increasingly polarized, there was remarkably broad agreement that the Supreme Court had gotten this right. Its string of libel decisions–beginning with its unanimous 1964 ruling in New York Times Company v. Sullivan–was generally regarded with reverence. As recently as 2010, Congress passed a law celebrating the country’s commitment to defending Americans from weaponized libel claims. In a barely recognizable act of bipartisan unity, not a single lawmaker voted against the legislation. And then, in the space of only a few years, that consensus crumbled. Donald Trump was a crucial catalyst. Beginning in 2016 and continuing through 2024, he relentlessly demonized the media as ‘evil,’ ‘criminals,’ and the ‘enemy of the people,’ applauding violence, threatening to revoke TV networks’ licenses, and floating the idea of jailing reporters. There is a long history, of course, of politicians attacking the news media. He convinced broad swaths of the public that journalism itself was illegitimate, that its articles, fact checks, and exposes were not to be trusted–a belief that was enhanced at times by some journalists shirking their roles as open-minded seekers of truth instead donning the robes of ideologies. As this distrust took root among millions of Americans, it would become much easier to justify the curtailment of long-standing press freedoms and for politicians, business executives, and others to escape accountability. But more subtle forces were also at play, including the emergence of a clique of high-powered lawyers who, motivated by a mixture of profits and politics, specialized in attacking journalists and others on behalf of Russian oligarchs, opioid-pushing executives, corrupt politicians, scandal-plagued celebrities, and many others who were the subjects of unfavorable media coverage.”
Murder the Truth by David Enrich - 2025
Trump in Exile by Meridith McGraw - 2024
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“Campaign Monitor, an email marketing platform, had been the primary distribution engine for Trump’s fundraising emails but had suspended the Trump operation after January 6. And major donors, like Marriott, were no longer interested in giving to the GOP. But issues with email lists and corporate snubs aside, Trump was still the star attraction for major fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago. Make America Great Again Action, a super PAC run by Corey Lewandowski, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, and Dave Bossie, held a fundraiser at Trump’s New Jersey golf club at the end of May for which ticket prices started at $250,000. In the PAC’s first two months it took in more than $3 million from major Republicans donors like Don Ahern, a Nevada businessman who gave $1 million; Kelly Loeffler, the wealthy former Georgia senator who had lost her seat to Raphael Warnock in a runoff election; and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. By the end of June, Trump and his political action committees had amassed a war chest of more than $100 million – an unprecedented amount of money (especially for a defeated ex-president) that rivaled the Republican National Committee and the GOP’s House and Senate campaign committees. Much of that money was raised off Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, that he needed money to support the audits in Arizona and other states, and his promise to support MAGA candidates in the 2022 midterms. In a statement about his fundraising Trump thanked the donors who ‘share my outrage and want me to continue to fight for the truth.’ Trump’s fundraising success in the first six months after being forced from office was a proof of concept that falsehoods about the election were now baked in and had become the new Republican ‘truth.’ And it was very on-brand that Trump did not share the wealth. During that six-month period, none of the funds raised by Trump’s PAC had gone to any of the audit efforts or boosting any of the candidates Trump had endorsed. Millions instead were spent on political advisers, events, travel, more fundraising outreach, and legal fees for attorneys who had defended Trump in his second impeachment trial. Trump was squirreling away money – and political capital in the form of endorsements – to put toward his next act.”
“On the morning of March 21, three days after the Gawker verdict and hours before jurors awarded the additional $25 million in damages, (Trump) had arrived at the Washington Post’s headquarters for an hour-long interview with the newspaper’s editorial board. The discussion started with Trump bragging about how his planned hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue was ahead of schedule and under budget. Then it veered into foreign policy. Eventually the Post’s publisher, Fred Ryan, piped up. ‘You’ve mentioned that you want to ‘open up’ the libel laws. You’ve said that several times.’ ‘I might not have to, based on Gawker, right?’ Trump interrupted. ‘That was amazing.’ ‘What presidential powers and executive actions would you take to open up the libel laws?’ Ryan asked. Trump launched into a soliloquy about how the press treated him unfairly. Ryan tried again. ‘But how would you fix that?’ he asked. Trump wouldn’t be pinned down, even as other Post journalists asked him increasingly specific questions about New York Times v. Sullivan and the actual malice standard.”
“Trump was most upset about the uptick in praise for and interest in DeSantis, though, blasting him for being ‘disloyal’ and accusing him of being cute about his presidential ambitions. . .‘Ron came to me in desperate shape in 2017 – he was politically dead, losing in a landslide to a very good Agriculture Commissioner, Adam Putnam, who was loaded up with cash and great poll numbers. Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money, but he said that if I would Endorse him, he could win. I didn’t know Adam so I said, ‘Let’s give it a shot, Ron.’ When I Endorsed him, it was as though, to use a bad term, a nuclear weapon went off. Years later, they were the exact words Adam Putnam used in describing Ron’s Endorsement. He said, ‘I went to having it made, with no competition, to immediately getting absolutely clobbered after your Endorsement.’ I then got Ron by the ‘Star’ of the Democrat Party, Andrew Gillum. . . , by having two massive Rallies with tens of thousands of people at each one. I also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart. I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen. . . And now, Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well in terms of loyalty and class that’s really not the right answer.’”
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“In his most explicit work, (Francis) Schaeffer wrote in A Christian Manifesto that America was being destroyed by tyranny. In the words of one biographer, ‘Schaeffer saw only two alternatives for American culture: either society would return to its Christian base, or there would be an imposed order.’ While Schaeffer advocated for Christians to resist tyranny, he demurred when asked for specifics. Because Schaeffer was committed theologically to a view of the end-times that predicted social chaos and persecution of Christians, he not only didn’t see any form of theocracy arising, but he didn’t want it. Yet for the movement today, Schaeffer is a prophet. For example, William Wolfe, author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism, wrote that the ‘rapidly metastasizing vision of government’ as ‘the state’ as an all-controlling entity akin to governments in non-democratic countries is ‘at the root of our peril and predicament.’ He adds in the next line that Schaeffer ‘saw it coming.’ Another supporter of Christian nationalism, Pastor Douglas Wilson, who oversees a multi-institutional operation in Moscow, Idaho, wrote that the American government had ‘declared war on righteousness itself’ in the last few decades. Wilson stops short of leading a revolution, though he is clear on what the outcome should be for the ‘war’ he described: ‘We are simply calling upon God to destroy His enemies. Our first preference is that He destroy them by transforming them into His friends. . . But if their hearts are hardened, we call upon God to take them out nonetheless.’ Because of this type of language, the question of violence is always at the forefront. One reviewer of Wolfe’s book put it clearly: ‘His use of Christian language to defend political violence against a freely elected government should be a bigger scandal than it is: It amounts to a call for holy war against democracy.’ This rhetoric has a real impact. Christian nationalism was a major theme for those who participated in the 2021 insurrection and its related anti-democracy scheme, ‘Stop the steal.’ Not surprisingly, the mandate movement’s spiritual warfare has translated well into Donald Trump’s authoritarian political vision. Supporters of the seven mountains mandate have been widely supportive of Trump. And it doesn’t matter to the movement that Trump isn’t spiritual in practice nor does he act overtly like a Christian. He has been hailed as a modern Cyrus, the sixth-century Persian king who ended the Babylonian captivity and is referenced as a figure of Jewish deliverance. As Matthew Taylor points in his 2024 book about the spiritual warfare that supported the 2021 insurrection, ‘a leader in one of the nonreligion mountains doesn’t have to be pious or even necessarily religious to govern according to the kingdom of God. They just have to exert their power in conformity with’ the interests of conservative Christians.”
The Seven Mountains Mandate by Matthew Boedy - 2025
“(Charlie) Kirk adds to that ideal an appeal to undermine the very Constitution he claims to honor. Kirk said in 2022 that the U.S. Constitution is only fit for a moral and religious people, paraphrasing a 1798 letter written by John Adams. That letter was Adams’s justification to the Massachusetts militia for the empowering of a Christian government against the same kind of moral rot Kirk and the seven mountains mandate movement fear today. One historian called the justification by Adams ‘an extraconstitutional means of controlling the kinds of unbridled human passions that, in Adams’ view, the Constitution alone could not control.’ Many experts think Trump is the next one to try to implement that extraconstitutional control.”