“So many in media are ill-equipped to interview officials about what’s happening because they begin with the presumption of legitimacy and don’t know enough about history or U.S. foreign policy to foment intelligent pushback and hold officials accountable,” journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones posted Sunday on Bluesky. She continued, “The questions begin with WILL regime change be successful, not how is it legal or ethical to orchestrate a coup and who are we to decide when leadership must go and who are we to believe we have rights to a sovereign nation’s resources.”

Hannah-Jones pointed specifically to Trump’s claim that the US is “reclaiming its stolen oil” and how there’s little pushback on the framing, or an explanation of the veracity of that claim.

This exposes a construct from which mainstream journalists have struggled to shake loose since Trump’s first term: If the president says something, then it’s assumed true. After all his criminal convictions, civil penalties, an attempt to overthrow the government and a life-long track record of lies and fraud, because he was able to recapture the presidency, the tendency remains to paint him in the positive light possible. For some journalists and news organizations, leaning on that assumption helps create order during a chaotic situation. (It’s not that other presidents never lied to drum up support for war; they all did to varying extents, though typically made clear after the fact.) From a journalist's perspective, however, it’s much more challenging to figure out how to cover a president who you know is actively lying to you. But it’s a challenge we reject at our own peril.

On Friday afternoon the White House press pool reported Trump was out shopping in Florida for marble to outfit his new ballroom. By late Saturday morning he was holding a news conference from his country club saying the US is now running Venezuela. Just like that, we apparently claimed a new colony. Of course he had no details on what that functionally meant, and since then it’s become clear that by “running” Venezuela he envisions a remote work-type situation where he posts on Truth Social from a makeshift Situation Room at Mar-A-Lago. He’s literally the man behind the curtain.