The Dictatorship
Pete Hegseth’s press conference shows how the Trump administration views the media’s job
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was in full crybully mode during a Thursday news conference that, according to a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump, was intended “to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots” and provide “interesting and irrefutable” evidence of the “LEGENDARY” success of last week’s unilateral U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But Hegseth didn’t provide definitive evidence of the actual extent of the damage inflicted on those facilities by 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs — or clarity on whether Iran pre-emptively moved its stash of weapons-grade uranium. Instead, the secretary complained that certain media outlets failed to act as unquestioning cheerleaders of a stunning act of aggression against a longtime U.S. adversary — an attack that the president had immediately declared an unequivocal success.
The 42-minute press conference was a useful distillation of the Trump administration’s posture vis-à-vis news coverage: playing the pure-as-driven-snow victim while lashing out in fashion.
It is quite literally the job of reporters to ask the government for evidence to back up its claims.
Hegseth insisted the attack was successful in “decimating — choose your word — obliterating, destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities.” He blasted the press for reporting on a leaked preliminary intelligence assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which asserted that the U.S. attack may have only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months.
The secretary repeated the fact that the DIA’s initial assessment was of “low confidence” and insisted the reporting should have instead been about the awesomeness of the weapons and the bravery of the pilots who conducted the mission. I’m sure the weapons were awesome and the pilots were brave — and details of those tools of war and the risks of the mission were, in fact, reported widely in the mainstream press. But no matter which party is in power, it is quite literally the job of reporters to ask the government for evidence to back up its claims. And few details are more crucial to verify than those pertaining to military conflict.
That’s not how Hegseth, a former co-host of “Fox & Friends,” sees the media’s role in covering the Trump administration.
“How about we celebrate … how about we talk about how special America is that only we have these capabilities? I think it’s too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news,” Hegseth added. “We’re urging caution about pre-premising entire stories on biased leaks to biased publications trying to make something look bad. How about we take a beat, recognize first the success of our warriors, hold them up, tell their stories, celebrate that, wave an American flag, be proud of what we accomplished.”
But that’s the thing. We don’t know “what we accomplished.” That’s what journalists are asking the government, represented by Hegseth, to prove by sharing actionable evidence.
Hegseth even lashed out at his former colleague, longtime Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin, for having the temerity to ask the defense secretary about satellite imagery that showed at least a dozen trucks at one of Iran’s nuclear facilities days before the attack.
“Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally,” the former daytime talk show host scolded the longtime hard-news reporter. Griffin retorted, “In fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy … so I take issue with that.”
Trump, long known to hire people based on their Fox News appearances, gave Hegseth high marks for his performance.
The president — a notorious anti-free speech ideologue — was on a press-hating tear of his own this week. He called for the firing of BLN reporter Natasha Bertrand, posting to Truth Social, “I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog.’” And the president also had his lawyer threaten to sue The New York Times and BLN for reporting on the DIA’s initial post-attack intelligence report. According to the Times, Trump’s lawyer wrote that the paper’s reporting “had damaged Mr. Trump’s reputation” and demanded a retraction and apology for “false,” “defamatory” and “unpatriotic” reporting.
It doesn’t get much more “crybully” than the most powerful person in the world siccing his lawyer on news outlets whose reporting on a government document hurt his feelings.
But there’s a lesson here for institutions, including universities, white shoe law firms and media corporations that continue to face Trump’s shakedown threats: Don’t give the schoolyard bully your lunch money in the hopes that he won’t demand it again.
Don’t give the schoolyard bully your lunch money in the hopes that he won’t demand it again.
The Times’ deputy general counsel, David E. McGraw, responded to Trump’s legal threat with a letter of his own, writing that it would be “irresponsible for a president to use the threat of litigation to silence a publication” for reporting on the government’s own intelligence that suggested “the President may have gotten it wrong in his initial remarks to the country.”
“No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so,” the letter concluded.
That’s how you do it. Simply ignore being insulted as “unpatriotic” for asking questions to which the public deserves to know the answers. Don’t report on war as if it were a child’s game of heroes and villains and super-cool fireworks and explosions. Make the government prove its own claims. And do not agree to settlements when it comes to Trump’s bogus, anti-free speech lawsuit lawfare. Refuse to be bullied and all the bullies can do is cry more.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and writer for BLN Daily. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.
The Dictatorship
Honduras weighs shift in China-Taiwan ties as Trump pushes for US dominance in Latin America
WASHINGTON (AP) — Three years after Honduras parted ways with Taiwan and forged diplomatic ties with China in hope of economic gainshrimp farmers in the Central American country are in revolt.
Their sales to Taiwan fell to a mere $16 million in 2025, down from more than $100 million in 2022, and the Chinese didn’t fill the void as hoped.
“We were deceived,” said Javier Amador, executive director of the National Aquaculture Association of Honduras, as he described the promises from former President Xiomara Castro of better opportunities with China when she severed ties with Taiwan and opened an embassy in Beijing in 2023.
Nasry Asfura, who was elected president with the backing of President Donald Trump and sworn into office in January, has ordered a review of agreements between Tegucigalpa and Beijing. This has fueled expectations that Honduras will distance itself from China, in line with a Trump administration campaign to reduce Chinese influence and economic clout in Latin America.
Asfura is expected to join other regional leaders for a security summit Trump is hosting at his golf course near Miami on Saturday.
“Honduras is probably the most likely country in the world right now to switch diplomatic recognition back to Taiwan,” said Francisco Urdinez, an associate professor at the Political Science Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. “President Asfura campaigned on it, he met Trump at Mar-a-Lago within days of taking office, and his vice president has confirmed the government’s intention.”
“But it’s not as simple as flipping a switch,” he said, noting that Honduras has signed more than a dozen agreements with China since 2023.
China and Taiwan were both diplomatic in responding to questions about a potential shift in allegiance.
Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said Honduras has better prospects for its long-term development since establishing diplomatic ties with China and both countries have “reaped fruitful cooperation outcomes in various fields.”
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, the island’s de facto embassy in Washington, said Taiwan will continue to advance relations with Honduras “in an open and pragmatic manner, without preconditions, and on the basis of equality and reciprocity.”
The Honduras government has not responded to a request for comment.
Taiwan as a barometer of influence
Latin America’s ties with Taiwan have gained attention because they have become a barometer of the power balance between the world’s two largest economies.
Beijing considers Taiwan to be Chinese territory, while Washington, despite its lack of formal ties with Taiwan, is the island’s strongest partner and has vowed to help Taiwan keep its formal allies, seen as necessary for the island to eke out a legitimate space on the global stage.
Of the 12 governments that still recognize Taiwan’s statehood, seven are in Latin America, including Guatemala, Paraguay and five in the Caribbean.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, during a visit to Guatemala in February, thanked the country for sticking with Taiwan.
“It’s not easy in a world where there is a lot of pressure to change that recognition and to break those ties, but you have always stood firm,” Rubio said, as he promised to work with Guatemala to deepen its economic ties with Taiwan.
Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, had a similar message when hosting a delegation from Guatemala in November.
“While too many countries bow to the bullying of Beijing, Guatemala stands with the people of Taiwan and prospers through a strong trade relationship,” Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said. “I support Guatemala’s efforts to oppose Chinese aggression in our hemisphere and look forward to working with Guatemala on areas of common ground.”
U.S. lawmakers have introduced a bill that could provide $120 million over three years in assistance to Taiwan’s partners.
Thousands of shrimp farmers lose their jobs
In 2016 and 2017, Panama, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador all switched their allegiance from Taipei to Beijing. Nicaragua flipped in 2021, and Honduras in 2023.
The loss of the Taiwanese market led to the closure of at least 95 shrimp farms and one processing plant, the loss of more than 25,000 direct and indirect jobs, and the loss of millions of dollars in foreign exchange for the Central American country, according to Amador.
“Most of the companies closed in 2024 because many couldn’t ship to other markets, and China hasn’t been the answer, because we’re not competitive for them,” he said.
Amador hopes the president restores ties with Taiwan for the benefit of the 330 shrimp farming companies that are still operating.
“The issue of returning to Taiwan is not about recovering what we have already lost, but about whether we are going to start over to reactivate industry, improve productivity and generate foreign currency and employment,” he said.
Honduras’ new president has a dilemma
For Asfura, who campaigned on severing ties with Beijing, there’s more to untangle. China has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investments in Honduras.
Enrique Millán-Mejía, senior fellow on economic development at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said Honduras could confer “a special status” on Taiwan and withdraw from Beijing’s global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, which has helped the Chinese government open markets and extend its influence.
Last year, Panama became the first Latin American country to quit the Belt and Road Initiative, prompting an angry response from Beijing, which accused the U.S. of using “pressure and coercion” to undermine the cooperation.
Urdinez said Asfura may go further and rebuild formal ties with Taiwan.
“Asfura’s calculus is fundamentally about the U.S., not about Taiwan per se,” Urdinez said. “Taiwan recognition is essentially the price of admission to Trump’s good graces.”
___
Gonzalez reported from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Iran’s regime has named Mojtaba Khamenei the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, succeeding his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike at the start of the ongoing Middle East war.
Several of Mojtaba Khamenei’s other family members were also killed in the initial strikes, including his wife, Zahra Adel, his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, and his son, according to Iranian state media.
The ascension of Khamenei to his father’s seat of nearly absolute power suggests a determination by regime hard-liners to dig in against internal and external pressure for reform, even as U.S. and Israeli bombs continue to fall.
It also creates the awkward appearance of a ruling family leading an Islamic Republic that supplanted the monarchy of the shahs after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
In an interview with ABC News on SundayPresident Donald Trump reiterated that any new Iranian leader will “have to get approval from us.”
“If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long. We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it,” Trump said.
But Trump did not rule out accepting a new Iranian leader with ties to the old regime.
Khamenei, the late ayatollah’s second son, becomes just the third person to hold the title of supreme leader, after his father and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the republic.
Like his father when he took power in 1989, Khamenei, 56, is not an ayatollah but a mid-level Shia cleric. The elder Khamenei had the law changed to make himself an ayatollah essentially overnight – a source of tension that never quite went away during his brutal reign of nearly 37 years.
Until now, Khamenei has been considered a quietly powerful figure who has played a behind-the-scenes role in the regime. He has reportedly amassed a vast real estate portfolio through shell companies with several properties in Dubai, Frankfurt, Mallorca and on London’s “Billionaire’s Row” worth more than $100 million combined, according to a Bloomberg investigation.
In addition to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, his new role also means he is the de-facto leader of the so-called Axis of Resistance, a collection of paramilitary groups within the region united against the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza, as well as smaller groups in Iraq.
Regardless of who the leader would have been, they have a target on their back as U.S. and Israeli officials have vowed to assassinate them. Several high-ranking Iranian officialsincluding Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammad Pakpour, have already been killed.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on X on Wednesday that “every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue and lead the plan to destroy Israel, to threaten the United States and the free world and the countries of the region, and to suppress the Iranian people—will be an unequivocal target for elimination.”
President Donald Trump has said that “someone from within” the Iranian regime may be the best choice to assume power after the U.S.-Iraeli military campaign, but added that “most of the people we had in mind are dead.”
The new leader was chosen by Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the governmental body comprised of 88 clerics established at the beginning of the revolution. The group’s building in Qom, a city south of capital Tehran, was hit in an airstrike on March 3.
In an interview with MS NOW on March 4, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi did not confirm if Mojtaba would succeed his father, but said that “a new body has been established, comprised of three people, so they will be in charge until the new leader is elected,” adding that the group was “working to prepare the ground for the election of the new leader.”
Cabrera questioned Takht-Ravanchi’s definition of an “election,” asking, “Will the people of Iran have any say on who leads this country next? Or is that predetermined?”
“The people have already chosen that body who is going to elect the supreme leader,” Takht-Ravanchi said, calling the process “very transparent” and “democratic.”
Trump had repeatedly and publicly urged Iran to accept his terms for a nuclear weapons agreementamid fragile negotiations mediated by Omani diplomats, and threatened an attack if it did not. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, according to U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Iran has struck several U.S. military bases and civilian sites throughout the Middle East in retaliation, with at least six U.S. service members killed and numerous other deaths around the region from Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile strikes.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Press freedom organizations are celebrating the court decision invalidating Kari Lake’s tenure at Voice of America and nullifying the mass layoffs she ordered last year.
Reporters without Borders’ Executive Director Clayton Weimers, said the Saturday evening ruling “confirms what we knew when we first filed this lawsuit almost one year ago: that Kari Lake and the Trump administration acted unlawfully in gutting Voice of America (VOA). There is still more to unpack in this decision and work to be done to ensure VOA’s journalists get back to work. Beyond the immediate implications of the decision, this case is proof that fighting for press freedom matters.”
Lake, a former local news anchor and failed gubernatorial and Senate candidate, had tried to dismantle Voice of America, the U.S. government-funded international broadcaster created during World War II to provide news to a global audience, particularly to countries with little to no press freedom. Lake left her position as CEO on Nov. 19.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found that Lake was ineligible to serve as acting CEO of the United States Agency for Global Media, Voice of America’s parent company, when she was appointed to the position in July without Senate approval.
“The Court finds that these expansive delegations were an unlawful effort to transform Lake into the CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media in all but name,” Lamberth wrote, adding that “Lake satisfies the requirements of neither the statute nor the Constitution.”
Lake called the decision “bogus” and vowed to appeal it.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the country’s largest trade union for public sector employees, called the ruling “a major victory for the federal workers who Kari Lake and this administration have been attempting to illegally fire for the last year.”
“Voice of America employees are dedicated public servants who provide hope for freedom to those living under oppressive governments around the world,” Saunders said. “Yet time and again, this administration has attempted to strip these proud AFSCME members of their collective bargaining freedoms and their jobs.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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