The Trump Presidency Timeline

Donald Trump rage-posts on Truth Social about US media covering attacks on American tanker aircraft in Saudi Arabia, and FCC chair Brendan Carr sprints into the comments like a very eager hall monitor promising to yank broadcast licenses for airing what he calls "fake news." For extra groveling, Carr throws in a line about Trump’s "landslide election victory" – because nothing says independent regulator like cosplaying as the campaign’s deputy press secretary with subpoena power.

The problem, besides all of it, is that Carr knows this is legally garbage. He’s spent years trying to turn the FCC into Trump’s personal content-policing squad: going after late-night comedians, talk shows, public broadcasters, and any outlet that hurts Dear Leader’s feelings, all while literally scrubbing the word "independent" from the FCC website. Every time he screams "distortion" or "not in the public interest," it just happens to target someone who wasn’t sufficiently reverent toward the man whose face is on his lapel pin.

And yet, the emptiness of the threats is the point. Station owners don’t want to spend millions fighting the regime’s favorite bootlicker or risk merger delays, so they cave: spike stories, sand down headlines, and quietly decide that maybe they don’t need quite so much reporting on Iran, dead soldiers, or the Trump administration’s total absence of a plan. We’ve already seen this with KCBS in California, where managers killed interviews that might be "anti-Trump" after Carr launched an investigation. The message is simple: cover the war like Pete Hegseth wants, or the FCC may come for your license over a headline Trump doesn’t like.

That’s how you slide from a free press to something that looks a lot more like Iran’s state TV: obedient outlets, patriotic cheerleading, and wall-to-wall propaganda for the supreme leader and his wars. Republicans mostly shrug, Democrats mumble, and Carr keeps road-testing his dream job as programming director for Trump State Television. Freedom of the press dies not with a bang, but with a regulator whining about "treasonous" headlines on social media.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff and long-time architect of his political career, has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer and says she’ll keep running the chaos factory while undergoing treatment. On the human level: that’s serious, it’s scary, and like everyone else in that situation, she deserves competent medical care and a full recovery.

Then the Trump White House did what the Trump White House does: turned a private health crisis into branded content for the persecution-industrial complex. Trump hopped onto Truth Social to declare her prognosis “excellent” and assure everyone she’ll be putting in “virtually full time” at the White House, because this administration treats cancer like a minor scheduling inconvenience but climate change like a suggestion.

While most officials managed a basic level of humanity, deputy chief of staff James Blair decided the moment called for some fanfic about the Deep State Cinematic Universe. In a single post, he claimed Wiles had bravely battled through “illegitimate indictments, domestic spying by the former administration, rigged federal prosecutions, illegal law enforcement raids, general lawfare, assassination attempts, & more” — an impressive list of things that are either under criminal investigation, made up, or both. Apparently the message is: your boss is the victim of a vast criminal conspiracy, but also definitely in charge of the country, don’t think too hard about it.

So while Wiles faces a disease that affects one in eight women, the people around her are still laser-focused on the truly important thing: using literally anything — including a cancer diagnosis — to fuel Trump’s narrative that the justice system, the media, and basic reality are all part of an illegitimate plot against him. The prognosis for American democracy remains somewhat less “excellent.”

Donald Trump spent the summer of 2025 fantasizing about sending the National Guard into Democratic cities like it was his own personal cosplay of martial law, declaring places like Oakland "so far gone" they were basically write-offs. Minor plot twist: while he was on camera doing his best dystopian voiceover, Oakland was quietly recording its lowest homicide total in 25 years, cutting murders in half from their 2021 peak without needing tanks, tear gas, or a presidential tantrum.

Instead of federal stormtroopers, the city relied on boring, un-televised things: community groups like Urban Peace Movement, investment in neglected neighborhoods, coordination between local departments, and actual relationships with the people most at risk of violence. So naturally, the Trump administration is now lunging for credit, pointing to its immigration crackdowns and "tough on crime" theatrics while Oakland leaders politely note that federal meddling has mostly made things worse. Reality: local organizers, residents, and some cops doing the slow, grinding work of prevention. Narrative from DC: "We scared everybody straight with fascist vibes, you're welcome."

None of this means Oakland is a utopia – East and West Oakland still bear the brunt of shootings, and one mass shooting can erase a year’s worth of feel-good graphs for the families living through it. But the city’s experience blows up Trump’s favorite campaign B‑roll of "Democrat-run hellholes" and replaces it with something far less useful to him: a story about communities reducing violence with resources, not crackdowns; cooperation, not occupation. No wonder he keeps pretending it’s a war zone. Peace is terrible for the brand.

Brendan Carr, the FCC chair and newly self-appointed Minister of Truth, hopped on social media to remind broadcasters that their licenses are apparently contingent on flattering coverage of Donald Trump’s Iran adventure. Carr warned that outlets spreading what he calls "hoaxes and news distortions" about the war could see their spectrum permits revoked — because nothing says "public interest" like a government official threatening to shut down news organizations that annoy the president.

Trump, naturally, is thrilled. He raged on Truth Social that the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other "Lowlife 'Papers'" supposedly want the U.S. to lose the war, accusing them of publishing headlines that are "the exact opposite" of reality. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth chimed in from the war room-slash-green-room, scolding coverage of a "Mideast war" and suggesting more upbeat options like "Iran increasingly desperate" — a bold programming note from a guy who talks about bombing countries like he’s pitching a Fox & Friends segment.

While new CNN owner David Ellison publicly promises editorial independence, Hegseth helpfully hints that the network will be better once the billionaire finishes redecorating the newsroom. Carr, for his part, cites plummeting trust in "legacy media" as justification for using federal control of the airwaves — a public asset — as a political cattle prod. He even dredges up 2024 election coverage to complain that the press predicted a Democratic win before Trump’s "landslide" plurality, as if bad polling entitles the government to start yanking broadcast licenses.

So the Trump administration’s position is now crystal clear: the media is "sick and demented," coverage that isn’t sufficiently triumphalist is a "hoax," and the guy in charge of regulating the airwaves is openly musing about shutting down noncompliant outlets. Freedom of the press, reimagined as a conditional privilege you keep only if you cheer loudly enough for the war.

The Justice Department’s latest cosplay as a mob collections agency just hit a wall. A federal judge blocked Trump’s DOJ from subpoenaing Fed chair Jerome Powell over some allegedly scandalous building renovations, noting there was a “mountain of evidence” that the whole thing was just a pressure campaign to make Powell slash interest rates or resign. The court helpfully observed that DOJ had produced “essentially zero evidence” of any crime, which is a pretty bold way of saying: this isn’t law enforcement, it’s a shakedown.

Trump has spent the past year publicly calling the guy he appointed in 2018 “stupid” and “too slow” for not tanking rates on command, and now—what a coincidence!—his administration is trying to criminalize cost overruns on a construction project. Meanwhile, GOP senator Thom Tillis briefly remembered what a spine is, warning that appealing the ruling will just delay confirming Trump’s preferred replacement, Kevin Warsh, who just happens to be more eager to do the president’s bidding on cheap money.

As a bonus authoritarian side quest, the Supreme Court is weighing Trump’s attempt to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook over mortgage-fraud allegations that look suspiciously selective, given that even his own Treasury secretary Scott Bessent allegedly played similar games on his paperwork. So the Trump White House is now trying to purge and intimidate central bankers with criminal probes and loyalty tests, then insisting this is all about good governance and not, say, turning the Federal Reserve into Mar-a-Lago’s in-house ATM.

Donald Trump has finally achieved his life’s dream: not just being president, but being king of an empire with his very own open-ended war in Iran. After spending his second term LARPing as a monarch – posting AI videos of himself in a crown dumping sludge on protesters, slapping his name on the Kennedy Center and the US Institute of Peace, demolishing the East Wing to build a ballroom, and getting his face on a semiq-dollar coin – he’s now upgraded from petty authoritarian cosplay to the real thing: a unilateral war built on zero accountability and a Supreme Court permission slip.

The road to this mess was paved with shredded safeguards. Trump gutted post-Watergate anti-corruption rules, fired 17 inspectors general, and bypassed the Senate to install loyalist prosecutors. Then he handed the keys of law enforcement to Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, turning DOJ and the FBI into his personal revenge squad. They dutifully tried to prosecute Letitia James and James Comey in what his own chief of staff Susie Wiles cheerfully admitted was just “score settling” – a phrase that used to be a red flag and is now apparently official White House policy branding.

Unlike Nixon, who at least had the decency to be stopped by a functioning Congress and a Supreme Court that still believed presidents weren’t literal sun gods, Trump enjoys a 6-3 court that blessed him with sweeping immunity for “official acts.” Sonia Sotomayor warned this could let a president order assassinations or deploy the military against political enemies; Trump heard that as a to-do list. He’s already sent troops into US cities, ordered illegal strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean, and used federal agencies as tools of retribution. The Iran war is just the logical next step of an imperial presidency that stopped pretending to be constrained by law.

So here we are: Congress sidelined on war and spending, watchdogs fired, prosecutors handpicked, the courts rubber-stamping “King Trump,” and the executive branch rebranded as one man’s stage show with live ammunition. The old fear was that the presidency might become too powerful. Trump and his enablers solved that debate by skipping straight to the sequel: what if we just don’t have a democracy anymore?