Can there be a democracy without a free press? We might be about to find out if Hegseth gets his wish.

At a press briefing on Friday, Politico reported that Defense Secretary (aka Secretary of “War”) Pistol Pete Hegseth spent the bulk of his prepared remarks, “attacking the press for publishing stories he called ‘fake news.’” While he did get to the subject at hand, a briefing on Trump’s Iran war, some of his statements smacked more of hyperbole than reality as he “portrayed the ongoing war as contained, even as Iranian attacks hit civilian energy production sites and oil tankers across the Gulf region and 11 U.S. and one French service member have died in the conflict.”

Politico went on to report,

Hegseth discounted any hard evidence of Iran laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz despite U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey suggesting Thursday that “the Iranians may have started mining in the Strait.”

Iranian attacks are diminishing, Hegseth said, with Iran’s ballistic missile fire having decreased by 90 percent since the opening days of the war last month. He said Tehran’s one-way attack drone usage was down 95 percent. Bottom line up front for the world to hear — and the press to actually admit-that the United States is decimating the radical Iranian regime’s military,” the former Fox morning show host said in his combative opening remarks, which focused most on his frustration with media reports.

Commercial shipping through the strait has all but ceased. Iranian drones have also already hit several tankers, prompting the cost of oil to rise across the globe. But Hegseth said the Pentagon has “been dealing with it” and disputed any need to worry.

Hegseth also said the Iranian defense industry has been hit hard, with “production lines, their military plants, their defense innovation centers” hit and “Iran’s leadership is in no better shape.”

“Desperate and hiding, they’ve gone underground, cowering - that’s what rats do,” he said.

Remove Pistol Pete’s braggadocio, and you’re left with precious little substantive or reality-based information.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, Trump’s current “favorite general (Take if from me, Danny Boy, your time, like all the other Trump favorite generals, will come) didn’t add much according to Politico, offering “little new information on the state of the conflict, or how the war will end.”

I guess all we need to do is wait for Trump to declare victory “when he feels like it.”

So why you might ask am I telling you all this. This briefing was no different than the ones before and, I will predict, the ones coming up. Except for one line from the opening paragraph of this story,

Hegseth spent the bulk of his prepared remarks, attacking the press for publishing stories he called ‘fake news.’

In this case, Hegseth attack was not the run-of-the-mill Trumpian style put-down. Hegseth didn’t emulate his boss by calling a question “stupid” or a questioner "a pig.” Actually, there’s no need for that incivility anymore since the defense department has “uncredentialed” most of the legitimate press, packing the room with the friendly toadies…er…reporters. No, this time Hegseth’s comment was much more ominous.

Referring to a recent CNN report questioning the Trump administration’s underestimating the war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz (a question raised by many other news organizations given on how the administration is actually handling the closing of the Strait), Hegseth called the report, “…a fundamentally unserious report,” going on to say, “The sooner [Paramount’s] David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

Translation: “I can’t wait until the Ellison’s buy CNN so along with Fox and Paramount’s own CBS*, we’ll have three propaganda outlets promoting our agenda.”

*(CBS legends Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid and Walter Cronkite are definitely not resting in peace since the eminently unqualified Bari Weiss was given control of CBS News by the Ellison’s.)

Why is this important? I’ll defer to Robert Reich.

CBS News is on the verge of becoming part of the largest pro-Trump media monopoly in America.

Two of the nation’s biggest news organizations-CBS News and CNN - along with CBS Entertainment (home to Stephen Colbert), Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart), HBO (John Oliver), and TikTok (where 1 out of 5 Americans now get their news) —are all about to become one giant mega-media monopoly under the control of Trump allies and suck-ups: multibillionaire Larry Ellison and Ellison’s son, David.

It could make Rupert Murdoch’s media empire of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post look scrupulous by comparison.

The truth is as simple as it is frightening: Trump cares more about TV news than he does about his presidency. In fact, TV news is his presidency. He chose his Cabinet members on the basis of their total loyalty to him and how they look and sound on TV. He spends all day watching coverage of himself on TV. And now he’s on the verge of having effective control over a gigantic media monopoly.

Think of it. The Ellison’s playing Goebbels to Trump’s Hitler spreading propaganda unencumbered by facts. Even more ironic given that Larry Ellison was born and raised a Jew who now rejects what he calls “the dogmas of Judaism.”

Can this consolidation be stopped? As Reich writes,

The Ellison’s ‘new mega-media monopoly would never pass muster if America still had antitrust enforcers. Media mergers and acquisitions deserve even stricter scrutiny than normal deals. But Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice is as likely to stop this deal as she is to enforce criminal laws against ICE agents.”

It’s up to the states, Reich argues,

You know who can stop this from happening? State attorneys general. They have the power to enforce antitrust laws and sue to stop this merger. They have legal standing and necessary resources to challenge this monstrosity.

Can they? Maybe, say the experts, but it’s no slam dunk.

As The Guardian reports,

“I definitely think they have a shot at stopping it if they pool their resources to make a challenge,” Alvaro Bedoya, who served on the Federal Trade Commission between 2022 and 2025, said in an interview.

In that vein, Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, said in a post on X that he was “in conversation” with fellow state attorneys general.

“Paramount/Warner Bros is not a done deal,” Bonta said in a statement after the deal was announced. “These two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny – the California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review.”

“A combined lawsuit by state attorneys general presents a real threat,” Bill Baer, who served as assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division of the US Department of Justice from 2013 to 2016, told the Guardian. “It’s harder for them to prevail if [the justice department] has said [the merger] is fine, but it’s not impossible. There are serious antitrust issues that in a normal world would involve further inquiry.”

A merger like this one is yet another step in America’s decline from democracy into an untethered autocracy supported by a compliant, propaganda-spewing media.

Is Reich correct that the states can stop it? Can Bonta really get a coalition of fellow state attorneys general to join him in a law suit? Or, will all this simply delay, not doom the merger, with the ultimate decision resting with the U.S. Supreme Court?

(Sorry, my glass half-empty persona compelled me to end with an “it’s up to SCOTUS” reference)

One last thought. The Trump administration’s war on fake news is not just limited to cabinet level appointees like Hegseth but to lower level bureaucrats as well. In an X post on Saturday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr quote-tweeted a Truth Social post by President Trump in which the president claimed that news coverage of the Iran war was “terrible” and “intentionally misleading” and accused traditional media organizations of actually wanting the U.S. to lose the war. In his own post, Carr threatened to revoke licenses if coverage doesn’t change in a way the Trump administration would approve of.

Just to be clear, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNOW and their like are CABLE NETWORKS and are not licensed by federal government as they don’t use the nation’s airwaves. I assume Carr knows this…or maybe he’s just as incompetent and ill-informed as so many other Trump appointees. But more important—let this Carr threat sink in: he will “…revoke licenses if COVERAGE DOESN’T CHANGE IN A WAY THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WOULD APPROVE OF!”

I guess if the Paramount/CNN merger is approved, Carr will have a few less licenses to worry about.