Establishment Media Anguish over Trump’s ‘Sledgehammer’ Approach: ‘Simply Can’t Cover Everything’

Members of the establishment media admit they are overwhelmed with President Donald Trump’s wave of hourly news dumps.

The volume of news appears to be traumatizing corporate newsrooms and media personalities who are seemingly accustomed to a president who hid from the press for four years.

Publications “are cognizant of the fact that, much like their larger peers, they simply can’t cover everything,” CNN’s Liam Reilly told readers Wednesday. 

Just on Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. would take control of Gaza, slapped Iran with sanctions, offered to purge the CIA, and continued to dismantle the USAID. Wednesday is set to be another big day with an executive order to restore women’s sports.

“There is so much winning out of the Trump White House that the mainstream legacy media can’t keep up with it,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Brian Stelter, who claimed four years ago that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, reported in his morning newsletter about Trump’s “sledgehammer” approach and captured members of the media complaining about it:

Why the “sledgehammer” instead of the scalpel? “I think it’s just laziness,” CNN’s Abby Phillip said on NewsNight. “Hey, it’s easy, and you get the headlines you’re looking for.” And, Josh Rogin added, the sledgehammer approach is “harder to combat because it’s so crazy and so fast and so illegal.”

Tanya Ballard Brown, the executive editor of Government Executive, tried to console her fellow establishment media journalists. “You just have to remember that the goal is to wear us down — so don’t get worn down,” she told CNN.

Other opinionists appear apprehensive about going to work. “I’m getting really tired of waking up in the morning and knowing it’s probably going to be a good day for Bad Guy,” New York Times columnist Gail Collins complained.

Rex Huppke whined in a USA Today opinion piece that Trump’s return to the White House is living a “nightmare over and over again” that produces “shock.” He advised readers to “protest where you can” and help “those harmed” by Trump’s actions.

Americans’ trust in the establishment media to report current events “fully, accurately and fairly” plummeted to a record low in 2024, Gallup polling found in October. The decline in trust indicates the media lost credibility due to pushing false narratives, such as Hunter Biden’s laptop story, Russian collusion, the source of the 2020 pandemic, the January 6 investigation, and numerous hoaxes.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.