The major elements of Donald Trump's conflict with the media come as a result of perceived left-wing bias in corporately run media. Recently, ABC settled a $15 million dollar lawsuit for defamation of his character following the 2024 US election.

In 2020 the Committee to Protect Journalists published a special report by Leonard Downie Jr. titled "The Trump Administration and the Media".^[1] In the very beginning the report stated:

Trump has habitually attacked the news media in rallies, responses to reporters’ questions, and many hundreds of tweets. He has repeatedly called the press “fake news,” “the enemy of the people,” “dishonest,” “corrupt,” “low life reporters,” “bad people,” “human scum” and “some of the worst human beings you’ll ever meet.”^[1]
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More than 600 of Trump’s tweets targeted specific news organizations, led by The New York Times, CNN, NBC and MSNBC, Fox News and The Washington Post. He called the Times, among other slurs, “fake,” “phony,” “nasty,” “disgraced,” “dumb,” “clueless,” “stupid,” “sad,” “failing,” and “dying.” He characterized the Post as “fake,” “crazy,” “dishonest,” “phony,” and “disgraced.”^[1]

From his inauguration in January 2017 through October 15, 2019, Trump called the news media the "enemy of the people" 36 times on Twitter.^[3]

In 2012, former Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell gave a speech at a conference sponsored by Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group, in which he called the media "the enemy of the American people". The term was promoted by far-right media organization Breitbart News, one of whose major stockholders is Robert Mercer who employed Caddell as a contractor since 2013 and was one of Donald Trump's biggest financial backers.^[4] In February 2017, hours after meeting Caddell while touring a Boeing aircraft plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, Trump said on Twitter that The New York Times, NBC News, ABC, CBS, and CNN were "fake news" and "the enemy of the American People".^[5] On February 24, he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference, "A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people."^[6][7]

In a June 2018 rally in South Carolina, Trump called journalists "fake newsers" and "the enemy of the people".^[8][9] On July 19, following the critical reaction to his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 15 July 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, Trump tweeted "The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media." The New York Times noted Trump's use of this phrase during his "moments of peak criticism" and use of the term by Nazi and Soviet propaganda.^[10] On August 2, after Trump tweeted "FAKE NEWS media... is the enemy of the American People",^[11][12] multiple international institutions such as the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights criticized Trump for his attacks on the free press.^[13] On August 16, the United States Senate, in a symbolic rebuke to Trump, passed by unanimous consent a resolution affirming that the media is not "the enemy of the people" and reaffirming "the vital and indispensable role the free press serves."^[14][15][16]

In August 2019, when journalist Jonathan Karl asked him if he feared that his supporters would interpret this as a justification for violence, Trump replied: "I hope they take my words to heart. I believe the press is the enemy of the people."^[17]

In March 2024, Trump, who had previously supported a congressional bill that would ban TikTok in the United States, said he now opposed a ban because it would help Facebook, and that he considered "Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media".^[18][19][20]

After losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump persistently undermined the election results in the weeks leading to Biden's inauguration.^[21][22] His tweets played a role in inciting the January 6, 2021, attack of the US Capitol during the formal counting of electoral votes.^[23] Though the Senate eventually acquitted Trump during his second impeachment, social media companies swiftly banned him. Facebook and Instagram banned him for two years.^{[24][25][26][27]} Twitter permanently suspended his @realDonaldTrump handle, followed by the official account of his campaign (@TeamTrump)^[28][29] and the accounts of allies who posted on his behalf, like Trump campaign digital director Gary Coby.^[30] Twitter also deleted three tweets by Trump on the @POTUS handle^[31] and barred access to the presidential account until Joe Biden's inauguration. During the first week that Trump was banned on several platforms (January 9–15), election-related misinformation declined 73 percent, according to research analytics firm Zignal Labs.^[32]

• Pablo J. Boczkowski, Zizi Papacharissi eds. (2018) Trump and the Media
• Catherine Happer, Andrew Hoskins, William Merrin eds. · 2018 Trump’s Media War