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After US troops swarmed into Venezuela, seizing the country’s president and his wife, there was little to be heard from the Pentagon.
Typically, it would be a time for defense officials to talk to the Pentagon press corps: a group of journalists made up of some of the most talented reporters in the US. The Pentagon could have been expected to be held to account over what has been criticized as a violation of international law.
Under the Trump administration, that didn’t happen.
The press corps was decimated late last year. Almost all credentialed reporters from traditional media companies surrendered their Pentagon press passes in October, rather than sign a 21-page Pentagon document that set restrictions on journalistic activities.
Into that void, the Pentagon credentialed dozens of pro-Trump rightwing online figures, creating a distinctly unserious press corps which includes someone from a pillow salesman’s nascent media company, and a man from a “maritime news” website who has openly fawned over Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary.
This new group of reporters – nominally supposed to hold Trump and the Pentagon to account – reacted much as one might expect after the US captured Nicolás Maduro in a pre-dawn raid.
The Gateway Pundit, a conservative outlet known for publishing lies about the 2020 presidential election, wrote that it was a “stunning operation by US forces”. It framed the debate over the legality and morality over invading a foreign country and seizing its president as “conservative patriots supporting Donald J Trump and the leftist globalists denouncing it”.
John Konrad, Pentagon press corps member and CEO of gCaptain, which is a maritime news website, urged people on X to “give ALL your thanks to the military members who risked their lives capturing Maduro”. The Washington Post noted that last month Konrad said Hegseth had a “thousand-watt lightbulb of charisma”.
Others followed suit. Rightwing blogger Breanna Morello wrote: “I’m not normally for regime change strikes, but there’s something very endearing about bombing Hugo Chávez’s dead body.” Cam Higby, a rightwing influencer who, like Morello, is in the Pentagon press corps, wrote in the hours after Maduro’s capture: “The White House account better be cooking up a sick edit.” Higby has claimed Trump deserves the Nobel peace prize “more than anyone else”, and wrote in October: “Friendly reminder Trump hasn’t even been in office one year yet. We’re just getting started. The violent left should hunker down. It’s going to be a long winter for you.”
Lindell TV, an online streaming channel founded by Mike Lindell, a conspiracy theorist and CEO of MyPillow, was among those to join the Pentagon press corps late last year. Two days after Maduro was captured, LindellTV published an article headlined: “FOUR reasons why ‘Operation Absolute Resolve’ simply ROCKED.”
“It’s about time the world was reminded of the absolute superiority and skills of the US military in action,” the article said. It added: “While screeching leftists, squawking media pundits, and clickbait commentators may try to paint the Venezuelan mission as an unnecessary American regime-change mission, there are many ways that this military operation represented nothing but success for the country.”
In order to become a member of the Pentagon press corps, this new, almost entirely rightwing group of media figures had to agree to restrictions which essentially prevented them from conducting any serious journalism. The constraints include requiring news organizations to pledge they will not obtain unauthorized material – in effect limiting journalists to reporting on officially provided information – and agreeing to limits on journalists entering certain parts of the Pentagon.
Perhaps their response shouldn’t have been too surprising.
“The influencers, they sound like these armchair warriors who wrote their blogs at home and parroted a lot of what the military said,” Melissa Wall, a journalism professor at California State University, Northridge, told Wired.
“Are they actually getting any real information? Are they just taking press releases or whatever is given to them?”
In a statement to the Guardian, White House press secretary Kingsley Wilson said: “The former Pentagon press corps that self-deported from the building were almost entirely left-wing people who acted as activists on behalf of the Democrat Party.
“The new Pentagon press corps is dedicated to telling the truth and actually holding the Department of War accountable to the American people through their reporting. Despite no longer having left-wing activist reporters in the building, Secretary Hegseth held a globally covered press conference with President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and others at Mar-a-Lago hours after the success of Operation Absolute Resolve, taking questions for 30 minutes in front of a broad spectrum of media.”
Yet the president’s continued aggressive posturing means concerns over the Pentagon’s servile press corps are unlikely to go away.
Trump now has his sights set on Greenland – this week the White House said using the military to seize the Danish territory is “always an option”. Trump has also threatened to seize the Panama canal. With a pugnacious president in office, the need for an intelligent, sober press corps is paramount: the current rightwing incarnation appears to be anything but.
