President Trump didn’t like what he was seeing on his TV screens these past few weeks, so he decided to change the story.
President Donald Trump successfully hijacked the news cycle, using a staged, high-profile “crime crackdown” in Washington, D.C., to push coverage of the Epstein files and the unpopular Republican budget bill out of the spotlight. During the critical 72-hour window from August 11 to 13, nearly two-thirds of all broadcast mentions (65%) amplified and parroted Trump’s preferred frame of chaos, disorder, and crime, while only 27.7% characterized his actions as authoritarian overreach.
Our review of 19,363 broadcast mentions found that, despite the unprecedented federal takeover of a local police force, outlets across the political spectrum rarely engaged in sustained scrutiny of its legality, historical precedent, or the racialized targeting at its core. When news coverage did include authoritarian framing—highlighting Trump’s overreach or the move’s use as a distraction—it was typically limited to brief quotes from local officials or short editorial asides, overshadowed by the frequent repetition of the administration’s talking points. This reflects not only individual editorial choices but a broader structural failure in the press to identify and describe democratic erosion when it is presented in the familiar language of “law and order” and reinforced by carefully staged displays of state power.
This report examines both the mechanics of that diversion and the effects of the media’s framing: two major accountability stories—the handling of the Epstein files and the Republican budget bill—were pushed aside, an extraordinary use of executive power was normalized, and the residents of Washington, D.C., most of them Black and Latino, were positioned as the backdrop for a display that served neither public safety nor democratic governance.
