Longtime Trump pal unloads on his 'unhinged' new 'final battle' ad

U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to board Air Force One for travel to Tennessee from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., September 26, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

On Monday, one of President Donald Trump’s oldest friends and allies declared that the administration’s new "final battle" ad campaign is “unhinged.” This is the appraisal of television personality Geraldo Rivera, who asserts that Trump’s attacks against the media are not only backfiring, but unconstitutional.

“'This is the final battle,'” Rivera quotes from a pro-Trump, government-funded ad that aired over the weekend. “We hear the President’s ominous voiceover, as the video shows him striding resolutely down a scary-looking corridor. ‘Final battle?’ Against whom? Iran? Russia? The Houthis? What did I miss?” According to Rivera, the President’s “extraordinary, taxpayer-funded dirge” used “apocryphal language to conjure the boogeymen of the boomer generation, communists, Marxists and fascists, all evil operators seeking to inflict pain and suffering on the American people. But wait. This time it isn’t terrorists or murderers who are the targets of the President’s wrath, it is the news media.”

“'We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country,'" Rivera again quotes from the ad. “'We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.'” As Rivera notes, “The Evil doers being targeted by this president are the ones wielding microphones and reporter’s notebooks. On this politically quiet Sunday afternoon, as the East Coast hunkered down to weather a nasty nor-easter, the President’s unhinged attack was shocking, even for Donald Trump.”

It came in the wake of Trump’s failed attempt to ban the press from the White House, a move that Rivera writes was “badly timed as it was unconstitutional. He wanted maximum exposure of his grand summit with the Chinese leader. He ended up playing in the dark to an audience of nobody.” After the ban blew up in his face, Trump doubled down on his attack on the media by banning CNN from Air Force One, instead allowing on “ideologically appropriate reporters from Real America’s Voice and the My Pillow guy’s LindellTV.” And as Rivera notes, Trump capped this off with a post to Truth Social, ranting in all caps, “Fake news should not be allowed in the White House. It has gone on far too long at a tremendous cost to our country.”

Then came the ads declaring that Trump was waging the “final battle” against the media, prompting criticism from his old ally Rivera. This isn’t the first time Rivera has expressed his disapproval of the president. Recently, for example, he took to social media to plead with Trump to give up on his efforts to put his name on the Kennedy Center. “There is no honor in that, only spite,” asserted Rivera, who has been friends with Trump since the 1970s. Now, he warns that Trump can’t be allowed to “dictate the content of the news that is being reported. That is not the ‘final battle,’ but it is worth fighting.”

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