U.S. President Donald Trump, next to Ivanka Trump's husband Jared Kushner, salutes as a U.S. flag is raised on a new flagpole installed on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 18, 2025.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s nephew shared a story about his uncle that explains much about his relationship with the media. According to Fred Trump III, the press – or lack thereof – is “the one thing” that can hurt Trump.
“My uncle may have found the one thing the media can take away from him: attention,” posted Fred Trump. “What if the media simply stopped giving him the attention he craves. I recently suggested this to Vaughn Hillyard of MS Now. I have a personal reason for thinking it might work. In 1990, after Donald had been on the front page of The New York Post for eight straight days with some very personally negative headlines, my family celebrated Father’s Day. Donald looked gloomy. I asked my uncle Robert why. ‘Don’t you get it?’ he said. ‘He wasn’t on the cover of the Post today.’ I have never forgotten that.”
Fred Trump’s post comes in response to his uncle banning Politico, CNN, and MS NOW from the White House for reporting what the president called “purposely negative stories.” This prompted a string of top media outlets to boycott covering the president’s press pool, including Trump’s usual ally Fox News. The banned networks also filed suit against Trump, which he seemed to immediately assume he would lose, railing on social media against the judge he himself appointed and referring to the media as “Third Rate Clowns.” He isn’t the only one who expects the judge to rule against him. “I appreciate Trump acknowledging, before any briefs are filed by the DOJ, that he is 100 percent going to lose at the District Court,” joked attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.
The president has long been publicly obsessed with his presence in the media, frequently boasting about the size of the TV viewership of his speeches. His nephew’s anecdote reveals that media coverage – whether good or bad – has been a lifelong fixation. When he appeared at a press event for the first time following the ban, he spoke at length but was unable to be heard due to missing microphones, which drew no shortage of jokes, including from the president’s niece, Mary Trump, who posted a video of her inaudible uncle, captioned simply: “Paradise.”
“Cover consequential news, of course,” added Fred Trump. “But not every Trump provocation deserves amplification. Sometimes, the most powerful response to a demand for attention is simply no attention.”
