Donald Trump was ecstatic on Friday when a correspondent from MAGA-boosting MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s media company tossed him a softball query about targeting “rogue judges,” telling the reporter he loved her for the “very nice question.”
The president once again gushing over a right-wing media personality fawning over him came just moments after a cameraman shouted “Trump 2028” following a question about plummeting border crossings, laying bare the changing dynamics of the White House press corps under the Trump administration.
Taking a victory lap on Friday after the Supreme Court handed him a “GIANT WIN” by curbing nationwide injunctions, which included federal judges blocking his executive order redefining “birthright citizenship,” Trump held a hastily arranged news conference at the White House briefing room.
“Instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation ... this was a colossal abuse of power, which never occurred in American history prior to recent decades, and we've been hit with more nationwide injunctions than were issued in the entire 20th century,” Trump bellowed at the presser.
While taking questions, he eventually pointed to Cara Castronuova, a former boxer and failed MAGA political candidate who now works as the White House correspondent for Lindell TV, the pro-Trump propaganda network that Lindell founded to help boost his 2020 election fraud conspiracies.
“On the 2020 election, is there any more information on the special prosecutor? So many Americans still have questions about the 2020 election,” she asked.
“And speaking of rogue judges, would you consider appointing somebody at the DOJ, maybe to investigate the judges that allowed for the political persecution of you, your family, and your supporters during the Biden Administration?”
Immediately smitten, the president reacted: “I love you! Who are you?” The president has taken to consistently asking reporters which outlet they work for, which then prompts him to decide whether he wants to engage with the journalist or insult them.
“I’m Cara from Lindell TV,” she replied.
“Well, it‘s a very nice question,” Trump continued, before preemptively denying that Castronuova was a plant due to the friendly nature of her question and the fact that she works for one of his most passionate supporters. “And it‘s not a setup. I have no idea who you are, but I appreciate that question.”
In true Trumpian fashion, the president unleashed a rambling answer in which he raged about the 2020 election being “rigged and stolen” while also congratulating himself on his 2024 victory, eventually going on a tangent about murderous asylum-seekers coming to the United States.
“Look at what this lunatic did,” Trump exclaimed, referencing former President Joe Biden. “Look at what he did. He opened our borders to people that were murderers!”Claiming that Biden let in people from “mental institutions on steroids,” Trump then did “The Weave” and started talking about how he should be credited with bringing peace around the world – which included a treaty between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
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“The Congo, you know, we have a great press conference coming up later. And it‘s the Congo and Rwanda,” he declared. “You know, they were fighting for years and it was machetes. It was vicious. It was as vicious – people‘s heads being chopped off.”After bouncing around on other disparate topics such as Russia, Iran and the ceasefire between India and Pakistan, which he once again falsely claimed he personally mediated, Trump turned back to Castronuava. “But I appreciate that question,” he concluded.
Shortly before the Lindell TV reporter drew the president’s praise, a cameraman made the president’s day. After a reporter noted that “illegal crossings at the border are zero now,” Trump repeated the remark before exclaiming: “Does everyone hear that? Zero!”
“Trump 2028!” an unknown camera operator shouted, prompting Trump to laugh: “Who’s that guy? He’s pretty good. I like him.”
Castronuova, meanwhile, had already made her presence felt in the White House before Thursday’s news conference. During a press briefing in April, she asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to share the president’s secret “fitness plan” because he looked “healthier than ever before.”
Part of a cohort of overtly MAGA “journalists” whose job essentially entails lobbing softballs at Trump and his press team while doing the administration’s bidding in order to maintain White House access, Castronuova and the rest of the “new media” who have been elevated by Leavitt reveals just how this White House has reshaped press coverage.
In recent months, the administration has sidelined Associated Press reporters because the wire service made the editorial decision to continue to call it the “Gulf of Mexico” despite the president’s executive order renaming the body of water. Leavitt has not only created the “new media” seat in the briefing room and within the rotating press pool, which is predominantly but not exclusively reserved for friendly conservative outlets, but she’s also held “influencer” briefings that were stocked with MAGA social media personalities.
