At Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk twice performed an arm gesture that even many Germans recognized as a Nazi salute. Days later, he joked about the Holocaust in social media posts.
Pundits are busy debating Musk’s true intentions, even though he has a long record of aggressively amplifying far-right content on Twitter, including a recent live chat with the leader of Germany’s neo-Nazi party, the AfD.
But there’s no such debate in the Trump White House, where this week Musk got an official government email address, an office and, after some slippery maneuvering, unlimited control of an official government agency — without any of the financial disclosure and ethics rules that everyone else who runs an agency must submit to.
Meanwhile, here in the icy Midwest, Milwaukee meteorologist Sam Kuffel took to social media to comment on Musk’s Nazi moves and lost her job as a result.
“Dude Nazi saluted twice. TWICE. During the inauguration.”
That plus a few well-placed “F” words is what Kuffel wrote on her personal Instagram account earlier this week. A local right-wing radio host took notice and then Kuffel, who spent five years on the weather team at Milwaukee’s CBS affiliate WDJT/Channel 58, was quickly fired.
It was cowardly and wrong for Channel 58 and its parent company Weigel Broadcasting to take this action. I mean, it’s not like she said climate change is real or anything outrageous like that. She used a personal platform to note the outrageous behavior of Trump’s go-to guy.
I hope a less fearful news outlet gives Kuffel a highly visible platform. If she’s unafraid to criticize an unelected Nazi apologist, she’s surely going to deliver much needed clarity on the severe weather plaguing our country and world because of climate change.
It’s been a rough week for truth telling.
Much of the coverage of Trump’s inauguration ran away from Trump’s disgraceful history. Some of it even invented new realities like when CNN anchor Jake Tapper described the Trump-Vance 2024 campaign as “very disciplined,” apparently forgetting how the pair spent months accusing Haitian immigrants of eating peoples pets.
Later, we learned why Tapper was providing such out of character coverage. Media critic Oliver Darcy reported that “CNN chief Mark Thompson convened his top anchors for a meeting about inauguration coverage in which he signaled he did not wish to see them focus on Trump’s record as a convicted felon or the fact he was twice-impeached.”
Not surprisingly, the White House press corps is also busy cozying up to Trump. At the very first press encounter in the Oval Office on Monday, the assembled reporters were mostly quiet, even meek. Compare that to the way frequent screaming encounters with Joe Biden. But the Trump double standard is now in effect. When Trump signed the executive order calling for the removal of a sentence from the U.S. Constitution, no one asked a single question about it. Not one.
Nor has the press corps made a stink about the failure of the new White House press secretary to hold a single press briefing. Lawrence O’Donnell says it’s all part of a grotesque double standard:
“There is no White House briefing even scheduled, none. And there is not a single complaint from the White House press corps. They could turn on their cameras and scream at the empty podium, and televise that to show their outrage at not being allowed to ask a single question of the White House press secretary, but they would never do that in the Trump White House.”
That double standard was also on full display with much of the coverage of Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons vs. Biden preemptive pardons. Trump and his MAGA media have long sought to rewrite history by convincing us what we saw with our own eyes on Jan. 6 was really no big deal. No legitimate news organization should help spread that lie. Instead, do more reporting on exactly who these domestic terrorists are, precisely what they did on Jan. 6 to harm others and the threats they now pose.
Luckily, there have been some notable mainstream press wins this week as well. Before getting hidden away in a graveyard shift in apparent attempt to appease Trump, CNN’s Jim Acosta reminded everyone how powerful facts — including visual evidence — can be when confronting lying MAGA electeds. Some of the journalists at the embattled Washington Post broke the story about the startling Trump clamp down on all health and safety information from the nation’s health agencies. NBC News revealed more troubling evidence about Pete Hegseth’s history of violence, even as the journalists themselves were being threatened by Hegseth allies. Of course, smaller media outlets and individual journalists have been doing great work all along.
This has been a tumultuous week. Trump’s return to the White House has resulted in the start of a massive, and intentional upheaval that impacts every single one of us. Clearly, there is much news to be covered and that will continue to be the case for weeks, months and even years ahead. But that requires a press that is not afraid to ask hard questions — especially of Donald Trump.
It also demands that we support those who bravely speak truth to power including journalists, local news weather forecasters like Sam Kuffel and community leaders like the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington who called on Trump to show mercy on LGBTQ+ and migrant communities. Only then can we have a chance of outrunning this dangerous MAGA storm.
Jennifer Schulze is a Chicago journalist talking about journalism. You can read her columns at Heartland Signal and on her Substack “Indistinct Chatter.” Follow Jennifer on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social or Threads @newsjennifer_schulze.