Power Grab/Fire anyone who can stop him
Trump called the New York Times’s Iran coverage “TREASONOUS” and said he would add it to his multibillion-dollar lawsuit
The June 21, 2026 post came during the U.S. war with Iran, which began February 28, 2026. Whether the lawsuit was amended to add the coverage is not verified.
What happened
On June 21, 2026, at 6:28 p.m. Eastern, Trump posted on Truth Social that the New York Times’s coverage of “a very battered and beat up Iran” relied on “FAKE & MADE UP ‘FACTS’” and was, “in my opinion, ‘TREASONOUS.’” He wrote: “I will be adding all of their false and ridiculous reporting to my multi Billion Dollar lawsuit against them. They are Criminals!”
The United States had been at war with Iran since February 28, 2026. The Times had been reporting on the course of the fighting, including casualties and the state of Iran’s military, in ways that contradicted the administration’s account.
The lawsuit Trump referred to is the defamation case he filed against the Times in federal court in Florida in September 2025, seeking $15 billion. It concerns the paper’s coverage of his business career and the 2024 campaign. A judge struck the first complaint as improper and Trump refiled. Whether the Iran coverage was added to that case is not confirmed.
Who benefited
Trump used the accusation to discredit wartime reporting that undercut his claims about Iran. His legal team gains leverage from a pending multibillion-dollar case regardless of its merits. Other outlets took note of the cost of reporting against the administration’s war narrative.
Who wanted something
Trump wanted it, in his own words. The administration’s wider campaign against the Times in the same month included grand-jury subpoenas to its reporters from U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton’s office and Pentagon restrictions under Pete Hegseth. Officials with power to act reinforced the threat.
Who lost out
The New York Times faces an open-ended lawsuit the president says he will expand to cover whatever it reports about the war. Readers depend on independent accounts of a conflict the government has been reluctant to describe accurately. The line between criticizing coverage and branding it a crime was crossed.
Why it matters
A president at war called a newspaper’s reporting on that war treason and said he would use his personal lawsuit to punish it. The statement is on the record, time-stamped, in his own words.
Sources Trump's Truth (archive of Truth Social posts, Defending Democracy Together) (primary)Truth Social (primary)