CNN, MS NOW, and Politico File Lawsuit Against President Trump
A Prince Who Quarrels With the Heralds
When a ruler under siege turns his weapons on the press that reports his movements, he wagers his state on appearances without mastering the economy of fear, hatred, and law that governs them.
The scene is clear enough for our purposes. A president with approval below forty percent, burdened by economic anxieties from a war in Iran and facing midterm elections, prepares to depart his palace for the United Nations. The great television networks have agreed that CNN will act as the shared pool, the single pair of eyes through which many will see his departure and appearance in New York. At that very moment, CNN, MS NOW, and Politico accuse him in court of violating their constitutional rights. Thus, the escort who should magnify his dignity instead drags him before the judges. When the herald sues the prince, the real combat is over narrative.
In my time, to control the proclamation of a decree, one seized the town crier; here, one shapes the lens through which millions watch in an instant. As I argued in *The Prince*, most men judge more by the eye than by the hand, because everyone can see but few can touch. So a modern ruler’s media relations are not ornament, but a kind of auxiliary army of appearance. When these auxiliaries rebel, supported by other large networks, the prince discovers he has leaned on forces whose interests are not his own. Whoever relies on soldiers who carry cameras instead of pikes must still remember the old rule on mercenaries and auxiliaries: power borrowed is power owed, and payment comes due at the least convenient hour.
Let us begin from his necessity. With low favor and elections approaching, the ruler’s first imperative is to maintain the state. He must raise his standing or at least prevent further decay. War abroad adds uncertainty at home, and every procession to the United Nations becomes theater in which he can either appear as master of events or as their captive. In such a moment, any prince will be tempted to constrain hostile coverage, to punish those he thinks twist his image, and to favor those who praise him. The question is not whether such impulses exist; sermons cannot extinguish them. The question is whether he satisfies them with prudence, or indulges them in ways that increase his dangers.
Here the lawsuit is a signal. When several major outlets allege constitutional violations, they do more than seek a remedy for themselves; they invite judges, rival powers, and the public to pronounce on the ruler’s conduct toward the press. In a republic, this press plays a role similar to that of tribunes: noisy, partial, sometimes reckless, but often the last barrier before outright corruption of the orders. When I wrote in the *Discourses* that a people is wiser and more constant than a prince, I had in mind precisely this multiplication of eyes and tongues. To make open enemies of such organs, without either subduing them or reconciling them, is to stir tumults that neither side can easily contain.
A prince may, from necessity, use severity. If he believes certain outlets truly threaten the safety of the state, he can attempt to shut them out, but then he must do so wholly, swiftly, and with a legal reasoning that others can at least fear, if not love. Ill-used mercy lets disorder grow; ill-used severity creates hatred without security. From what is reported, we see neither clean reconciliation nor total exclusion, but a quarrel that spills into courts while pool coverage is still expected to proceed. This is the middle course I always condemn: to offend the great powers of communication just enough to unite them, and just before you most need them, is to buy the costs of war and the costs of peace at once.
Nor should a prudent ruler confuse fortuna with virtù in this field. As I once wrote, in W. K. Marriott’s translation, “fortune is the arbiter of one half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.” Favorable coverage in calmer years, a divided media landscape, the distraction of foreign crises – these are the floods of fortune. The dykes and barriers are the institutions and habits you prepare when the waters are low: clear rules for access, consistent treatment of critics, credible legal justifications. If, instead of building such dykes, a prince alternates between courting and insulting the press, he should not complain when, at the moment of need, the waters join against him.
One might object that confronting hostile media is itself a show of strength, that the people admire a ruler who fights those they already distrust. Sometimes this is true. Yet even then, prudence demands you choose your enemies with precision and your instruments with care. To turn a dispute over access into a constitutional drama is to invite judges and voters alike to join the fray; to quarrel with the very outlet tasked with presenting your solemn departure is to darken your own stage. In these conflicts, the effectual truth is simple: if you cannot either master the narrative or live peacefully with those who shape it, sooner or later they will write your exit scene for you.
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From the works cited
- The Prince — The economy of violence and the feared/loved calculus: better feared than loved if one must choose, but never hated — fear rests on the prince's will, love on the fickle will of others.
- The Prince — Arms of one's own versus mercenaries and auxiliaries: power borrowed is power owed, and it will be collected at the worst moment.
- The Prince — Occasione: the new prince needs the matter (a crisis, a vacuum) and the virtù to shape it — opportunity without capacity is a tragedy, capacity without opportunity a biography nobody writes.