内容摘要：Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

It’s the latest in a series of skirmishes with the media, long a target of Donald Trump and his supporters. The Defense DepartmentNPR, NBC, the Times and Politico from their Pentagon workspaces, and Trump has

CBS’ “60 Minutes” for its handling of an interview with former opponent Kamala Harris last fall. Free press advocates are also concerned aboutwhose charter guarantees its editorial freedom.This time, though, is a bit different. By linking federal government spending to the media, Trump has bundled two of his long-favored political targets into one rhetorical package — denouncing a common practice as untoward while offering no supporting evidence for his assertions.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the government had paid more than $8 million for Politico subscriptions and that Elon Musk’s government efficiency team “is working on canceling those payments.” That quickly set off a social-media maelstrom and a hunt by online sleuths for other evidence of taxpayer spending on the news.“The U.S. government must stop paying for media subscriptions. Now,” Richard Grenell, Trump’s special mission envoy, posted on X.

Trump, on his Truth Social platform, complained about payments to the “FAKE NEWS MEDIA” for creating good stories about Democrats. “Did the New York Times receive money??? Who else did??? THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL,” he wrote.

And at a national prayer breakfast at the Capitol on Thursday morning, Trump touted the efforts to look into the media spending. “We’re catching them left and right,” Trump said. “We’re catching them. We’re catching them to a point where they don’t know what the heck is going on. They can’t believe they’re getting caught.”from running in the August presidential vote and suspended the candidacy of the other main leftist contender, immediately vaulting

into the ranks of front-runners despite its unpopularity.The moves targeted the two strongest leftist challengers to Arce’s nominee: Morales, Bolivia’s

who governed the country from 2006 until his ouster in 2019, and Andrónico Rodríguez, the young Senate president who hails from Morales’ rural coca-growing bastion.Both Morales and Rodríguez vowed to fight the decisions and condemned them as a blow to the Andean nation’s fragile democracy.