Image: White House photo by Molly Riley (public domain, U.S. government work)
WASHINGTON — In a ruling legal scholars are calling “bold,” “historic,” and “definitely getting reversed by lunch,” U.S. District Judge Harriet P. Wendell on Wednesday issued a gag order barring President Donald Trump from using the phrase “fake news” to describe legacy media outlets.
The 94-page order, printed in a font Wendell described as “emotionally safe,” found that the phrase causes “irreparable harm to journalists’ feelings” and has “a chilling effect on the press’s ability to be believed.” Wendell cited no specific story that was actually true, explaining from the bench that accuracy “is not the standard here. Vibes are.”
Under the order, Trump may still criticize the press as long as he uses court-approved alternatives, including “fact-challenged reporting,” “news with a different relationship to reality,” and “the Differently Accurate Media.” Each violation carries a $10,000 fine, payable to a legal defense fund for anonymous sources.
Wendell, who once ruled that a parking ticket violated a Prius’s civil rights, said the First Amendment “protects all speech except speech I find upsetting, which is a separate category I created this morning.”
When asked how the order would be enforced, Wendell said a court-appointed monitor will follow the president to rallies carrying a buzzer. “Every time he says it, we buzz,” she said. “It’s modeled on Family Feud.”
Legacy outlets celebrated with a series of triumphant headlines, all of which were quietly corrected three hours later.
At press time, Trump had called the ruling “very, very fake,” prompting Wendell to schedule an emergency hearing on whether “very” counts.
