Brian Stelter's Stilted Take on Trump Somehow Ending Democracy

Tim Graham on Mar 20, 2026

CNN's Brian Stelter exemplifies the media pattern of constantly claiming Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy that must be curbed. The comedy never ends. Trump was supposedly going to end democracy throughout his first term, and the fact that democracy never ended never slows Stelter & Co. down.

On March 18, Stelter played up a new report out of Sweden that America is "rapidly autocratizing" in Trump's second term. It looks like the Democrats are going to try to make "End of Democracy" a campaign issue again in the midterms, even though it accomplished nothing in 2024. But they're hoping to use it to keep their voters motivated for the midterms.

Screechers like the hosts of "The View" on ABC routinely suggest Trump's going to cancel elections, and no liberal "fact-checker" moves a muscle. Leftists spent most of 2024 suggesting Trump was going to ruin the 2024 election. He only "ruined" it by winning. Stelter acknowledged: "Trump loyalists often dispute these concerns by pointing out that Trump won reelection democratically. But the researchers are focusing on what Trump has done with his power since then."

The Swedish think tank here is called "V-Dem," or the Varieties of Democracies Institute. It's quite obvious they have a hyperbolically anti-Trump tilt. Stelter linked to an article in The Guardian, the socialist British newspaper. It carried the unsubtle headline "'Trump is aiming for dictatorship'. That's the verdict of the world's most credible democracy watchdog."

Did you notice the "most credible" experts are the ones who insist Trump's "aiming" for tyranny?

Stelter then happily followed up with a report from Freedom House. "Among countries rated Free, the United States, Bulgaria, and Italy have experienced the year's largest declines," their new report claims. Among the factors weakening democracy in the U.S.: "Growing pressure on people's ability to engage in free expression."

What you often find in these reports is that it's "autocratic" to defund PBS and NPR. It's "authoritarian" to end federal support for "DEI" initiatives in education. Red states rolling back "trans rights" is somehow tyrannical. Even seeking to deport illegal immigrants is apparently anti-democratic -- as if illegal immigrants must be left in the country for the U.S. to be rated a "free" country. All of this has a nasty leftist bias.

None of this bilge on the Left acknowledges that the Media Research Center identified the Biden administration's 57 initiatives to censor our speech. But when the Left censors conservative viewpoints -- or something like opposing viewpoints on the COVID pandemic -- that's somehow not "authoritarian"; it's a positive trend, a victory for "reliable sources." When Democrat presidents crack down on "dissenting voices" and attack conservative media outlets, that's just "accountability."

Stelter and his allies constantly suggest that when Democrats are having their policies repealed, it's "democratic backsliding." The Left is used to maximizing its power through taxpayer-funded propaganda in "public" broadcasting and academe, and Trump definitely removed government support.

Anything that pushes back on leftist media is tyrannical. Trump suing media outlets for bad reporting is "authoritarian." Media owners like Jeff Bezos deciding The Washington Post won't endorse Kamala Harris for president is malignant "self-censorship." It doesn't matter at all that the leftist media never stop crusading against Trump in the most "prestigious" media outlets.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr suggesting a probe into the massive leftist guest tilt on the late-night comedy shows of "The View" is authoritarian. It's not undemocratic for these shows to only offer platforms to the Democrats. Stelter and his favorite think tanks have a "heads I win, tails you lose" calculus on how democracy should be defined.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.