Warring with the media is a big part of President Donald Trump’s schtick.

Attacking the press as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people” fosters his image as the victim of a vast establishment conspiracy, in which the mainstream media plays a leading role.

It works both to rally his supporters and to discredit legitimate criticism of the president’s actions and behavior.

Other presidents have found advantage in attacking the media. Richard Nixon was notorious for villainizing the press, and his disgraced vice president, Spiro Agnew, labeled reporters “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Trump, in his second go-round in the Oval Office, is going deeper by using the power of the federal government to trample the First Amendment.

The new president is executing a vindictive campaign to not just silence and undermine the credibility of media outlets, but to punish them for slights by denying them access, dragging them into court and threatening them with regulatory action.

What Trump is doing is a disservice to Americans, who rely on the free flow of information to be active participants in our democracy. His attacks range from frivolous to subversive.

This week, an Associated Press reporter was banned from the Oval Office press pool because the AP refuses to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, as Trump dictated in an executive order. The AP, which did go along with the name change of Alaska’s Mt. Denali to Mt. McKinley, explained it kept its style on the Gulf because an international body, not the president, names international bodies of water and other geographic features. It said it would include references to Trump seeking to rename it the Gulf of America.

That’s petty stuff, unbefitting a president, as is his directive to federal agencies to cancel their subscriptions to Politico and other news sources. Same goes for the Pentagon’s decision to give the seats of reporters the administration abhors to more friendly, and more conservative, journalists.

More worrisome are the legal efforts against outlets for spreading misinformation or defaming Trump. Unfortunately, too many are passively playing along to further their own interests.

ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit claiming anchor George Stephanopoulos defamed him by mischaracterizing the verdict in the civil case filed by a woman who charged Trump assaulted her.

CBS News is reportedly considering settling a $10 billion lawsuit brought by Trump claiming his campaign was damaged when the network favorably edited an interview with his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. And that’s after agreeing to hand over the unedited tapes and transcripts of the interview to the chairman of the FCC for his review.

Meta, the company that owns Facebook, settled for $25 million a lawsuit Trump filed after the social media platform suspended his account in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Even X, owned by Trump confidante Elon Musk, ponied up $10 million to resolve a lawsuit claiming it violated the president’s free speech rights in censoring his X account.

Many of the electronic outlets are subject to federal licensing regulations. The settlements of lawsuits they arguably could have won with a First Amendment defense raise concern they are sacrificing their journalistic integrity for more favorable treatment by regulators.

For example, Paramount, parent company of CBS, is looking for Trump administration support for its merger with Skydance.

Confrontational relationships between presidents and the press are normal, and perhaps even desirable. Citizens aren’t well served when the media is too cozy with the occupant of the Oval Office.

But the power of the government should never be used to intimidate, punish or silence the media for its coverage. What Trump is doing is an unacceptable abuse of the First Amendment and threatens the free flow of information that serves as a critical guardrail for our democracy.”

— The Detroit News