In Trumpled, award-winning journalist Ted Gutsche, Jr. highlights the main elements of journalism’s struggle not only with the direct challenges of the Trump administration, but the underlying social and cultural turns and positions of power that led to the alarming situation in Washington, D.C. during Trump’s tenure. He emphasizes that this is not just a response to the current political regime, but a call to conceptualize the actions of the press - and the possible legitimate concerns of press critiques - that creates a narrative of one of the biggest threats to normalized news understandings the world over.

From fake news to alternative facts, banning reporters from press conferences to leading a nationwide partisan attack against mainstream press, the rise of Trump and neoliberal democratic values has been at the center of socio-political change in the U.S. The implications are international and personal: concerns surrounding civil liberties, militarization of U.S. forces abroad and police at home, and at the center of public discourse today, the potentially destroyed role and existence of a free press in American Democracy.