Topic of the day
Trump TV is on air!
Trump now has his own CNN. It isn’t called CNN. It’s called **TRUMP TV: The Essentials Station**, streaming 24/7 on the White House YouTube channel. The slogan reads like a late-night cafeteria poster: the administration’s greatest hits, in one place, always. Promised.
The timing is almost too neat. Friday: Trump posts on Truth Social that CNN, MS NOW and Politico are banned from the White House for spreading “fiction and lies.” Saturday: credentials gone, access gone. Monday: the three outlets sue. The same day, the TV pool — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN — stops joint coverage in protest. Monday, 7 p.m. Eastern: TRUMP TV goes live. Call that a coincidence if you’ve never watched a reality show to the credits.
The new channel’s first showcase wasn’t a fresh briefing. It was Trump’s July 3, 2026 Mount Rushmore speech — a summer rerun as opening night. The White House says not every big moment made it to television before. Some moments now make it twice, three times, on a loop, until the algorithm surrenders.
The Monday before supplies the punchline. CNN was due to run the TV pool, the unglamorous rotation that keeps fifty crews from tripping over the Oval Office flowers. The other networks refused to cover for CNN. At the new White House helipad dedication, Trump was barely audible: rotors, wind, no pool mics. America got static. Hours later a round-the-clock channel appeared, solving the problem by blasting old speeches in stereo. Problem noted. Problem rebranded. Problem streamed.
TRUMP TV is not a newsroom. It is a government greatest-hits playlist from an administration that has walked off everyone else’s set and kept the remote. Speeches, appearances, announcements, “updated in real time.” Independent questions are not on the schedule. Follow-ups are a commercial break. Fact-checks can come back later; the loop is busy. A politics professor put it simply: Trump has long preferred to narrate the Trump story himself. Plenty of people post only the flattering baptism photos. Few launch a news network to do it.
In court, CNN, MS NOW and Politico call the ban a First Amendment and due-process problem: no hearing, no clear standard, just “fake news.” The White House answers that access is a privilege, not a right; the three allegedly broke conduct rules; presidents have always had favorite reporters. In plainer English: if you don’t clap, you don’t get in. Judges will decide whether that survives the Constitution. The outlets were told they could contest the ban by Friday — after they had already been locked out Saturday. Eviction first, paperwork later.
Gavin Newsom called it state television. A White House staffer shot back that, by that logic, Mark Kelly’s Twitter feed would be state media too. That only works if a senator with a phone and a 24-hour government stream looping Mount Rushmore are the same product. They aren’t. One is a man with a smartphone. The other is a channel with a slogan, a livestream, a website section and the energy of a shopping network that sells speeches instead of pans.
Media ethicist Jane Kirtley called the move unprecedented: the public is entitled to independently tested information. That vanishes when the government owns the camera, the cut and the playlist. What remains is control of the first impression. Taking the microphone and turning on your own channel is not “no cameras.” It is “my camera.”
The branding is the program. CNN stands for Cable News Network. TRUMP TV stands for Trump. Midnight breaking news is the 4 p.m. speech with different subtitles in the viewer’s head. When someone asks an inconvenient question — see Kaitlan Collins at the U.N. — the year’s sharpest media critique is: you shouldn’t have been there. That isn’t an interview. That’s a bouncer with a press pass.
There is an almost touching faith in the medium. Throw out the press because the stories sting, then name a YouTube channel “Essentials Station,” and you are betting the studio was the problem, never the content. It’s a restaurant that bans critics, relabels the menu Greatest Hits and screens the same schnitzel for 24 hours. Two kinds of viewers stay: the ones who loved the schnitzel anyway, and the ones checking whether anyone notices the fries are from July.
Reach is not a joke. The White House channel has millions of subscribers; the stream quickly crossed a million views. That is a distribution warehouse, not a garage. The harder question is who it converts. People who already hate CNN don’t need a second CNN. People who don’t hate CNN will not watch TRUMP TV and suddenly understand the helipad. They will understand the business model.
So the evening split-screen is simple. On one side, the lawsuit. On the other, the loop. In the middle, a president who treats news like a hotel review site: five stars stay, one star disappears. Legacy networks film through the glass from the sidewalk. Sometimes they hear the rotor. Sometimes they hear a speech from eleven weeks ago. Both count as information. Both count as television. Both are very 2026.
Yes: Trump has his own CNN now — no pesky correspondents, no pesky follow-ups, no microphone that belongs to someone else. Just the essentials. The big moments. Again. Until the next big moment arrives, or the same one starts over. If you change the channel, that isn’t media criticism. That’s a viewer noticing state TV doesn’t have to be gray. It can have gold letters, an eagle in the logo, and Mount Rushmore at 3 a.m. Good night. And now, the repeat.
Entertainment of the day
Turn once – Nice & Sexy Bikinigirls Turn a little Around
Cooking of the day
Korean Cheese Corn Dogs
A truly extraordinary snack you can make at home: Korean Cheese Corn Dogs.
This is street food with wow factor – a crispy golden shell, a sausage-and-cheese combo inside, and that long, stretchy mozzarella pull when you take a bite. It looks like it came from a food truck, tastes sweet-salty, and is surprisingly doable.
Ingredients (for 4 pieces)
Filling
- 4 Wiener sausages / hot dogs
- 200–250 g mozzarella (preferably firm, low-moisture, cut into sticks or thick logs)
- 4 wooden skewers or chopsticks
Batter / coating
- 150 g flour
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 egg
- approx. 100 ml milk (add gradually; the batter should be thick)
- Panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
- Oil for frying
- extra sugar for dusting
- Ketchup + mustard for serving
Method
- Thread sausage and mozzarella pieces onto the skewers (sausage at the bottom, cheese on top – or half and half). Keep the cheese well chilled beforehand so it stretches better later.
- Mix flour, sugar and baking powder, then stir in the egg and milk until you have a smooth, relatively thick batter.
- First dip the skewers into the batter (or spread the batter around with a spoon), then roll them firmly in panko.
- Heat the oil to about 170 °C (340 °F). Fry the corn dogs one or two at a time for 3–5 minutes until golden brown, turning occasionally. Drain on kitchen paper.
- Dust immediately with a little sugar and serve with ketchup and mustard. Eat hot – the cheese pull only really works right after frying.
Tips
The batter must not be too thin or it will drip off. For extra crunch, you can press on small cubes of pre-cooked potatoes or crushed instant noodles before the panko. It also works in an air fryer, but they will not be quite as round and crispy.
If you prefer steamed rather than fried: homemade bao buns with glazed pork belly slices, pickled cucumber and cilantro are the slightly more refined street-food version – fluffy steamed buns that you can also make yourself or buy ready-made at an Asian grocery store.
Lady of the day
Anette Belorie
Basic knowledge of the day
