President Donald Trump on Saturday escalated his long-running battle with the national press, calling on the courts to intervene after a wave of coverage reported that Florida Republican gubernatorial nominee Rep. Byron Donalds had removed the president from his campaign website and materials. According to The Gateway Pundit, Trump used a Truth Social post to denounce the story as fabricated and to argue that news outlets behind it should face consequences.
Trump framed the dispute as more than a personal grievance, tying it to the stakes of Donalds’ race and to what he described as an effort to split his supporters from the Republican Party.
What the reports said, and what Trump says actually happened
Coverage of the website redesign began with USA Today, Trump said, and then spread to CNN, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek, The New York Times, ABC, NBC, Forbes and other outlets. The Miami Herald, according to the source account, published the first major Florida version of the story, describing Donalds as having “stripped” prominent Trump references from a relaunched site.
Trump pushed back hard on that characterization. In his post, he said Donalds did not drop him, did not revoke the endorsement, and did not back away from the America First platform that helped carry him into the governor’s race.
As The Hill reported, Trump’s endorsement remains live on the campaign site, including in a rotating banner of conservative supporters, and Donalds’ listing as a 2024 Trump campaign surrogate is still present. Donalds also posted a photo with the president and said publicly that he is proud of the endorsement.
On X, Donalds wrote that he is “proud to have President Trump’s endorsement” and steered attention toward his policy agenda, saying that while everyone was focused on the website, voters should look at his proposals to make life more affordable for Floridians. He then criticized Democrat David Jolly, saying his opponent has “ZERO substance.”
Trump’s demand for court action
In the Truth Social post, Trump argued the press should be “called out by the Courts” and said that if America does not have a “Free and Honest Press, it can never be truly Great Again.” He also said the outlets involved “should not be allowed to enter the White House premises, or Press Room.”
Trump described the reporting as a coordinated attempt to halt his political momentum, calling the outlets “CORRUPT and DISHONEST” and asserting that the story lacked sources. He said the coverage was designed to “demean” him and to make MAGA voters turn against Republicans, but predicted the opposite effect.
He pointed to his Florida margins as evidence that the story would not land, saying he won the state by millions of votes with the highest tally in history and that his numbers now are stronger than they were on Election Day.
Donalds’ position and the Florida race
Trump stressed that his endorsement of Donalds remains “Complete and Total,” and said two rallies are already scheduled in Florida for the candidate, which he predicted would sell out. He warned that if Florida voters believed Donalds had “dropped” him, the nominee would lose the election, adding that Donalds is “going to be a fantastic Governor.”
The president also went after Jolly directly, calling him a “Failed and Totally Incompetent” Democrat and a “known Lefty Loser” who does not represent the values of Florida voters.
The dispute illustrates how quickly a website refresh can become a national political story in a state that Trump has made central to his political identity. For Donalds, the episode forced a public reaffirmation of his alignment with Trump at a moment when his campaign wants to focus on affordability and policy. For Trump, it became another opportunity to press his case that mainstream outlets manufacture stories to damage him and his allies — a theme he has returned to repeatedly since his first campaign.
Whether any court action actually follows remains to be seen. Trump’s post did not outline a specific legal filing or identify a cause of action, and it is not clear what mechanism he envisions for courts to penalize outlets or bar them from White House access. The president’s statement was, however, unambiguous in its intent: he said he would make it his “mission” to call out what he described as hypocrisy, dishonesty and lies aimed at the American public.
Trump closed the post by crediting divine intervention for his political longevity, writing that “God must be looking down on me.”
Source: www.thegatewaypundit.com — https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09/president-trump-demands-court-intervention-after-fake-news/