Malign Regimes Keep Getting a Pass with the American Media

By Becket Adams

Sunday, March 01, 2026

 

In 2016, the Heritage Foundation posted a note on social media unfavorably contrasting then–President Barack Obama with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

“Vladimir Putin respects two things: strength and consistency,” it read. “In the last eight years, President Obama has shown neither.”

 

It was an intensely stupid thing to say, both in terms of the facts and the optics of a supposedly patriotic U.S.-based organization elevating an enemy of the U.S. to criticize the U.S. president.

 

I bring this up to illustrate how our national media cover foreign adversaries and hostile regimes. They often use an approach similar to Heritage’s, only to discredit Republicans instead of Democrats.

 

Just consider the wildly divergent news coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics.

 

On the one hand, journalists idolize Eileen Gu, a woman who enjoys all the comforts and freedoms of being born and raised a U.S. citizen but competes anyway for the Chinese Communist Party. Journalists fawn over her, with glowing profiles and heroic praise, even though she’s ultimately just a well-compensated spokeswoman for a country that herds ethnic minorities into internment camps.

 

On the other hand, members of the U.S. men’s hockey team, the first to win gold since the year audiences learned Darth Vader is Luke’s father, have been vilified and smeared as misogynists, clowns, and all-around villains by the press — all because they accepted a phone call from the president during which he invited them to his State of the Union address and then joked that he would have to invite the also-victorious Olympic U.S. women’s hockey team or he’d be impeached. Some of the hockey players laughed, and some also attended Trump’s State of the Union address.

 

The men’s hockey team is also unapologetically patriotic and clearly proud of the U.S., even with Donald Trump at the helm. They haven’t adopted the sports media’s preferred political stance, which portrays the U.S. as a deeply corrupt country in need of constant flogging. So naturally, the men’s hockey team faces withering criticism from the press, while a propaganda tool of the CCP receives favorable coverage.

 

If this surprises you, it shouldn’t. This isn’t the media’s first love affair with a proxy of a malign regime, especially when they see that proxy as a repudiation of the Trump administration — and at the Winter Olympics, no less!

 

Don’t forget the sycophantic coverage the U.S. press gave to Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, because she appeared to give a disapproving look to then–Vice President Mike Pence.

 

You go, girl! Resist fascism!

 

Meanwhile, the North Korean people are starving, with some trying to survive on grass, roots, and dirt.

 

Then, of course, there’s the American press’s long-standing veneration of China. What stands out is not just that U.S. reporters often praise the brutal police state, but that they regularly shield it from criticism.

 

Recall the efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic, for which China is responsible, when American media swung between praising the CCP’s laughable claim that it had “defeated” the virus and criticizing those who suggested the pandemic might have originated from a lab in Wuhan. Some went so far as to say it was racist to promote the lab-leak theory (because the idea that the Chinese caught the virus from eating bats and pangolins in filthy wet markets was somehow the non-racist explanation).

 

Speaking of completely unbelievable claims, let’s not forget when the New York Times ran a piece declaring that the “fight against climate change” is an “effort now mostly led by China.”

 

Are we just going to ignore that China’s primary energy source is 87 percent fossil fuels or that it’s the world’s top emitter? Stop asking questions. Be quiet and read this Times op-ed written by Director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute Li Shuo, titled, “China Is the Adult in the Room on Climate Now.”

 

Perhaps the applause for unambiguously evil leaders and regimes is just an immature outburst fueled by partisan rage.

 

Then again, long before Trump, the U.S. press also adopted a sympathetic and complimentary tone toward the Soviet Union, portraying Mikhail Gorbachev as the adult in the room and President Ronald Reagan as a cowboy dotard.

 

What’s curious is that the American press now hates Russia. What has changed?

 

Perspective.

 

Whereas members of the press previously saw the Soviets as direct adversaries of Reagan, whom they didn’t exactly favor, many today genuinely believe there’s an alliance between the current White House and the Kremlin, or at least a sense of kinship. So, the current media attitude against modern Russia might not be about Russia itself. It could be about Trump. This would certainly explain the whiplash quality of coverage from a press that once spoke favorably of the Soviet Union but is now anti–Soviet Union lite.

 

If journalists didn’t believe Trump and Putin were simpatico, they probably wouldn’t care as much about the invasion of Ukraine. Just compare the media’s muted response to the invasions of Georgia and Crimea with the current outpouring of Ukrainian pride. One can’t help but wonder if they really support Ukraine or just oppose what they likely see as a MAGA-coded despot in the Kremlin.

 

Everyone knows there’s no version of reality in which a U.S.-born and trained Olympian hops overseas to compete for the Russians, and the American media treat her as the darling of the moment. We know exactly how that scenario would play out.

 

But as long as the authoritarians in question are perceived to be the enemies of their enemy — the American president — the media can be counted on to be credulous.