Joy Reid warns Trump could reshape US media into a North Korea-like propaganda arm

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Joy Reid isn’t mincing her words anymore.

Speaking on 'The Breakfast Club' podcast on Tuesday, the former MSNBC host laid out one of her starkest warnings yet, a future where President Donald Trump’s influence grows so dominant that American media begins to resemble a “North Korea-style” propaganda machine. And she insists the signs are already showing.

Joy Reid fears Trump’s growing media influence will erase alternative viewpoints

During her conversation with the hosts, Reid argued that Trump has been steadily using his power, both political and personal to pressure media companies into compliance. If that continues, she warned, Americans could soon be stuck with only one “approved” perspective.

“You get this one perspective that just happens to be the same perspective as the president of the United States,” Reid said.

“And now we're North Korea because, where can you get any alternative view?”

Reid also drew comparisons to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose government now dominates almost all major media outlets in Hungary.

“Basically, all of the media is his perspective and only his perspective, and you can't get an alternative,” she added. “That’s a dangerous place, especially in this country, as diverse as this country is.”

Reid points to Trump’s involvement in major media mergers as a warning sign

Before jumping into her most dramatic prediction, Reid walked through how Trump has allegedly tried to control media and entertainment companies behind the scenes.

She pointed to Trump weighing in on the proposed merger between Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery. Just before the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, Trump told reporters, “I’ll be involved in that decision,” calling the massive deal “a problem” for the market.

Reid claimed this wasn’t just casual commentary, it was influence. “Yeah, and the Netflix president had to go have a personal conversation with Trump to get him to approve the deal,” she said.

According to her, billionaire David Ellison and Paramount’s Skydance were also lobbying heavily because they wanted to acquire Warner Bros Discovery themselves.

All of this, she argued, is part of a trend: a shrinking media landscape dominated by a handful of companies who inevitably fall in line with whichever administration controls the pressure points. 

“In the end, we're going to have like five media companies,” Reid warned. “They're going to own everything from social media to regular media. This is not good because the public is not going to have anywhere to go.”

Joy Reid believes news outlets will comply out of fear of losing licenses

Reid said she has worried for months about how eager networks and studios might be to avoid Trump’s wrath. The fear, she noted, often comes down to money and survival: lose a broadcast license and an entire network collapses.

“It’s going to be like, back in the day there were three networks. There’ll be three networks again, but they’ll all be in line with the government,” she said.

White House fires back, mocking Reid as ‘Joyless’ and calling her a partisan propagandist

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital that Reid’s warning lacked credibility: “Unfortunately, Joyless Reid has such little self-awareness that she hasn’t realized she is already a propagandist for the Democrat Party and apparently an ineffective one because she was fired by MSDNC.”