'Operation Resolve rocked!" How the Pentagon press corps was replaced with Trump fans

After US troops swarmed into Venezuela, seizing the country's president and his wife, there was little to be heard from the Pentagon.

- Adam Gabbatt

Typically, it would be a time for defence officials to talk to the Pentagon press corps: a group of journalists made up of some of the best reporters in the US. The Pentagon could have been expected to be held to account over what has been criticised as a violation of international law. That didn't happen.

The press corps was decimated late last year. Almost all of the credentialled reporters from traditional media companies surrendered their press passes in October rather than sign a 21-page document that set restrictions on their activities. Into that void, the Pentagon credentialled dozens of pro-Donald Trump online figures.

This new group reacted much as one might expect after the US captured Nicolás Maduro in a pre-dawn raid. The Gateway Pundit, a conservative outlet, wrote that it was a "stunning operation by US forces". It framed the debate over the legality and morality of invading a foreign country and seizing its president as "conservative patriots supporting Donald J Trump and the leftist globalists denouncing it".