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Happy Wednesday. Here's the latest on the Kennedy Center, YouTube, Vanity Fair, Google's "preferred sources," WaPo's "creator network," Vogue, "Wednesday," and "Mamma Mia!" But first...

'Fake' everything?

Deny the data. Disrupt the data collectors. And demand a different result.

That is what we're seeing now from some federal officials. It's a common theme in several of this week's biggest stories, and it has big implications for news coverage.

"Crime stats in big blue cities are fake," President Trump's deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said yesterday on X, clearly reacting to the news media's fact-checking of Trump's extreme exaggerations about crime in DC. "The real rates of crime, chaos & dysfunction are orders of magnitude higher," Miller insisted.

"Coupled with the attack" on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein said, "this is rapidly advancing deeper into the territory of insisting that all data that doesn't conform to Trump preferences is inherently invalid and that only the leader can tell you the truth." Brownstein called it "a hallmark of authoritarians" throughout history.

He invoked the BLS for good reason: Trump's commissioner choice, E.J. Antoni, is being scrutinized from left to right. Numerous economists have criticized him "for misunderstanding the data he would now oversee," the NYT's team reported.

 >> For more on the jobs data controversies, check out Alicia Wallace and David Goldman's latest piece for CNN here. One of their subheds: "Federal data under siege." 

'Nullify the real'

President Trump's rhetoric about "fake news" keeps expanding to new categories. In the past month, he has assailed "fake intelligence agents," dismissed "fake polls," claimed "the Russia thing was fake," and declared that "the Democrats are fake."

The effect is to sow doubt about anything and everything. As veteran journalism professor Jay Rosen said in a Q&A with Mark Jacob earlier this week, "with this doubt comes friction, controversy, commotion, emotion, backlash, accusation, disgust, momentum. And with the energy released by these reactions you can power your political movement." 

Rosen asserted that Trump has trained the MAGA movement to "reject reality on a sweeping scale, and discredit the whole idea that we can know what's happening in our world." The idea, he suggested, is to "nullify the real." Republicans often argue that this distrust in institutions was well-earned and is well-deserved. But the process of restoring trust? That's a whole lot harder.

MAGA editor at the Smithsonian?

Do you want Trump White House political aides vetting the tone and framing of museum exhibits? That's really the question now that the WH has notified the Smithsonian that it is reviewing eight museums with an eye toward making "content corrections where necessary" and "replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions." CNN's Betsy Klein has more here. 

 >> Last night on "AC360," Cornell William Brooks called it "censorship tied to a celebration," namely, the America250 anniversary. "The White House is essentially engaged in a kind of cultural micromanagement," he said.

 >> The Smithsonian is not part of the executive branch, as I noted on "CNN News Central" this morning. The museum says it will work "constructively" with the White House, but that could mean a lot of things. It also reaffirmed a commitment to "accurate, factual presentation of history."

The pictures he wants 

"By sending National Guard soldiers into the streets in the absence of a crisis, Trump really is adopting the intimidatory tactics of strongman leaders," CNN's Stephen Collinson writes this morning.

The president is getting the pictures he wants: "National Guard troops spotted in Washington DC," this Fox headline says. And MAGA media commentators are agitating for more: Additional cities, more aggressive actions.

 >> Fox alum Jeanine Pirro has had "a starring role in promoting the president's federal takeover on TV," the NYT's Michael Grynbaum observes.

 >> Media critic Jeff Jarvis says "the story, which media keep missing, is not crime in DC. It is Trump's fascist plan to invade and intimidate (Black and blue) cities in America."