Slovak PM Robert Fico attacks Brussels correspondents after report on Trump’s psychological state
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico unleashed a furious online broadside this week against Brussels correspondents Nicholas Vinocur and Zoya Sheftalovich, after reporting that he privately raised concerns about Donald Trump’s “psychological state” during an informal EU summit.
The outburst — delivered across X and Facebook — read like a greatest-hits compilation of grievance politics: Brussels bad, liberals lying, journalists conspiring. Fico accused the reporters of spreading “anti-Slovak, pro-Brussels liberal lies,” that he questioned Trump’s mental fitness. “No one heard anything, saw anything, had witnesses,” he declared, dismissing the reporting as a fabrication.
His message detonated instantly inside his 374,000-strong Facebook choir, which quickly mobilized into a digital swarm. Commenters tagged the two Brussels reporters en masse for supposed “anti-state activity,” turning the thread into a catalogue of dehumanization — “vermin,” “plague,” “media manure,” “liberal fascists.”
Supporters push for punitive laws against journalists
The backlash didn’t stop at insults. Fico’s online loyalists appeared eager to translate outrage into policy, calling for laws that would make “defaming government politicians” a criminal offense. Others demanded the journalists be barred from institutional access entirely. “Revoke their accreditation,” one supporter wrote, “so they can’t go to press conferences at all!”
Brussels isn’t running a blacklist — and that still matters
For the Brussels press corps, there are still a few guardrails. The EU institutions do not operate a Media Offenders List or blacklist reporters in the style of the Trump-era White House. No sudden bans from briefings, no public naming-and-shaming, no fear of being heckled on Washington streets.
But the episode lands in a region with a painful recent history. Brussels sits more than 1,150 kilometers from Veľká Mača, the Slovak village where investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, were murdered in 2018. While there is no evidence linking Fico to the killings, their deaths triggered mass protests and ultimately brought down his previous government.
Press freedom under pressure?
The uproar over a report on Trump’s “psychological state” is also a broader test of how far a sitting prime minister in the EU is willing to go in mobilizing his base against journalists. The rhetoric may be digital, but the stakes are real. When political power turns hostile to scrutiny, even reporters working hundreds of kilometers away can find themselves in the crosshairs.
