The left-wing media’s treatment of the Wolff book is a model for the way it has reported on the Trump presidency from the start. Real news (especially good news) has taken a back seat to gossip, hearsay, and innuendo. Consider how many times the media has had to walk back inaccurate stories about so-called Russian collusion because overeager reporters and anchors made baseless claims about President Trump. We saw this when ABC’s Brian Ross falsely claimed that Trump had directed former national security advisor Michael Flynn to work with Russians during the campaign. Ross was later suspended for four weeks and the network had to issue a “clarification.”14
The media’s blind opposition to the president has led some once-legitimate outlets to become little more than sidewalk tabloids.
PERMANENT OPPOSITION
In my book Understanding Trump, which detailed my experience with Donald Trump during the campaign and the early months of his presidency, I described the media as being a part of the permanent opposition.
A year after that book was published, the description remains accurate.
As I’m writing this book, as recently as January 10, 2018, Nicholas Kristof wrote for the New York Times15 that President Trump (and myself) threaten our democracy.
Even anti-Trump bannerman MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has acknowledged that “the entire mainstream media, we are reflexively anti-Trump on all things.” According to the Hill16 news outlet, while Scarborough was speaking with former NBC morning show host Katie Couric on a podcast, he shared the revelation that the media’s constant full-court press against the president was a losing fight.
As the Hill reported, Joe’s right about the media’s bias.
According to a recent report by Pew Research Center,17 media coverage of President Trump’s early administration has been overwhelmingly negative compared to past administrations.
According to Pew:
Compared with the first 60 days of the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, news outlets’ evaluations of Trump’s start in office were far more negative and less positive. About six-in-ten news stories about Trump’s first 60 days (62%) carried an overall negative assessment of his words or actions. That is about three times more negative than for Obama (20%) and roughly twice that of Bush and Clinton (28% each).
At the same time, only 5 percent of news coverage about Trump has conveyed a positive message, according to Pew. This compares with 27 percent for Bill Clinton, 22 percent for George W. Bush, and 42 percent for Barack Obama.
The Pew study also shows the media’s focus on Trump’s character rather than his policies. The report found that 69 percent of stories about Trump were about his personality, even though “in previous years, the leadership and character frame never comprised more than half of overall coverage.” This focus on covering Trump the person came at the expense of covering his agenda and his achievements. Under past presidencies, about half of the news coverage was devoted to ideology or agenda. For President Trump, that figure was 31 percent, according to Pew.
An earlier survey by Gallup18 found that the number of Americans who believe the media has a clear political bias is at record levels. In April 2017, Gallup reported 62 percent of Americans say the media favors one political party over another. This is the highest that statistic has been in two decades. Furthermore, 64 percent of those who say the media is biased say news organizations favor the Left.
The media’s intense hatred for the president has only amplified its bias for Democrats and set its members into a constant state of frenzy. This mania has caused reporters and anchors to ignore the Trump administration’s role in significant military victories in the Middle East, improved relations between North Korea and South Korea, and in creating a better trading climate with China.
Instead, they focus on gossip, the liberal fantasies of so-called economic experts, and anything that could make the president or Republicans look bad.
Piers Morgan describes the media’s current pathology as “a new strain of PTSD—Perpetual Trump Shrieking Disorder.” He warns as the media’s mania gets more and more voracious, Trump will only get stronger.
Morgan wrote for Daily Mail on January 10, 2018, that “the less deranged Trump appears, the more deranged many of his more famous critics are starting to appear.” Morgan noted that “screaming abuse at everything Trump does or says is self-defeating for his enemies; it simply rallies his base and empowers him more.”
Morgan was commenting on a particularly vitriolic speech made by actor Robert De Niro at the National Board of Review Awards in New York City in which De Niro called the president a “f*****g idiot,” a “f*****g fool,” and the “baby-in-chief.”
Morgan wrote:
[Robert] de Niro’s become one of the first casualties of a new strain of PTSD—Perpetual Trump Shrieking Disorder.
The poor man’s been sent doolally by a President who refuses to play by the rules, and infuriates as many people as he delights, but who is starting to deliver, as CNN’s Dana Bash said yesterday, what “people who had high hopes for the Trump presidency thought it would be.”
The intensity of the media’s hostility to President Trump resembles the media reaction to Presidents Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When a president comes along who challenges existing orthodoxies and power structures, he or she has to be ready for vicious, intense condemnation from those currently in power. Nothing said about President Trump is worse than comparable scurrilous attacks on Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR.
Like Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR, President Trump is serious about real change, so he is arousing vicious, emotional opposition, which is leading his opponents toward derangement.
However, writer and radio host Erick Erickson offered another view on December 12, 2017.19
Erickson suggested that the media is currently grappling with the result of a period of rampant mingling with the Obama administration.
He argues that the revolving door between Washington media, Democratic political offices, liberal think tanks, and lobbying firms has permanently shaped the worldview of many reporters and done irreparable damage to their ability to write objective truth.
Erickson points to the mainstream media’s decision to ignore many important details of the Fusion GPS story as evidence of this widespread “incestuousness.” Fusion GPS is the Washington, DC, journalist-founded political consulting firm responsible for producing the so-called Steele Dossier. The dossier was created during the campaign by a former British intelligence agent, who was largely fed information by Russian officials. It was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the National Democratic Party and contained numerous lewd allegations about then candidate Trump that threatened to harm his chances to win the White House. Rumors about the dossier circulated through elite groups in Washington throughout the latter part of the campaign. BuzzFeed.com published the dossier on January 10, 2017, after the election but before Trump’s inauguration.
I will write more about Fusion GPS and the entire bogus Russian collusion narrative in the next chapter. However, it’s useful to mention here for making Erickson’s point.
Erikson wrote:
In fact, the Washington Post is now reporting that Fusion GPS used media connections to advance interests of various groups that paid it. It is an ascertainable fact that many reporters have failed to aggressively pursue this story because they have knowingly or unknowingly been used by Fusion GPS to advance the interests of paying clients.
Erickson makes an incredibly valid point here. Members of the Washington, DC, media have moved from news outlets, to administrations, to political firms, and back to media outlets so freely, they have lost any credible ability to remain objective.
Within his piece, Erickson includes a staggering list of people who illustrate his point:
Jay Carney went from Time to the White House press secretary’s office. Shailagh Murray went from the Washington Post to the Veep’s office while married to Neil King at the Wall Street Journal. Lin
da Douglass went from ABC News to the White House and then the Atlantic. Jill Zuckman went from the Chicago Tribune to the Obama administration’s Transportation Department. Douglas Frantz went from the Washington Post to the State Department and Stephen Barr went from the Post to the Labor Department.
Ruth Marcus who heads the Washington Post Editorial Board is married to the Obama Administration’s former FTC Chairman. Jonathan Allen of NBC News had been at the Politico before going to work for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then back to Politico before going to left-leaning Vox. He left Vox and moved to NBC News. Andy Barr worked for the Politico before leaving for Democrat politics. Michael Scherer was at both Salon and Mother Jones before going to Time. Laura Rozen was at Mother Jones and the American Prospect before Foreign Policy magazine. Even Nate Silver had started out at Daily Kos. Then, of course, there is Matthew Dowd who worked for scores of Democrats before working for George Bush. That, though he later washed his hands of Bush, bought him street credibility with ABC News to become its senior political analyst alongside George Stephanopoulos, formerly of the Clinton Administration.
Perhaps better than any media poll, Erickson’s list shows the clear culture of liberal bias in media today.
TRUMP OWES THEM NOTHING
One of the most puzzling aspects of the media’s intense hatred of President Trump is that he has been incredibly open with his time.
The Washington Times reported in December 2017 that Trump had “engaged in an unprecedented level of interaction with reporters.”
According to the newspaper:
Mr. Trump allowed pool sprays and other events that usually would be relegated to photo ops to become impromptu press conferences. He responded to more than 500 questions from reporters during these encounters, according to a tally by the Washington Times.
His walks across the South Lawn to and from Marine One routinely become question-and-answer sessions with reporters along the rope line. He has taken questions there on 13 occasions, responding to 42 questions during a single session in October.
By comparison, President Obama took questions twice when leaving or arriving on the Marine helicopter, and both times there was a podium placed there for the event, according to meticulous lists kept by Mark Knoller, White House correspondent for CBS News.
President Trump’s willingness to be so open with (and take abuse from) the press is puzzling because he could just follow in the footsteps of Obama and ignore them completely.
President Trump must defend the United States Constitution and that includes the First Amendment. A free press is vital for democracy.
Aside from this defense of their basic First Amendment rights, however, President Trump owes nothing to the Washington press corps and elite liberal news media. The First Amendment guarantees that the media can work freely to report the news. It includes no obligation on behalf of the White House to give them full, unfettered access to the president.
As I have written before in my weekly newsletter, President Trump should take a cue from FDR. At President Roosevelt’s first press briefing on March 8, 1933, the ground rule was established that no member of the White House Press Corps was free to quote the president outside of a written statement. In fact, most of the conversation was off the record or for background purposes only. This is because the meeting was not about recording gotcha questions or the daily media melee; it was about helping the press understand and communicate the goals and achievements of the administration. Granted, this was a very long time ago, and mass media has drastically changed. However, FDR’s ground rules are important for illustrating that the First Amendment’s press freedoms were never meant to guarantee unfettered access to the president.
I have learned over the last few years that if President Trump fails to follow sound historic advice, there is often a good reason—and he often has a better idea than I do. I have come to believe that he puts up with the White House Press Corps because he likes fighting with them. He may or may not like them personally, but he likes fighting with them. He spent years being constantly covered by the media in New York City. He learned that noise works, conflict works, getting covered by the press works.
What I didn’t understand about the president until late in 2017 was how much he loved fighting reporters and producers. He dislikes Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN (who Trump is convinced got the job leading CNN because of a lunch Trump had with Zucker’s future boss). On the other hand, he loves fighting with Zucker. Every time the president tweets or ad libs an attack on CNN, it is pure gold for Zucker. If Trump really wanted to hurt CNN, he would never mention it or its leadership—but that isn’t the Trump way.
President Trump has already proven to be an expert in using social media to bypass the elite news media and speak directly with the American people through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or other new social media platforms. He could use these skills to connect directly with the American people—much like FDR did with his fireside chats, a series of radio broadcasts he made during his presidency.
President Trump could also move the physical press facility to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, where members of the media could have more room to work without being able to wander the White House looking for opportunities to attack or undermine the president.
President Trump has every right to interact with the American people in any way he wants to, and he has every right to call out the news media for being irresponsible and dishonest. When people go out of their way to lie about the president of the United States, we owe it to the American people to stand up and say we are going to fight back.
When I was Speaker of the House, I learned not to agree to regular on-camera interviews. I had originally set up frequent on-camera interviews with the Capitol Hill press in order to keep my constituents and Americans abreast of goings-on in Congress.
It quickly turned into a weekly sparring match with the press, in which largely uninformed reporters asked erroneous questions they were fed by Democrats in order to shape public opinion and completely undermine what we were trying to do.
These regular, live press gaggles rapidly became so destructive we simply shut them down. The Capitol Hill Press Corps’ hostility actually reduced its access to leadership. President Trump should consider doing the same thing.
Perhaps if White House reporters are moved out of their elite gossip circle and forced to start looking for real news from real named sources, the rampant sensationalism in today’s media would subside.
I wouldn’t count on that happening soon, though.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE RULE OF LAW VERSUS THE RULE OF MUELLER
One of the greatest challenges to Trump’s America is the rise of Muellerism as a replacement for the rule of law.
Muellerism is the offensive version of Comeyism, which was the desperate effort by former FBI Director James Comey, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and President Barack Obama to protect Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from answering for wide-ranging violations of the law.
Clinton faced no consequences after she deleted 33,000 emails, then had a staff assistant destroy cell phones and other hardware with a hammer to avoid having them subpoenaed. Her huge foundation continued to operate in the shadows as her husband was paid $500,000 by a Russian bank while she was involved in deciding if the Russians could take control of American uranium. In the midst of the current Mueller frenzy, it is easy to forget just how much then FBI Director Comey was bending or breaking the law on Clinton’s behalf.
For myself and many Republicans after the election, it seemed clear that any postelection investigation should focus on the various Clinton cover-ups. If the investigation was going to have a Russian focus, it would be on the Russian-Clinton ties. It was initially difficult for Trump supporters to understand how the national establishment and the deep state could simply skip past the last eight years of illegality and abuse of power and decide to launch a new “Republicans-only” investigation cycle. We had
underestimated how much President Trump scared the deep state.
After candidate Trump beat 16 other Republicans and won the nomination, then defeated the elite media and the billion-dollar Hillary Clinton campaign, he thought he would have some legitimacy.
However, the establishment and the deep state were so offended that an “inappropriate,” “deplorable” candidate won their presidency, they had to find a new way to frame him as illegitimate. After all, if he was a legitimate president, then their entire world was dying and under siege. They had to find a way to keep him on defense and to keep his legitimacy as president in doubt.
So, the elites decided that Trump could only have done so well with illegitimate help. They determined it had to be the Russians.
The elite media, desperate for a non-Trump future, dutifully adopted a “the Russians did it” theme. Senior elements of the Obama national security team began saying “it might have been the Russians.” Democrats in Congress began demanding investigations into the obvious “fact” that Trump and the Russians must have been colluding (how else could you explain deplorables beating Hillary, the great elitist). There was a desperation to these attacks, which intensified every time President Trump tweeted. The Russian collusion was the one thing which was going to save the deep state and the elites from being dramatically changed by the new president.
THE SESSIONS RECUSAL AND MUELLER’S BLANK CHECK
As the Left built into a frenzy, it overwhelmed both Republicans in Congress and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
I have known and liked Sessions for years. He had great courage as a U.S. senator and routinely defied the Left in the Senate. I had worked with him on the Trump campaign when he had been the only senator willing to work openly for a Trump presidency. His best policy expert, Stephen Miller, had become the new president’s top policy advisor and speechwriter (Miller had spent a year on the campaign plane and could channel President Trump on policy and speech language better than anyone else).
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