Media Madness

by Howard Kurtz

  I chatted with Pence at the White House an hour before the Comey firing was announced. He seemed relaxed, even serene, as he posed for pictures with schoolchildren. He told me he had grown close to Trump, and he was obviously comfortable as the president’s behind-the-scenes confidant.

  Ironically, given his loyalty to the president, many in the media wanted this staunch conservative to take over at the White House. It was a measure of their antipathy toward Trump that the pundits now pined for Pence.

  CHAPTER 18

  COLLUSION CONFUSION

  The television commentators were doing something extremely rare—praising President Trump for a signature speech—when breaking news banners began flashing across their screens.

  Mike Flynn was taking the Fifth, refusing to comply with a Senate subpoena in the seemingly endless Russia investigation.

  It was the morning of May 22 and Trump was on his first foreign trip, having just delivered a sober address in Saudi Arabia that struck a more moderate tone on Islam as he tried to rally the Arab world against terrorism. The press hailed the speech, but Flynn’s legal maneuver overshadowed coverage of the president’s next stop in Israel.

  That was the pattern all week. Trump’s strong performance on the world stage, credited even by his critics, competed for ink and air time with each new report on the scandal front. A Washington Post story, for instance, said Trump had conversations with national intelligence director Dan Coats and National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers, asking them to push back against Jim Comey’s FBI investigation, and that both refused.

  And when the media weren’t distracted by scandal they plunged into silly debates, such as whether Melania had slapped her husband’s hand when he tried to hold hers.

  Even a high point of the trip, a cordial meeting with Pope Francis, fed the gossip machine. Sean Spicer, a devout Catholic who had openly yearned to meet Francis if Trump went to the Vatican, was not included in the small group of handpicked aides who joined the papal meeting.

  This was cast as a presidential swipe against his long-suffering spokesman, especially when CNN quoted a source close to the White House as saying “wow, that’s all he wanted.” Reporters felt sorry for Sean. Even Glenn Thrush, his constant antagonist, said Spicer’s exclusion “speaks to a small-mindedness that I find incredibly depressing.”

  But in the media’s short-attention-span environment, that was quickly forgotten.

  While Trump was in Brussels, scolding NATO leaders about paying their fair share of defense costs, a big story erupted on CNN and MSNBC.

  The subject was Jared.

  The press increasingly resented Kushner, who was dubbed a “princeling.” He had no previous government experience, yet he seemed to be running everything, including foreign policy. Reporters investigated his real estate empire and searched for conflicts of interest with his White House work. The New York Times Magazine cast him as a slumlord of low-income apartments in Baltimore. Many stories recycled the fact that Kushner’s father, who owned billions in real estate, had served time in prison for his role in a sordid case of illegal campaign contributions (to Democrats), tax evasion, and witness tampering, which included entrapping his brother-in-law with a prostitute and sending a tape of the incident to his sister.

  Despite his “cool and unflappable” image and being “soft-spoken, slim and handsome,” a Politico profile said Jared Kushner played rough and quoted ex-employees as disparaging him. The Washington Post highlighted allegations that Kushner had tried to use the newspaper he owned, the New York Observer, to retaliate against business adversaries.

  Now the Post reported that investigators in the Russia probe were “focusing on a series of meetings held by Jared Kushner,” with the Russian ambassador and a Moscow banker, the month before the inauguration. And NBC Nightly News reported that Kushner was under FBI “scrutiny.”

  The pieces were strikingly thin, acknowledging that Kushner was not a “target,” a “subject,” or even a “central focus” of the probe. So the news was essentially that Kushner, who had voluntarily offered to discuss these meetings with Congress, would be a witness in the probe. But the volume was cranked up so high that it seemed like he was under investigation and probably guilty of something. Actually, the unnamed “sources close to the investigation” were breaking the law by leaking the information, but just about everything in this criminal investigation was leaked, almost in real time. And the press had what it wanted: the president’s son-in-law was under suspicion.

  The following night brought another Washington Post exclusive and frenzied coverage on CNN and MSNBC (but not Fox, which downplayed the story and similar developments in prime time). The paper said that Kushner had discussed with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak setting up a secure communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin. Kushner suggested using Russian equipment at its embassy or consulate, according to U.S. intercepts of Russian communications.

  The immediate media assumption was that this was nefarious, an attempt by the president’s close relative to hide his underhanded dealings with Moscow. It certainly might have been naïve. The Trump team, seven weeks before taking office, clearly didn’t trust the Obama administration, and was exploring its own diplomatic channel to the Russians.

  This was news, but the media plunged into hyperventilation mode. CNN’s David Gergen suggested that Kushner consider a leave of absence. MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance said if the story was true, “this is now espionage.” Another MSNBC analyst, Naveed Jamali, flatly said that Kushner was “either aspiring to be a Russian agent or was in fact a Russian agent.” Foreign Policy magazine warned of “Jared Kushner’s Growing Stench of Treason.” Keith Olbermann, still doing his online rants, proclaimed: “I call for the immediate arrest of Jared Kushner.”

  The idea that a novice had made an innocent misstep was widely dismissed by the press. It was all seen as part of the Trump/Kushner cover-up. The New York Times editorialists said Kushner’s behavior might be explained by “stupidity,” “paranoia,” or “malevolence,” but clearly he was “in over his head” and should vacate the White House.

  Kushner believed that the media totally oversold the story. To them, this was treason! But where was the substance? He had met with an ambassador. There was nothing wrong with setting up back channels, Kushner felt. He hadn’t put the meetings on his security forms because he thought “foreign contacts” meant relationships, not individual meetings. He had done nothing to hide a meeting he had with Russian banker Sergei Gorkov shortly after the election.

  Jared believed he knew why this was happening. There had been a blog post suggesting that he had argued the White House should take a scorched-earth approach to dealing with the Justice Department. That had put a target on his back. Now the FBI was leaking stuff against him.

  When this was all over, when you asked all these media people what they had found on Russia, what would they say? Would the media, he wondered, ever admit that they were wrong?

  When Trump returned home from overseas, where he had avoided reporters, the press had escalated matters to what a New York Times headline called the “Growing Crisis Over Kushner.” That melded seamlessly into leaks about infighting, with Politico announcing: “Russia Scandal Casts Uncertainty Over Kushner’s Role.”

  The media drumbeat grew louder. A couple of stories said the FBI wanted to talk to Kushner, which was legitimate news but hardly surprising since he was a key aide and had dealings with the Russian ambassador. The same stories dutifully noted he was not a subject of the investigation. But the sheer repetition created an atmosphere of “crisis,” and then unnamed sources—including Jared’s rivals—started popping off that he must do something to quiet things down.

  Kushner might not have been an FBI target but he was a prime target for his White House adversaries, who trashed him anonymously to reporters. Considering that he had clashed with Bannon and Conway, dumped on Spicer, and, earlier, had backed Lewandowski’s dismissal, it was payba
ck time through the press.

  An extraordinary New York Times story by Thrush and Haberman was a grab bag of complaints against Kushner, described as having an “aloof demeanor” and “unfailing self-regard” as he assembled his “vague portfolio” but avoided the “messy” work of government. Trump had started dressing him down in front of other aides, the piece said, especially after the embarrassment of his sister pitching Beijing investors on a New Jersey condo project by dangling the possibility of American visas that could be bought for $500,000. Bannon had been calling him “the air,” because he blew in and out of meetings. And the fact that Kushner had thought that Comey’s firing would quickly blow over was lost on no one.

  The Washington Post gave voice to “some White House aides” who “have discreetly discussed among themselves whether Kushner should play a lesser role—or even take a leave” during the uproar. And Politico said that within the White House there was “a feeling of resentment among people about Kushner’s special status as a family member, and a feeling that it’s about time for him to have a turn under the gun.”

  All this bubbled up into a witches’ brew that cast an evil spell on Kushner, without any evidence of wrongdoing on his part. The president had to put out a statement saying that “Jared is doing a great job for the country.”

  On May 24, Greg Gianforte, a Republican congressional candidate in Montana, body-slammed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs for barging into a room, sticking a tape recorder in his face, and asking policy questions. The candidate started punching him, shouting “get the hell out,” and broke his glasses, according to an eyewitness account by a Fox News correspondent.

  The reaction of many commentators to this unprovoked attack was to blame…Donald Trump.

  The violence was Trump’s fault, they insisted, because of his harsh rhetoric against the so-called dishonest media. So what if Gianforte, who was charged with misdemeanor assault, acted like a thug? Trump must have inspired him!

  On CNN, Don Lemon talked over a guest with a contrary opinion, saying “you don’t think it’s because the guy who’s in office now has said very horrible things about reporters and said that reporters are the enemy of the American people?”

  On MSNBC, former Bush aide Nicolle Wallace said it was “ridiculous” to deny “a direct line between Donald Trump calling reporters enemies of the state and people beating up a working journalist.” Joe Scarborough agreed that Trump’s “reckless words have consequences.”

  And the accusations continued once Gianforte apologized—after he won the election, that is. As a Washington Post headline put it: “Reporters Say They Are Being Roughed Up. Observers Point to Trump.”

  This kind of guilt by association was off the charts. Now anything bad that happened to a journalist was an obvious byproduct of the Trump era.

  The president had barely tweeted during his foreign trip, but on his first morning back in the White House, confronted with an avalanche of anti-Kushner stories, he let loose: “It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media.”

  Trump also tweeted that it was “very possible that those sources don’t exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!”

  Some pundits condemned Trump for that last phrase, saying it was that kind of rhetoric that fostered the climate for attacks on journalists. He had not used the accusatory word “enemy” for three months, so his critics rushed to invoke what happened in Montana.

  The press was, in fact, relying too heavily on anonymous sources, who had obvious agendas to push, and Trump was free to call such stories unfair, but it was not true that the sources didn’t “exist.” Reporters needed to discern which sources were credible, and which were simply trying to undermine the administration or, more commonly, their personal rivals. Kellyanne Conway saw an unmistakable pattern emerging. When Trump asked her whether his foreign trip had been successful, she said, “Yes, that’s why the media stopped covering it.”

  The press loved “White House shakeup” stories, but so far there had been no real shakeup. Sean Spicer was back at his podium after the foreign trip, doing his televised briefings, Steve Bannon was still Trump’s chief strategist, and Reince Priebus was still chief of staff, despite Politico calling him a “dead man walking” and a cheeky Drudge Report headline: “TRUMP READY TO RINCE PRIEBUS?” Kellyanne Conway realized that the first time she was asked about a possible Trump administration shakeup was three days after the inauguration.

  For all the leaks and counter-leaks, Conway believed the White House remained a largely collaborative place. The media peddled an image of White House dysfunction, she thought, because it took little effort for reporters to handicap who was in and who was out; and she saw the furor over Kushner and the FBI investigation as classic examples of the media’s rush to judgment. The pundits kept screaming about Russia, but after eight months of investigation, in her view, they didn’t have much of anything.

  Still, Trump was deeply unhappy with how his communications team was handling the press. He wanted a war room to take charge of rapid response. So he summoned Corey Lewandowski to the White House.

  As Lewandowski saw it, Trump was working like a dog. When he visited the White House on Memorial Day, the president was in meetings from eight a.m. to eight p.m., this just after his nine-day foreign trip. The reporters were all exhausted, yet Trump kept going. The president was aggravated by the press, and blamed his staff for failing to sell his message.

  Lewandowski and his friend Dave Bossie, the former deputy campaign manager and a political streetfighter since the 1990s, had talked to Trump several times about joining the White House staff, and neither wanted to do it. Both were doing well in the private sector, with Bossie having signed on as a Fox News contributor. Both had four kids to support. Both doubted they would have enough influence in a White House infamous for its infighting. Lewandowski was flattered to be considered months after he had been treated so cavalierly, but he didn’t want to go inside the building, take all kinds of bullets, and ultimately fail.

  Corey’s reservations deepened when he spoke separately to Priebus, Bannon, and Kushner. Each asked him whose team he was on.

  “I’m not on any team, I’m on his team,” he replied.

  Ushered into the Oval Office, the president was blunt. “My staff sucks,” he said.

  Bannon and Priebus had told them that the president wanted Bossie as deputy chief of staff and Lewandowski as a special assistant for political affairs; all they had to do was say yes. But the president had a very different message. “I just don’t like that idea,” Trump said. Bossie and Lewandowski exchanged puzzled looks.

  If things didn’t improve soon, Trump said, “I’m going to get rid of everybody, and I don’t want you guys to be damaged by that.” He said he might make Priebus his ambassador to Greece.

  Almost on cue, Priebus walked in. “So this is done, everything is good?” he asked.

  Trump said, “If this place isn’t working in the next month or so, I’m going to make some changes. And that change is you.”

  Bannon was disappointed at this turn of events. He told Bossie and Lewandowski: “You two were my ticket out of here.”

  Lewandowski and Bossie were greatly relieved, and went out for a beer with Kellyanne Conway. Lewandowski got a call from Priebus. He had changed Trump’s mind. Both men could start Monday. They politely begged off.

  Days later, Trump called Lewandowski again after seeing him on Fox News.

  “Look Corey, you’re great as long as you’re going on TV,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re inside or outside.”

  Sean Spicer had a new approach, deflecting questions about Kushner and the FBI. He couldn’t comment because the matter was under investigation. That was the emerging strategy: banish such questions from the briefing room and stay focused on the president’s agenda.

  But there was a moment when Spicer let his frustration show, declaring that
the president was fed up with the “perpetuation of false narratives,” fueled by “unnamed, unaccountable sources.” And he offered a case study: a BBC reporter’s tweet—echoed by the Huffington Post and retweeted by a new reporter for the New York Times—that Trump hadn’t been listening to the Italian prime minister at the G7 summit because he wasn’t wearing headphones for the translation. Trump was actually using a small earpiece. That, Spicer said, was “fake news,” pushed out with “no apology.”

  Peter Baker, a New York Times correspondent respected for his even-handedness, objected: “Sean, none of that was in the newspaper. None of that was on the front page. Your trip was all over the front page. You’re making something out of one tweet instead of the vast majority of the coverage.”

  But “you guys defend your mistakes like that,” Spicer said.

  “Don’t you?” Baker countered.

  Spicer was right, though, that such incidents went viral. BBC reporter James Landale’s erroneous tweet drew fourteen thousand retweets; his follow-up with the White House denial, forty-two retweets. A Times reporter on Air Force One told Spicer he was sorry to see the misinformed tweet and was alerting his editors.

  Spicer thought this was no minor example. The Italian prime minister had been insulted by the reports. It didn’t matter that the story didn’t make the paper, for Twitter was now a prime forum for making news. Spicer felt the media were no longer being held accountable for their mistakes.

  CHAPTER 19

  CLIMATE CHANGE CALAMITY

  The media reaction to what President Trump did on climate change was so overheated that there was no pretense of a balanced approach, just a tsunami of criticism.

  From the moment that Trump announced on June 1 that he was pulling the country out of the Paris climate accord, the gathering storm reached well beyond the policy or the politics. It was a visceral outcry against the man himself.