by Howard Kurtz
There was, of course, plenty to debate about the non-binding agreement, its impact on the economy and America joining only two of the world’s 197 countries on the sidelines, and some reporters took that seriously. But the overall tone was captured by Fareed Zakaria, CNN’s leading foreign policy voice, who intoned: “This will be the day that the United States resigned as the leader of the free world.”
Or perhaps it was the left-wing Huffington Post, with its screaming headline “TRUMP TO PLANET: DROP DEAD.”
Or maybe it was Politico Magazine writer Michael Grunwald, who said Trump was “extending a middle finger to the world” in a slap against “fancy-pants elites and smarty-pants scientists and tree-hugging squishes.”
Such dismissiveness permeated much of what was said and written, a journalistic conviction that Trump was uninformed, anti-science, turning his back on the civilized world.
The personal invective was accompanied by alarmist warnings. Mark Preston, editor of CNN’s political unit, warned viewers that the seas would keep rising, New York City could be flooded, and the Marshall Islands would completely disappear.
Word of the coming move had dribbled out in advance. Steve Bannon, who press accounts had cast as marginalized, led the charge against the globalist agreement, the epitome of what he was determined to defeat, challenging the more moderate New York wing, whose press-conscious leaders were Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Thus, the New York Times quoted “three administration officials with direct knowledge” as saying that Trump was expected to withdraw from the agreement, while “other White House insiders disputed those reports.”
But since the president’s leanings were clear, the Times also ran a “news analysis” that read like an editorial, saying that abandoning the Paris deal “would be a momentous setback” and that the United States “would give up a leadership role when it comes to finding solutions for climate change.”
Bannon felt that journalists were shocked and outraged that Trump would do what he said he would do during the campaign. They thought it was just Trump’s BS and would never happen. When advocates said the agreement was nonbinding, Bannon told the president that the moment you pull out, you’ll see how it wasn’t nonbinding at all. He was amused by the press saying he had made a comeback and regained his Svengali role, after having written him off as a hospice patient who would probably expire any minute.
But Bannon hung back toward the end. For three days, he didn’t set foot in the Oval Office while Ivanka brought in climate change activists and people like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg lobbied the president. It was important not to limit his information.
When Trump announced in the Rose Garden that the United States was withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, he also said he would be willing to renegotiate the agreement under terms that would protect American jobs and factories. The press, however, paid little attention to that. And the media barrage that followed was unrelenting.
The Washington Post ran such headlines as “Trump’s Climate Deal Decision Alarms Leaders Worldwide” and “Trump’s Paris Speech Needs a Serious Fact Check.” The New York Times weighed in with “Trump Hands the Chinese a Gift: The Chance for Global Leadership.”
The Times op-ed pages ranged from liberal Paul Krugman (“Trump Gratuitously Rejects the Paris Climate Accord”) to conservative David Brooks (“Our Disgraceful Exit from the Paris Accord”) to environmentalist Bill McKibben (“Trump’s Stupid and Reckless Climate Decision”).
As long ago as 1987, in my first interview with him, Trump had told me that other countries were taking advantage of America through international agreements. He had made a campaign promise to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, and had long taken a stance in favor of putting American national interests over global agreements. But the media were so worked up that they refused to treat Trump’s decision as anything but a national embarrassment.
The outright contempt was crystallized on Morning Joe. It was there that Joe Scarborough, who was friendly with the Kushner faction, repeatedly declared that “Steve Bannon is president of the United States. Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about policy. Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about anything.”
Bannon, for his part, thought Scarborough harbored White House ambitions and was insanely jealous of Trump. It was no coincidence that the Republican National Committee, at the White House’s request, had just put out a hit piece saying Morning Joe had “the worst case of Trump Derangement Syndrome” and had become “three hours of far-left hysteria.”
The attacks by Trump-hating celebrities bordered on deranged. Mark Ruffalo, who plays the Hulk, went on a rhetorical rampage, saying the president would “have the death of whole nations on his hands.” Actress Alyssa Milano tweeted at Trump, “Oh my God, you really are a monster.”
But while many liberals profess there is no higher calling than saving the planet, MSNBC was more interested in damaging Trump. Less than four hours after the president’s decision, Chris Matthews led off Hardball with the Russia investigation—focusing on Jim Comey’s scheduled testimony a week later—as did the next three prime-time shows.
A few conservative outlets, like National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, agreed with Trump that the Paris accord did nothing for the climate but hurt America’s economy. Some in the media, however, focused not so much on the details of the accord as on whether Trump was a global warming “denier.” On ABC’s Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos, the onetime Clinton White House aide, repeatedly asked Kellyanne Conway: “Does the president believe that global warming is a hoax?”
“The president,” she replied, “believes in a clean environment, clean air, clean water, he’s received awards as a businessman in that regard.”
At his White House press briefing, Sean Spicer ducked the question, saying he hadn’t talked to Trump about it, but he also thought the question was beside the point. Whether people believed in climate change or not, in his view, the decision was made on economic grounds, which the press refused to consider. A tweet by Wall Street Journal reporter Eli Stokols, who during the campaign had called Trump a “mendacious” liar, said it all for Spicer: “Where we’re at: Upending the global order and threatening the planet entirely to appease your own base after four months in office.”
Threatening the planet?
Spicer called him. “Do you realize that’s not reporting?” he asked. Stokols deleted the tweet.
Facing what he considered an increasingly biased and sometimes dishonest press, Spicer answered many questions with a simple “yes,” “no,” “I don’t know.” He was pleased with his more disciplined approach. The briefings were shorter and tighter. And that left many journalists frustrated.
Van Jones, a liberal CNN commentator and former Obama aide, called Spicer “the Incredible Shrinking Man,” likened him to a “zombie,” and said he “looked like a depressed little kid standing up there.”
Spicer found the psychiatric evaluations laughable. Every time he turned around, it seemed, Politico was questioning his mental well-being. Who exactly did these reporters talk to? The only person he confided in about his emotional health was his wife, and she wasn’t talking to Politico.
The pundits tagged Jared Kushner as one of the big losers on the climate decision. A Politico reporter later texted an aide: Is Jared considering resigning? I hear it’s being talked about.
Kushner actually believed the decision-making process had been terrific. There were many clashing opinions, in his view, but nobody on the inside disagreed that the Paris climate accord was a lousy agreement. The question was whether to bail on the accord entirely or work on its shortcomings. In the end, Kushner felt, Trump had made a gut call that turned out to be right. But Kushner kept such a low profile that no one knew of his quiet agreement with the president.
Besides, the spotlight was on his wife, who had even invited Al Gore to talk to her father about the Paris agreement. The press portrayed her as the voice of sanity—an
d blamed her for not forcing her dad to bow to the global consensus. Yes, Ivanka believed in climate change; but like her father, she didn’t think the Paris accord was well constructed, and actually viewed it as meaningless. What disturbed her was not that her father had withdrawn from the agreement, but that leaks had made it appear that she was trying to puff herself up as a climate change expert, which she made no claims to be. She was not a scientist. She was a millennial who liked nature and believed in environmental policies that protected clean air and water. The media, however, took a harsher view.
“Is Ivanka Trump Getting Tired of Losing?” BuzzFeed asked.
Chris Cillizza gave her the “Worst Week in Washington” award.
She also had her defenders, with Politico citing “two people familiar with their thinking” as saying that Ivanka and Jared “have taken the defeat in stride” and were playing a “long game.”
But the mockery was sometimes malicious. The liberal New Republic said that Ivanka’s political “brand” was “dead,” that she should “stop pretending she ever cared about these issues or acknowledge that she’s a massive, world historical failure.” And in a particularly elegant phrase, the magazine said her relationship with her father—who was a “moral obscenity”—required her “to piss down our backs and tell us it’s raining.”
So classy.
No issue more forcefully brought out Donald Trump’s combative side than terrorism. Part of Trump’s appeal to voters was that he was willing to take extraordinary steps to protect the country. The press, however, was convinced that he was shattering the norms of diplomacy and blackening America’s image.
Reza Aslan was one of those who seethed with hatred for the new president.
During the campaign he had tweeted at Donald Trump Jr., “Like piece of shit father, piece of shit son.”
After Trump was in the White House he tweeted: “Oh the joy when this conniving scumbag narcissistic sociopath piece of shit fake president finally gets what’s coming to him.”
Aslan was not just some bystander; he was a television personality. In fact, he had a show on CNN. And yet he felt free to use the worst sort of gutter language against the president.
After a terrorist attack on London Bridge, in which three knife-wielding men in a van killed seven people and wounded forty-eight, Aslan could not contain himself.
Responding to Trump’s tweets, he took to Twitter and wrote: “This piece of shit is a not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”
Aslan’s foul-mouthed fury at the president created a problem for CNN, where he hosted a program called Believer.
Aslan issued a semi-apology at best, saying he lost his cool and regretted the profanity: “I should have used better language to express my shock and frustration at the president’s lack of decorum and sympathy for the people of London.” So he had no problem calling Trump an “embarrassment to humankind.”
CNN issued the mildest possible statement, saying such discourse was “never appropriate.” The network also said that Aslan wasn’t an employee. But neither was Kathy Griffin—she appeared once a year—and CNN fired her. A week later, the network quietly canceled Aslan’s show.
While Aslan’s denunciation was the most extreme, much of the media assailed Trump for his tweeted responses to the London attack. Some of the criticism was legitimate, but it also revealed the continuing culture clash about what constituted appropriate presidential behavior.
First, Trump had turned the attack into a domestic issue: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
He criticized London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” Khan had actually said that the city was increasing its police presence and there was no reason for residents to be alarmed in the coming days.
It was not Trump’s finest hour. A Washington Post news story accused him of having “reacted impulsively” to the London attack “by stoking panic and fear.” Post columnist Gene Robinson called the president “out of control” and “dangerously overwhelmed.” The Wall Street Journal editorial page said the “cycle of Twitter outbursts and pointless personal feuding” could damage his presidency. On Fox, anchor Neil Cavuto scolded Trump: “Mr. President, it’s not the fake news media that’s your problem, it’s you. It’s not just your tweeting, it’s your scapegoating, it’s your refusal to see that sometimes you’re the one who’s feeding your own beast.”
CNN’s Chris Cillizza, who admitted he totally misjudged Trump during the campaign, now described him as an “anti-president,” one whose attitude “is closer to Jerry Springer than to Gerald Ford. He’s more Limbaugh than Lincoln.”
Thomas Roberts, an MSNBC news anchor, asked on the air: “Is the president trying to provoke a domestic terror attack with this Twitter rant, because only to prove himself right?” After that comment, which actually suggested that Trump might want to see Americans killed to bolster his political standing, Kellyanne Conway questioned why Roberts still had a job. “People are really losing their minds over this presidency,” she said.
Undaunted, Trump returned to Twitter to insist that he won the White House by using social media to circumvent “the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, washpost or nytimes.” It was a megaphone he had no intention of surrendering.
CHAPTER 20
THE MUELLER ESCALATION
Sean Spicer was ticked off from the moment he turned on the Today show.
It was June 7, the day before James Comey was to break his silence before a Senate committee. And here was Savannah Guthrie touting “this explosive testimony on Capitol Hill tomorrow.” How did she know? And then Chuck Todd told her that “the executive branch is not functioning right now.” Really? The entire government?
It had already been a rough week for Spicer. When CBS’s Major Garrett asked at a briefing whether Trump had full confidence in Jeff Sessions, the press secretary replied that he hadn’t discussed it with the president. The press erupted as if Sessions was about to be booted. But Spicer felt he had to be cautious. It wasn’t his job to guess what Trump thought. If he said the president had full confidence in his attorney general and something went wrong, he’d take the hit. His goal was to avoid a replay of that Kellyanne moment, when she gave Mike Flynn a presidential vote of confidence in his final hours at the White House.
The news this morning was that Trump had picked a new FBI director. Trump tweeted the announcement during Spicer’s morning staff meeting. His choice was Christopher Wray.
“Good, we’re ready,” Spicer said.
Early accounts said that Trump had blindsided his staff, but Spicer knew in advance and had a packet of information on Wray.
Hours later, Dan Coats, the national intelligence director, testified in the Senate that he had “never felt pressure to intervene or interfere in any way” with an ongoing investigation. That statement was at odds with the lead story on the Washington Post’s front page: “Trump Sought Aid in Pressuring FBI.”
The piece, based on unnamed sources, said Trump, in a private conversation with Coats, “started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comey’s handling of it,” and that Coats told others that stepping in would be “inappropriate.”
Spicer called a senior Post editor. Here was a flat denial by Coats, he said, demanding that the paper run a correction in the light of his testimony. The editor stood by the story, saying Coats never said he wasn’t asked to intervene.
Jared Kushner walked into Spicer’s office. He grabbed the Post story and started reading from it. Who were the sources for this stuff?
His finger moved down to the next front-page piece, which said “two senior White House officials” expected that the president might use Twitter to offer “acerbic commentary” during the Comey hearing. Where did they get this s
tuff? No way that was happening, Kushner said.
CNN, meanwhile, reported that Comey’s testimony would directly contradict the president’s assertion that Comey had assured him he wasn’t under FBI investigation. Again: Who the hell were the sources? Was Comey leaking his testimony? Were reporters making it up?
Jared thought the media had gone crazy, and it was driving him nuts. Major news outlets constantly called his office asking him to confirm or deny outlandish rumors: Ivanka was becoming UN ambassador. He was secretly in the Seychelles. She was at a wedding in Italy. Ivanka was pregnant. Their marriage was in trouble. Ivanka was having an affair with Justin Trudeau. Every day, it seemed, his office had to knock down stupid gossip.
Kushner tried to walk off with the Post, but Spicer snatched it back. His argument with the paper wasn’t over. “We’re escalating,” he told Kushner.
All the networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and others—went live for what was billed as the biggest Senate hearing since Watergate.
By any reasonable measure, James Comey’s testimony was not a good day for Donald Trump. The fired FBI director called the president a liar. He accused Trump of demanding his loyalty, and of saying he hoped that Comey would drop his investigation of Mike Flynn. And Comey, an experienced witness, said he believed he had been fired because he was pursuing the Russia investigation.
But there were major points in the president’s favor as well. Comey said he was not accusing the president of obstruction of justice; that was for others to judge. He confirmed that Trump never asked him to halt the Russia probe. And the CNN story that upset Kushner, and a similar report by ABC’s Jonathan Karl, turned out to be wrong. Comey said he had in fact told Trump three times that he was not personally under investigation.
Under oath, Comey admitted that he had leaked against the president, giving a Columbia Law School professor a memo, which he wanted him to provide to the New York Times. The Times had quoted the document in reporting that Trump had asked Comey to “shut down” the Flynn investigation. The mainstream media used this confession to depict Comey as a savvy operative, adept at Washington’s dark arts.