Media Madness

by Howard Kurtz

  A New York Times news analysis said Trump had abandoned any attempt at unity, instead turning himself into “America’s apostle of anger, its deacon of divisiveness.” But the president had picked the fight he wanted, one that wrapped him in the flag and energized his supporters on the right. Trump may have had trouble scoring points with his legislative agenda, but he had won the season’s biggest sports showdown.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE FIGHT OVER “FAKE NEWS”

  When Sean Spicer made a surprise appearance at the Emmys, wheeling out the podium and joking with Stephen Colbert about the record-breaking size of the crowd, a Huffington Post banner screamed “GET. LOST.” Slate called the appearance a “Sickening, Cynical Laugh Grab.” CNN’s Chris Cillizza said it was “a validation that purposely misleading on the taxpayer’s dime is a-OK.” Rob Reiner said that since Trump was a “sick liar, if we reward Sean Spicer for enabling his sickness, we are saying we accept a mentally ill POTUS.”

  Spicer was stunned. He had insisted that any skit he appeared in not be mean, and had thought the bit was a cute moment that poked fun at himself. He was not on some rehabilitation tour. The pundits were wrong, he thought, in claiming the brief bit had some deeper, esoteric meaning. The haters, he concluded, were always going to hate.

  Spicer’s detractors were so deeply afflicted by Trump Trauma that they lost any semblance of a sense of humor. They wanted Spicer to wear a scarlet letter forever and never show his face in public.

  But even friends thought it was too soon for Spicer to be joking about what was widely deemed a lie. Reince Priebus called his old protégé, saying: “What were you thinking?”

  Sean spoke briefly to Glenn Thrush, who reported in the New York Times that the ex-spokesman regretted his decision to criticize “accurate news reports” about the size of Trump’s inaugural crowd. “Of course I do, absolutely,” Spicer was quoted as saying, though Spicer later said that he had unfairly truncated the quote. He’d said he could have done a better job and been more prepared, not that he regretted what he had done. The reporter brushed aside that criticism, but he did make an unexpected move.

  Thrush had previously drawn flak for his harsh tweets about Trump. He had been cautioned by his editors about his snarkiness and had even deleted a couple of postings. Now he finally decided to pull the plug on his Twitter account. The Times executive editor, Dean Baquet, soon tightened the paper’s social media policy with Trump very much in mind, saying it might appear “we’re trying to take him out…if I have 100 people working for the New York Times sending inappropriate tweets.”

  Still, it appeared that the press would not forgive anyone who had worked for Trump. Politico’s media man Jack Shafer decreed Spicer a “pariah.”

  “Sean Spicer doesn’t have to lie anymore,” Anderson Cooper announced. “Now he just seems to be doing it recreationally.” An NBC story said all the networks were passing on hiring him. A Good Morning America interview turned into an inquisition, with reporter Paula Faris asking: “Have you ever lied to the American people?” “Did the president ever ask you to lie or manipulate the truth?” “Do you think you have a credibility issue?”

  Spicer had seen his job as expressing Trump’s opinions. Journalists, he felt, wanted him to call balls and strikes, and call out his own boss. No press secretary would ever do that.

  Even now the press hounded him. When veteran reporter Mike Allen of Axios texted him about a story that Robert Mueller might be interested in notebooks he had compiled while in the White House, Spicer wrote back: “Do not email or text me again. Should you do again I will report to the appropriate authorities.”

  The truth was, he hadn’t even bothered to read the text. Spicer had helped Allen over the years, but he was tired of Mike peppering him with negative questions and stories, some of which were sent to his wife, Rebecca. Still, Spicer had lost his cool, and he apologized for his outburst. He canceled several television interviews and decided to lay low.

  No one noticed at first, but Donald Trump was feeling a bit more generous toward the press.

  Hope Hicks had encouraged him to spend more time talking to reporters, and he did just that, regularly stopping for questions during his public appearances, especially when he was about to board Marine One and had to raise his voice over the engines.

  Trump enjoyed mixing it up with journalists, and lately had felt he was getting better coverage, receiving grudgingly high marks for his handling of two hurricanes, for making deals with Democrats, and for his meetings with leaders at the United Nations. Even if the press didn’t like his tax-cut plan, Hicks thought, most of the headlines were about substantive policy.

  There were, as always, bumps in the road. The Washington Post disclosed that Jared, Ivanka, and other officials were occasionally using private email for official business. Kushner was bemused by the charges of hypocrisy—there was no classified material involved, as there had been in Hillary Clinton’s celebrated email scandal, and he had forwarded the notes to his White House account—but it was an embarrassment nevertheless. And the press suddenly seemed fixated on how Jared’s public role, at least, seemed greatly reduced. When the Times reported that John Kelly had not only slashed his portfolio but wanted him and Ivanka out of the White House, the general had to provide an on-the-record denial of any such thoughts—while Kushner countered to the Washington Post that he was now trying to dig deeper on just a few issues.

  The press declared a major Trump setback when his candidate, Senator Luther Strange lost Alabama’s Republican Senate primary and Steve Bannon’s man, Roy Moore, won, with Bannon and Breitbart touting Moore’s victory as the harbinger of their effort to derail the GOP establishment. A Washington Post review of two books questioning Trump’s mental health featured a disturbing sketch of the president in a straitjacket. That was soon surpassed by Newsweek comparing Trump to murderous cult leader Charles Manson.

  And Trump was enraged at his secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, when Politico disclosed that Price had blown more than $400,000 on private jet travel to the Aspen Ideas Festival and other less-than-urgent destinations. The dead-on reporting prompted the president to fire him.

  But then came Puerto Rico, which had been hit by another monster hurricane. Trump was spending a long weekend at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, seemingly more focused on kneeling football players.

  As the magnitude of the devastation became clear, news outlets asked why Trump hadn’t been quicker to mobilize the military to help in relief efforts. Initially, the media had shared the president’s fixation on the NFL over Puerto Rico, but now that the story was about Trump and not just the lack of food and electricity, it was suddenly fodder for cable news arguments.

  When the liberal mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, ripped the administration’s response on CNN, saying that “people are dying,” the media were filled with Katrina comparisons. And when Trump slammed the mayor on Twitter for “nasty” comments and “poor leadership,” the pundits chided him for picking on her during a crisis. On Meet the Press, African American host Joy Reid said Trump “has a particular reflex to attack women, to attack women of color.” Most of the media nodded in agreement. A CNN banner blared, “Trump Attacks San Juan Mayor as She Begs for Help.” He was counterpunching against a harsh critic, but that didn’t matter.

  Rachel Maddow, whose anti-Trump program had briefly surged to number one in cable news, told Jimmy Fallon: “Three and a half million Americans in Puerto Rico, and the president was really preoccupied with trying to make a racial issue out of the NFL while he wasn’t doing anything about that.” It was untrue that Trump “wasn’t doing anything”—in fact, Puerto Rico’s governor praised Trump for his handling of the relief efforts—but the football controversy, which the media had fervently embraced, now made a useful weapon against him.

  Trump went after “the Fake News Networks” for depressing morale in Puerto Rico, singling out CNN and NBC—“Shame!—over their negative cover
age. The truce with the media, such as it was, was over.

  Puerto Rico was a natural disaster, but on the night of October 1, a disaster of human depravity erupted, as a man armed with automatic weapons committed the worst mass shooting in American history, leaving fifty-nine people dead and more than five hundred wounded.

  The president delivered a somber, even eloquent speech. He declared the Las Vegas massacre “an act of pure evil,” called for unity and prayers, quoted the Bible, and said, “though we feel such great anger at the senseless murder of our fellow citizens, it is our love that defines us today—and always will, forever.”

  But much of the media refused to give him credit for matching the moment, believing, along with Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, that anything short of an immediate demand for greater gun control was an abomination. Politico allowed that Trump’s response “didn’t make a tragic situation worse,” but lamented that his words “were in line with what any National Rifle Association-backed president would do.” When CNN’s John King called Trump’s speech “pitch-perfect,” he drew flak from lefty pundits. While common-sense gun restrictions had broad public support, the press was clearly holding Trump to an ideological standard. And the late-night hosts—Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, and others—denounced the president’s party for not embracing stricter gun control.

  Trump did have some stumbles the next day on his visit to Puerto Rico. He lauded the federal effort, and said the island should be “very proud” because its official death toll of sixteen was way below that of Katrina. He added that “you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack” but that was fine. An awkwardly arranged photo op of him helping to distribute relief supplies—with Trump throwing rolls of paper towels into a crowd—went viral.

  The media went into hypercritical mode. Joe Scarborough said Trump was showing “a basic lack of humanity.” David Gregory said on CNN that it was “callous and absurd” to compare the death toll to Katrina and “trying to stir up hatred for the media.” A Salon headline called Trump’s Puerto Rican response “monstrous,” and said that any journalist who disagreed with that assessment was “naive, dishonest,” or “willfully delusional.” The president was trying to lift spirits on the crippled island, and once again, the media verdict was that he couldn’t do anything right.

  Much of the mainstream media believed that Trump was dangerously uninformed on foreign policy and that his generals and advisers were keeping him on a tight leash.

  NBC reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had considered resigning and had privately called the president a “moron.” Tillerson called a televised news conference to deny the story, but rather than dispute the moron comment, he said it was too petty to discuss. (His spokeswoman later denied it on his behalf.)

  Trump was furious at NBC, and branded the report bogus, even as the New York Times also quoted “associates” of Tillerson as describing “his deep frustration with the president and talk of resignation.”

  Trump seemed to give the stories of a rift between the two men some confirmation when he tweeted that Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate” a diplomatic back channel with North Korea, or, as Trump put it “with Little Rocket Man. Save your energy, Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”

  Trump also took this shot: “Why Isn’t the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up—FAKE!” He was clearly venting, but the mere suggestion that the government should investigate the press showed how low things had sunk.

  That was just the beginning. NBC reported that the moron comment followed a meeting in which the president stunned his national security team by asking for a tenfold increase in the nuclear arsenal, supposedly unaware of decades of arms-control treaties. Trump insisted the unnamed sources behind this report were made up. Anchor Lester Holt said they included three people in the room. Trump then ratcheted things up.

  “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks,” he tweeted, “at what point is it appropriate to challenge their Licenses? Bad for country!”

  What Trump missed is that the FCC doesn’t license national networks, only local stations. But the notion of using government muscle to pull the plug on offending media companies was a step too far, a slap at the First Amendment.

  “It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write, and people should look into it,” Trump told reporters.

  “You might want to look into it too, Mr. President,” Jake Tapper said on CNN, brandishing a copy of the Constitution.

  When Trump tweeted insults against retiring Republican Senator Bob Corker—who accused him of moving the country closer to “World War III”—the Washington Post said an angry Trump was “lashing out, rupturing alliances,” and had “torched bridges all around him.” Next the paper reported that Trump was “livid” and “threw a fit” when his team pressed him to accept Barack Obama’s nuclear disarmament deal with Iran. H. R. McMaster helped craft a compromise where Trump could denounce the deal—and refuse to “certify” it—while leaving the agreement intact unless Congress intervened.

  This could have been reported as boosting pressure on the Iranian regime without unraveling an international pact. But the media were wedded to the idea of the generals restraining Trump.

  When the president unilaterally halted billions in Obamacare subsidies, the AP—in a straight-news story—described his approach to governing as “wreaking havoc.” Chris Matthews said Trump was reversing Obama’s legacy out of “spite.” Don Lemon questioned whether he had “an Obama obsession.” The notion that Trump believed in changing these policies was rejected in favor of the notion that he was motivated solely by personal animosity.

  There were so many stories along the lines that Trump is impossible, and restrained only by his staff, who were always on the verge of quitting, that John Kelly felt compelled to appear in the briefing room to announce he was “not quitting,” and calmly suggest that reporters “develop some better sources.” It was, Trump’s new chief of staff declared, “astounding to me how much is misreported.”

  CHAPTER 27

  THE ERA OF HARASSMENT

  With one poorly framed answer in the Rose Garden on October 16, President Trump unleashed a war about war, which consumed an entire week of his presidency, and underscored how he was treated far differently than his predecessors.

  During a Rose Garden news conference called to demonstrate that Trump and Mitch McConnell were “closer than ever before,” a reporter asked why the president hadn’t addressed the deaths of four American soldiers in Niger twelve days earlier. Trump chose to respond by pointing the finger at others.

  He said that “if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls” to the families of soldiers who were killed. “I like to call when it’s appropriate.” When pressed again, he retreated to “that’s what I was told.”

  Trump was wrong; Obama visited with some families as well as calling and writing them. On CNN, which no longer seemed to care about cursing if Trump was the target, Ryan Lizza said the president just “makes shit up.” Former Obama counselor Dan Pfeiffer called him a “deeply disturbed ignoramus” and “pathological liar,” while Obama’s former deputy chief of staff Alyssa Mastromonaco said he was “a deranged animal.”

  Such over-the-top attacks fueled the media denunciations, but that was just the beginning. The next day Trump called the widow of one of the men ambushed in Niger, Sergeant La David Johnson, launching a cycle of charges and countercharges that overshadowed the deaths of four American heroes. And the mainstream media, which had provided scant coverage of the deaths in Niger, were obsessed with the political sniping. Just as with the hurricane in Puerto Rico, a tragedy wasn’t big news until it became a Trump story.

  Frederica Wilson, a Democratic congresswoman who heard the call, launched a television blitz to attack Trump f
or insensitivity, saying the president told Johnson’s widow that her husband “must have known what he was signing up for.” The soldier’s mother told the Washington Post the president had disrespected her son, and his widow, Myeshia Johnson, told Good Morning America that his tone had made her cry.

  Trump, in turn, denounced the “wacky” congresswoman for having “totally fabricated” the account (though it turned out he had uttered those words). And Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters it was “a disgrace of the media” to try to distort “an act of kindness.”

  Journalists were all too willing to believe that Trump, even if there were awkward moments, was incapable of handling a condolence call. They started asking other Gold Star families about Trump—CNN aired a tear-filled interview with two parents who said the president hadn’t called them—imposing a standard to which no previous president was subjected.

  There was a powerful moment when John Kelly, who had always been reluctant to talk about losing a son in Afghanistan, delivered an emotional defense of the president’s condolence call. But Kelly’s emotional appearance was marred by a misstep. He drew fierce media criticism after inaccurately describing a speech the African American lawmaker had once given—including from Congresswoman Wilson, who charged that “the White House itself is full of white supremacists.”

  The media view of Kelly quickly shifted. For all the talk about him “as a moderating force,” the New York Times said, he had turned out to mirror Trump’s “hard-line views” on “patriotism, national security and immigration.”

  The press also turned with a vengeance on Sarah Sanders for a rare misfire. When a reporter pressed her on General Kelly having misstated some facts about Wilson, Sanders replied, “If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.”