The press: or as His Lardship calls them, Fake News

Mark Weinberg, former assistant press secretary to Ronald Reagan, became the latest prominent figure to denounce President Trump’s treatment of the press. Ripping Trump’s description of the media as “the enemy of the people,” Weinberg wrote:

We all know why Trump attacks the press as he does. He wants its credibility to be so broken that whenever it reports negative stories about him it will not be believed. That has ominous implications. If the President succeeds in his effort to discredit the press, then from whom will the people get the truth?

  Matt Taibbi

In theory, that's right. But actually, we don't always get the truth from the press as it is. That would be a good start. If they would fact check before rushing to get a story printed so they can claim a scoop, it might cut down on some of the false or inaccurate reporting they do. And that would cut some of Trump's attacks off at the knees. They're their own worst enemy when they print inaccuracies.

And there's another part to this question: He's already succeeded. With his base. It wouldn't matter to them if the press were always 100% accurate. The rest of us will still look to the non-Fox press for information.

Things got really hot when the president ostentatiously refused to call on CNN’s Jim Acosta during Trump’s recent trip to Europe. His Orangeness sneered:

“I don’t take questions from CNN. Fake news. Let’s go to John Roberts of Fox. A real network…”

The pundit response was swift and furious. CNN’s Chris Cillizza, fast becoming the leading prominent-but-uninteresting voice of this generation (similar to the George Will of my youth), warned of something like an all-Fox future:

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At that event, the AP’s Jon Lemire stepped into the breach and asked the tough “who do you believe?” question, from which Trump is still backpedaling. It was a great example of how attempts to control or narrow the narrative usually backfire on politicians.

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The backdrop of Trump’s escalation with CNN (and other outlets) includes years of the hollowing out of the Freedom of Information Act, as well as a protracted effort across multiple presidencies to expand the scope of classification.

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Being frozen out by any politician, much less one like Trump, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It may even help in the long run. (This does not excuse Trump’s behavior. Not only should the president regularly answer questions, but government agencies, in general, should be more transparent. )

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The idea of presidents freezing out individual reporters or outlets is not new; those in power just usually don’t gloat about it in the nakedly reptilian way Trump does.

The George W. Bush administration was infamously petty with the press. Bush’s people once – over some idiotic perceived slight – reassigned Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report from the second row to what Slate called “the Siberia of the sixth.”

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In an incident that reflected horribly on both the media and the White House, Bush once took a surprise Thanksgiving trip to Iraq and conspicuously disinvited much of the usual press corps. The Bush-serving-turkey-to-troops trip was transparently a PR ploy, and vengeful Bush folk snubbed anyone who was considered a threat.

That included The New York Times, which didn’t get a seat on the plane. The paper should have simply not covered the event, but it instead caved and published a report by one of Bush’s “approved” reporters.

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This was a textbook case of a president getting what he wanted by acting like a baby.

This country in general, irrespective of party, is far too obsequious to its presidents. We really seem to want royalty. It's why we'll never hold presidents to account for their crimes like other countries do their own leaders. Or at least not until we have completely, irrevocably reduced ourselves to third world status and then several generations have passed.

[T]he Obama administration had a lengthy record of prosecuting leakers and whistleblowers (sometimes availing itself of the Espionage Act to go after officials who talked to reporters) and had a menacing war with then-Times reporter James Risen in an effort to suss out Risen’s sources.

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From Dick Nixon (the press were “bastards” who were “trying to stick a knife in our groin”) to Hillary Clinton (who was profoundly affected by the “vast right wing conspiracy”), presidential figures have given reporters pet names that at least rival “fake news” or “enemy of the state.”

Trump is a distinct new low, of course. He seems to despise the entire idea of a free media and doesn’t appear to have any way of understanding reporters except in terms of how much or how little they suck up to him.

What we need are more James Risens.

Trump’s dream media scenario probably involves a press corps made up entirely of Fox creatures – kept leashed and in a pen in the Brady briefing room, on a floor covered with birdseed. It’d be like if Caligula had state TV.

If that’s our future, so what? So long as the real press can still work somewhere, being expelled from the royal court is no disaster. We can do the job just the same from the outside looking in.

Most of you won't, though.

It’s easy to scramble reporters’ brains just by giving them catered meals and chartered flights and allowing them to walk across the tarmac with a Cabinet member. They want us to get high on having a seat behind the rope line.

I had a conversation once with a presidential campaign aide who talked openly about how the more food you give the press, “the more they shut the fuck up.”

In the pre-Trump era, you could buy adoring coverage basically for nothing, just by letting reporters take a picture with the president and/or by whispering an off-the-record secret or two.

Trump has simplified everything. He is too dumb to buy the press with honey and is doing us a favor by returning us to our cheap-seats roots. He’s also done a hell of a job of reminding us that presidents can be idiots, too, and that it’s not our job to look up at people in power with credulous awe.

But so many of you do.

As he did during the 2016 campaign, Trump uses the unpopularity of national reporters as a political crutch, recasting his various damning scandals and controversies as battles between himself and snobbish, upper-class, city-dwelling weasels who have it out for the little guy.

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Despite everything, Trump’s approval rating has actually been rising steadily, as much as 6 percent since late 2017. There are a lot of factors here, but turning negative press attention into a positive is classic Trump, and surely part of the picture.

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The public has grown to hate the national press over the years because they see media celebrities as elite supplicants who’d rather be up there than down here. So being kicked off the Olympus may be a blessing in disguise. Let Fox reporters demean themselves with their front-row seats at the daily presidential tongue-bath. Back on the outside, in our natural adversarial role, we might finally get our mojo back.

Don't hold your breath.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.