Remember when the leftist media was upset about Benjamin Netanyahu being in the Situation Room with President Trump? “How dare he?” they cried as they clutched their pearls. Well, at least Israel is an ally of the United States, whereas the media is not, and the media, as horrifying as it is, is only made worse by the President talking to them. Please, Mr. President, stop giving access to these people.
During the first Trump administration, the New York Times got scoop after scoop on the Trump administration from Donald Trump himself. He had Maggie Haberman on speed dial. He complained about her a lot in public, as he should have, but in private he not only took her calls, he called her too.
I remember thinking he’d be in a much better position if he’d reach out to conservative news organizations, even only every once in a while. Not to give interviews, he did that, but he’d give exclusive information to the Times over anyone else.
I understood it – he grew up in New York City and the Times was THE PAPER of the world. Trump in the 80s and 90s made his fame by appearing in the pages of the New York Post and Daily News, but that was for gossip. Getting in the pages of the Times was the passport to being taken seriously.
The Times mattered, and you mattered if you appeared in the Times. I remember the first time my name appeared in the Times – I have a copy of it somewhere – I was quoted as a health policy expert about Medicare Prescription Drug Discount Cards (try to remain calm, ladies, I’m married). It was very cool because it was tangible and the Times. It was also the early 2000s and I was not that far removed from college. The paper has crashed completely since then.
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But the President seems to still revere the memory of what it used to be. He still seems to want to win over those same Manhattanites who hated him even when he was one of them and a Democrat. But they will never like him, ever.
Two “reporters” from the Times, including Haberman, have a book coming out called “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” I’m not going to link to it, you can look it up on your own.
The description reads, in part, “Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented reporting from deep within the administration’s most closely guarded rooms, Regime Change takes the reader inside the Situation Room and into the secret Oval Office deliberations that have launched a new war in the Middle East and seen Trump seal the border, surge National Guard troops into cities, and send immigration agents into deadly clashes with protestors. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan bring us behind the scenes of a presidency that has transformed the culture, turned the Justice Department into an agent of retribution against the President’s enemies and the office itself into a brazen vehicle for profit. They reveal a second term propelled by a historical irony that Trump himself has come to understand: that the indictments, the convictions, the assassination attempts, and four years of exile made him not weaker but far more powerful, more vengeful, and more willing to gamble than any President in modern history.”
A couple of things pop out: 1, this will not be a fair or friendly look at the second Trump administration, and 2, they talked to a lot of people, likely including the President himself.
It would be better for the President and his legacy if he’d stop giving special access to reporters and news outlets that hope to obstruct anything he tries to go, don’t you think?
I’m not saying he shouldn’t take their questions at press conferences, like he does. Sparring with these people in public is one of the best things the President does to expose their bias and get out his message. But private conversations and special interviews, especially for their books, will never work out well. These people aren’t writing to truth, they’re crafting the first draft of a liberal narrative as history for a profit – and they need something “juicy” to sell that book and increase that royalty check. Direct access to the President helps get that because it gives credibility to the other lies they hammer in there.
There are plenty of conservative news outlets that would absolutely love to break stories and get the clicks that come along with it. Even if the President shifted half his efforts away from the enemy press it would go a long way toward cementing some positivity in his legacy and help the conservative press shore up its existence and bottom line to extend itself into the future. It won’t help when the snobs in Manhattan, but anything bad for them is good for the rest of America.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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