The campaign season upshifted to the next gear this week as the first Republican presidential debate was staged, and with it came all of the thematic posturing and the melodramatic interpretations of the mendacity. Absent from the proceedings and yet looming over them all the while was Donald Trump, as he brazenly turned his back on the event, while being incapable of ignoring it.
He staged a sitdown interview with Tucker Carlson to air at the same time and he arranged for his arraignment in Atlanta to take place the following day in order to suck the air out of the coverage of the candidates’ activities. But there was another more revealing action the former president took the day before the debate that revealed far more than he intended.
Politico has reported that on Tuesday evening Donald Trump hosted a dinner at an upscale restaurant that was attended by a number of prominent journalists. This meal was hosted inside of “Rare”, a steakhouse in Milwaukee, the same city where the debate was held. Trump resorted to his usual dose of trolling during the meal. Those seated were served a plate with Snack Pack™ pudding cups and Trump handed out Bingo sheets with a variety of expected quotes and topics he would deliver.
At the dinner Donald Trump hosted for a number of journalists before the GOP debate he refused to attend, he was his usual sophomoric self, seeing to it that pudding cups were served, and he handed out DeSantis Bingo cards.
— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) August 25, 2023
This is some sub-witty content
(pics via: @Politico) pic.twitter.com/5a1ZLZEnZw
The names of those attending are rather notable and spread out between broadcast and print. Of those reported to have enjoyed prime meat and chocolate pudding were:
Dana Bash (CNN)
Dasha Burns (NBC News)
David Chalian (CNN)
Robert Costa (CBS News)
Rob Crilly (Washington Examiner)
Josh Dawsey (Washington Post)
Shane Goldmacher (New York Times)
Fin Gomez (CBS News)
Rick Klein (ABC News)
Mario Parker (Bloomberg)
Rachel Scott (ABC News)
Kristen Welker (NBC News)
While it is not unexpected that there might be some journalistic interest, the ensuing reports from this crowd show the level of fealty they were willing to go. What takes this Sirloin Summit from darkly ironic to outright hilarious is the immediate dispatches from those in attendance.
Goldmacher had a DeSantis hit piece published immediately the next morning. Dasha Burns covered how Trump’s people were barred from the debate, quoting Jason Miller’s outrage after he was at the dinner. (Curiously, Rob Crilly claimed that while there were plenty of names from the campaign in town, he stated Trump himself was not in Milwaukee.) Dana Bash was dutifully delivering Trump-positive impressions following the lavish meal.
After this dispatch sent from the "Rare" steakhouse, where @DanaBashCNN dined with a dozen reporters hosted by Donald Trump.
— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) August 25, 2023
She fulfilled his request to polish his image in order to shine over the GOP candidates.
Hope the ribeye was worth it, Dana! https://t.co/oe2RqXx1Gw pic.twitter.com/jxvjXm3mLM
This co-mingling of Trump and the press is not itself problematic, necessarily. He’s a political player and they are the press covering the process. But when you weigh in the positions and stances of those on both sides over the past few years things become deeply curious.
For Trump, he has spent years burnishing his brand by being antagonistic with the press. He has become renowned for loudly labeling these journalists as being frauds, failures, and/or purveyors of “fake news”. But at the same time, he has shown a stark inability to avoid their attention. Maggie Haberman and Bob Woodward are just two examples of those who have profited from selling scalding books about the man incapable of resisting sitting down and spewing forth for them.
Less excusable however is the press fawning like this. For years the media have been railing against this man and insisting he is an inherent danger to the country. His words are allegedly so toxic that he needed to be silenced and forcibly removed from social media. Yet this year we have watched as the press gleefully runs his sound bites and his posts on Truth Social are regurgitated on the regular now.
This corrupted marriage exposes all of those at the dining table. We know why this alliance is being revisited; both sides strive to knock out Ron DeSantis from contention for the presidency. He is Trump’s main opponent in the campaign, and the journalists fear the Florida governor as one who can beat Joe Biden in the general election. They want Trump’s nomination so he can then be torn down to usher in a second biden or Democratic party term in the White House.
Look, the cynical reasons behind both sides operating like this hold no mystery. We fully understand each is using the other, and we understand why; this is the classic enemy of my enemy gamesmanship. But the reality is that this allegiance exposes the vacancy of the messaging from both Trump and the press.
How does Trump sell the concept of the press being the enemy of the people as he courts and fetes them in this fashion? Worse still are the journalists, who collectively have demonized this man to the point of alluding to Mar-A-Lago as one of the circles of Hades. How is anyone supposed to swallow the message of him threatening the core of our democracy when they dine with the demon and then promote his message to the masses?
It is all an example of how so much of this is nothing more than political theater. Trump hosts the people he despises, the press sits at the table with the man they claim to hate, then they lavish praise on him before they energetically report on his indictments in the expectation of tearing him down for the election. Trump plays along because it means all the attention is on him, the prospect of the Republican party be damned.
None of this is a surprise mind you, with the possible exception being that all the players pretend that nobody notices.