Remember how the media vowed, right around President Trump’s inauguration, that it was going to be no more Mr. Nice Guy for them? They were going to dive deeply into the innards of his administration with tough-minded shoe-leather investigative reporting that would reveal the Trump White House to be a nest of lies, self-dealing, corruption, incompetence, treason, and vainglory.
Throwing down the gauntlet most boldly was NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, calling for news organizations to send their junior people to official White House briefings while the seasoned reporters toiled behind the scenes to ferret out the true Trump horrors:
Look: They can’t visit culture war upon you if they don’t know where you are.
The New York Times‘s Nicholas K. Kristof wrote:
Well, I’ve got great news, so to speak: After doing some “due diligence,” New York Times reporter Julie Davis uncovered this “most likely hidden” Trump story of shocking proportions: The Trump White House is selling gold Easter eggs in connection with the upcoming 2017 Easter Monday egg roll on the White House lawn.
We all know about the thing Trump has for gold: those gold faucets, crown molding, chandeliers, and mirror frames all over his $100 million Roll Over Louis Quatorze apartment at the Trump Tower in Manhattan. That sounds pretty “ignorant” and “puerile,” doesn’t it, not to mention nouveau riche? Davis quickly trumpeted her King Midas findings via Twitter, writing, “Forget those silly pastel/rainbow colors of White House Easter Egg Rolls past; Trump’s Easter eggs will be GOLD.”
Not to be outdone in due diligence, as Twitchy has noted, other journos quickly latched onto Davis’s shocking revelation about the gold eggs, each bearing facsimiles of the president’s and first lady’s signatures and selling for $14.95 apiece (pastel-colored eggs, also autographed, go for $8.50). Here is some intrepid reporting from Isaac Dovere of Politico:
AV Club‘s Dennis Perkins hit even harder:
This delusional egomaniac branded and gilded the Easter eggs. https://t.co/lMuRy5uAuZ
— Dennis Perkins (@DennisPerkins5) March 28, 2017
Bloomberg View‘s Tim O’Brien seized the occasion to make fun of the long “p” at the end of Melania Trump’s signature—why not?:
FLOTUS appears to have changed her last name to “Jimmy.” And Trump loves himself some gold: https://t.co/bU86rdF0M9 https://t.co/faMAgbcz2d
— Tim O’Brien (@TimOBrien) March 28, 2017
But here’s a word to the wise for the duly diligent press: Before rushing to make your jokes, try doing minimal fact-checking first. For one thing, it’s not the White House itself but the nonprofit White House Historical Association that’s selling the eggs, as it does every Easter. Furthermore, as a tweeter not associated with the journalism profession pointed out, the 2016 Easter Egg Roll, when Barack Obama, not Donald Trump, was president, also featured a premium-price gold egg alongside the pastels. Two hours after her initial tweet, Davis, posted this:
Appears my memory of Easter Egg Rolls past was wrong. Seems Obamas had a golden egg too—not a Trump innovation.
Appears my memory of Easter Egg Rolls past was wrong. Seems Obamas had a golden egg too — not a Trump innovation https://t.co/zectzLccyC
— Julie Davis (@juliehdavis) March 28, 2017
Oopsie-do! You want the egg to be inside the shell, not on your face. Well, onward and upward, in that never-ending quest for the “real” Trump story.
