Don’t believe all of Donald Trump’s anger directed at reporters. According to the New York Times, he not only appreciates the media but is somewhat obsessed with it.
In a must-read Sunday magazine story by Mark Leibovich released Tuesday, Trump is described as a student of the media, a candidate who even tries to help them out.
“Getting close to Trump is nothing like the teeth-pulling exercise that it can be to get any meaningful exposure to a candidate like, say, Hillary Clinton. This is a seductive departure in general for political reporters accustomed to being ignored, patronized and offered sound bites to a point of lobotomy by typical politicians and the human straitjackets that surround them,” he writes in a Trump feature story.
The image of Trump in the New York Times Magazine story.
“In general, Trump understands and appreciates that reporters like to be given the time of day. It’s symbiotic in his case because he does in fact pay obsessive attention to what is said and written and tweeted about him. Trump is always saying that so-and-so TV pundit ‘spoke very nicely’ about him on some morning show and that some other writer ‘who used to kill me’ has now come around to ‘loving me,'” wrote Leibovich.
“There is a ‘Truman Show’ aspect to this, except Trump is the director — continually selling, narrating and spinning his story while he lives it,” adds the story.
It is a revealing insider’s look at Trump, his attitudes, his huge appetite and even his belief that exercise can cause more physical damage than just standing.
But it’s his view of the media, his off and on battle with reporters and outlets like Fox, that is revealing.
It ends with the reporter catching a ride with Trump. Leibovich wrote:
”Don’t speak,” Trump instructed me as I sat down next to him in a Suburban. That was fine by me. None of the five staff members and security people in the vehicle said a word. We sat, per Trump’s dictate, in silence for the half-hour drive. It was almost comforting to me that he would take a break from being Donald, the Brand, and turn relatively ”off” in my presence; that he could, as much as he ever does, retreat into himself. I wondered what he was thinking about.
After a few minutes, I saw Trump staring down into a phone glowing up into his shiny face. I checked my phone, too. ”Speech in Dallas went really well,” it said in my Twitter feed, courtesy of @realDonaldTrump, who was tweeting next to me in the dark.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
