President Trump ramped up his war with the media in the past week, taking it to a level not seen before.
Three people at CNN resigned after they published a story involving Russia and Trump supporter, Anthony Scaramucci. The report said Congress was investigating, “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.” The story cited a single anonymous source. After it was learned the usual protocols were not followed for vetting the story, CNN retracted it and apologized. The resignations followed soon after.
The incident gave Trump carte blanche to go after “fake news,” calling out not only CNN but NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. The president said, “they are all fake news.” In a press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders lashed out at the media as well, encouraging people to look at video released by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas showing a CNN producer saying the network covered the Russian collusion story for higher ratings.
The public bashing of the media caused NBC’s Chuck Todd to fire back at President Trump and Sanders on MTP Daily:
“I’m obsessed with the White House’s war on the press and on media,” Todd said. “And let’s be clear about this: that war is nothing less than a war on the truth.”
“Do we get it right all the time?” Todd asked. “Nope, we don’t, and when we don’t, we run a correction and in some cases, people lose their jobs.”
“We take what we do seriously,” Todd said. “Because trust — viewers’ and readers’ trust — is all we have and without that, we’re nothing.”
Being sympathetic to both sides is easy. The press denies it all of the time, but Republican presidents are held to a higher standard by the media than that of their Democratic counterparts. By the same token, the media has bungled several stories since Trump took office, giving him and supporters reason to doubt the media’s veracity. That said, Trump and his administration’s outright dismissal of news they don’t like as “fake news” and attacking the press for using anonymous sources when the administration is often an anonymous source, is out of bounds, especially for the highest office in the land.
Chuck Todd and others, however, are going to have to reconcile their demand for the truth now with their near-promotion of Trump during the Republican primary, especially in 2015. That Trump received more media attention than his counterparts in 2015 is not in dispute. On Dec. 30, Philip Bump, while working with “The Fix” at the Washington Post broke down how many times each of the Republican candidates appeared on Sunday news talk shows in 2015.
Since March of this year, Trump has appeared on one of the five major Sunday programs — ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “State of the Union” or Fox’s “Fox News Sunday” — 33 times, five more times than the next-most popular guest, Ben Carson.
For the record, Marco Rubio made 12 appearances, Jeb Bush made 10 and Ted Cruz, 4.
Another advantage Trump had in 2015 was Sunday talk shows allowing him to dial-in via the phone instead of being broadcast remotely or in the studio (the only show that did not allow it, ironically, was Fox News Sunday). Doing so gave him advantage other candidates did not have. By appearing over the phone, Trump didn’t have to shuttle back and forth between studios and spread them out. Huffington Post reported in August of 2015 there was a five-day period where Trump, using only a phone, appeared on nine different broadcast and cable network shows, including four that took place on Sunday shows.
So what of Chuck Todd’s quest to win the war against Trump as it relates to the truth? Trump came into the 2016 presidential race not as an unknown quantity, but with near-universal name recognition. Todd and others invited Trump on their shows with the full knowledge that several years earlier, Trump flirted with running for president and hitched his political wagon to one of the biggest political conspiracy theories promulgated in the last 25 years: The lie that claimed President Barack Obama’s place of birth was Kenya and not in the United States.
Trump’s penchant for lying did not slow when he decided to seek the Republican nomination for the 2016 presidential race. He told so many that Politifact’s 2015 “Lie of The Year” were the numerous lies Trump told while on the campaign trail.
Todd didn’t stop inviting Trump to appear on “Meet The Press.” Why not? If Todd’s search for the truth is of the utmost importance, why have a candidate who routinely tells lies on the show? Not only did Trump continue to appear on Meet The Press, but it was not until late March 2016 when Todd said he’d no longer allow Trump to dial into the show and would have to appear via remote or in the studio. Naturally, this was after Trump won primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the Nevada caucuses and following the collection of 255 delegates when Trump won seven state contests on Super Tuesday.
The bottom line is, it was only when Trump was on his way to securing the GOP nomination that Todd and other networks pulled the plug on phone interviews and began their supposed quest for the truth. If Todd acknowledged the rules were different for Trump than other GOP candidates, his outrage might have more credibility. Todd and others had a chance to hold Trump then to the standards they want to hold him to now, and they chose not to.
That’s on them, not Trump.
Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the assistant managing editor at RedState, as well as a contributor to National Review and The Atlantic.
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