More than most, President Trump relishes his adversarial relationship with reporters. A day after a gunman opened fire on Republican lawmakers, though, Trump could be softening his tone with the White House press corps.
“So everybody who’s worked so hard on this program and everybody who’s in this room, including the reporters,” Trump said during an executive order ceremony Thursday, “God bless you, God bless America.”
That addition of journalists to the presidential benediction might not be noticeable if it came from George W. Bush or Barack Obama. The press respectively hated and loved those presidents but they could care less if either offered their blessing. When Trump offered his, the press laughed.
And that’s significant considering Trump’s newsworthy aggression toward the press. He has called reporters “liars,” he’s labeled outlets “fake news,” and declared journalists “the enemy of the American people.” Taken out of context, those statements could be construed as license for violence against the press.
The origin of Trump’s ad-lib isn’t immediately obvious. But it does come just hours after Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., argued that Trump was “partially to blame” for the polarized political environment that led to the baseball shooting.
“The fact is you’ve got the top guy saying ‘Well I wish I could hit you in the face and if not, why don’t you and I’ll pay your legal fees,’ that’s bizarre. We ought to call it as such,” Sanford said on MSNBC this morning, paraphrasing remarks Trump made at a campaign rally about a liberal protestor.
Sanford has a point. Since Trump announced his presidency two years ago, civil discourse has gotten worse, not better. Both sides of the aisle lob vicious attacks in Congress, protestors of all persuasions have traded punches, and at least one political journalist has been assaulted while on assignment.
Now that brutal rhetoric has become real violence, it seems Trump’s subtly easing up on the press corps.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
