The President then interrupted him. “Did you ever suppose I used to be going to be known as the peacemaker?”
Glenn replied, “Really, I did.”
His query, when he received round to it, was about Alyssa Farah, a former aide in Trump’s first-term White Home who’s now a co-host of the favored ABC daytime discuss present “The View” and a vocal critic of Trump’s. In keeping with Glenn, Farah had promised to put on a Make America Nice Once more hat on TV if he truly managed to safe the discharge of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, however she had not but achieved so. After explaining all this to the President, his question to Trump was simply two phrases: “Your response?”
A day later, Glenn was again in entrance of Trump, at a press convention that includes the President and the director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel. The occasion’s information, amongst different issues, was Trump complaining that law-enforcement companies ought to examine and prosecute extra of his political enemies and confirming that he had secretly ordered the C.I.A. to hold out operations inside Venezuela. Glenn, nevertheless, needed to make some extent about one in every of Trump’s longtime preoccupations—what the President calls the “rigged election” of 2020. “By the best way, you gained Georgia 3 times,” Glenn shouted over different reporters attempting to ask questions. Ed O’Keefe, of CBS Information, standing in entrance of Glenn, could possibly be seen shaking his head with what gave the impression to be exasperation. It was the final a part of the change that basically stood out, although. In response to Glenn, Trump mentioned, “Yeah, I agree. Do you agree with me?” After Glenn replied, “I do,” the President rapidly jumped again in: “And he’s the media! He’s the media!”
I can consider no extra good encapsulation of why the Trump Administration has achieved what it has to eviscerate the century-old custom of impartial reporting from the White Home. In his second time period, it was now not sufficient to name the actual information pretend; now it’s the pretend information that will get to displace precise journalists in an effort to playact the actual factor. And when Trump desires validation, whether or not for his false claims of election fraud or another lie, he can now declare “the media” gave it to him. How lengthy can or not it’s till there are solely Brian Glenns in that room?
You would possibly suppose that the Kremlinization of the White Home press pool doesn’t actually matter at a second when there are such a lot of different Trump-generated crises within the nation. Or that it’s merely self-serving of journalists to complain about their very own perks being taken away. Or that the President has no obligation, authorized or in any other case, to reply questions from anybody. All of that are truthful factors.
However the motive to concentrate to what’s occurring with the protection of the Presidency is that Trump cares about it maybe greater than anything. There has by no means been a extra media-obsessed President, nor one for whom the regard of others, even whether it is suck-uppery within the crudest kind, issues a lot. He’s identified to spend hours a day consuming cable-news reviews about himself. There isn’t any element of his public portrayal that doesn’t concern him. In a prolonged social-media put up this week, he berated Time for a canopy about his Center East diplomacy which was so complimentary it was headlined “His Triumph.” Trump’s beef was with the accompanying picture of himself, which he deemed “the Worst of All Time.” The purpose being: there isn’t a pleasing a frontrunner whose want for affirmation is so bottomless.
The template for Trump’s second time period up to now has been to remake the White Home as a spot more and more devoid of constraints or criticism. Gone are the first-term advisers corresponding to John Kelly or Jim Mattis who noticed themselves as checks on Trump’s tendency to go rogue. Solely yes-men and flatterers want apply, and increasingly more they appear to be competing with each other to provide you with probably the most over-the-top compliments attainable for the boss. Final weekend, throughout a rally in Tel Aviv to have a good time the Trump-brokered deal to launch the Israeli hostages, Trump’s Center East negotiator, Steve Witkoff, proclaimed him “the best President in American historical past.” It doesn’t take a lot creativeness to suppose what discuss like that from his advisers does to a person with Trump’s ego. These questions from reporters might quickly be the very last thing left tethering the President to at the least some type of actuality.
For this reason it’s not exhausting to anticipate the place all that is going. Trump, it seems, is constructing a dream palace of infinite puffery for himself, a gilded protected area the place there will likely be no extra powerful questions, no extra pesky reporters or impertinent calls for for data that he doesn’t need to give. And picture how very highly effective the President, who already believes the Structure offers him the facility “to do no matter I would like,” will really feel then. The Pentagon’s transfer to successfully ban journalism from its halls this week was not an outlier—it was a preview. ♦
