President Trump stirs up controversy, by design, on just about everything.
And when the media, including me, cover this flood-the-zone approach, Trumpian allies rip the resulting stories and segments as reflecting an unhealthy negative obsession with the president.
Memo to the pro-Trump zealots who go online and declare I hate the president, that’s objectively ridiculous. He was pleased with the two interviews I did with him during the campaign, and I was just over at the White House for a meeting with his team. But have your fun.
You know how Trump has been kidding around about running for a third term? Well, he told Kristen Welker on ‘Meet the Press’ he’s ‘not joking,’ in an off-camera but on-the-record interview in which she had to describe his remarks. Sure it violates the 22nd Amendment, but there are workarounds, he said, adopting her suggestion that JD Vance could run in 2028 and then turn over the presidency to him.
This is classic Trump – it’s a joke until it’s not. I happen to think he’s trolling the press and won’t do it – he’d be 82 – but with the Democrats in such sorry shape, who really knows?
Now he undoubtedly called Welker because the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was a guest (insisting, by the way, that he does too know national security adviser Michael Waltz), and made other news. Trump said he is ‘pissed’ at Russia for dragging its feet on a Ukraine peace deal, and IF he concludes that he may hit the Kremlin with more sanctions. This is noteworthy because he almost never criticizes Vladimir Putin – and sanctions won’t do much because of our minimal trade with Russia – but notice there’s no Trump sound bite to be replayed.
Also, on American cars costing more because of his tariff war, the president said ‘I couldn’t care less if they raised prices because people are going to start buying American-made cars.’ Imagine if Joe Biden had said that. He’d already have been impeached, with many cutting off the sound bite after the first eight words.
Meanwhile, the market plummeted again yesterday over uncertainty over the tariffs that are about to take effect, and is on track for a horrible quarter.
On his vow to take control of Greenland, Welker quoted Trump as saying ‘I never take military force off the table, but I think there’s a good possibility we could do it without military force.’ That’s a relief.
I talk and write about most of the major Trump controversies – there are always ones I can’t get to because of the fire-hose approach – which is of course as he likes it. Negative coverage helps him as much as positive coverage, as I’ve been saying for the more than three decades I’ve known him, because it means he’s driving the news agenda.
I mean, the guy will talk about anything. When Kid Rock insisted on bringing Bill Maher to have dinner with Trump, the president said he’d do it as a favor to Kid but:
‘The problem is, no matter how much he likes your Favorite President, ME, he will publicly proclaim what a terrible guy I am, etc…Who knows, though, maybe I’ll be proven wrong? It might be fun or, it might not, but you will be the first to know!’
I wonder if the president’s aware of how Maher beats up on the left.
Maher’s response to critics:
‘If two guys who’ve been at each other for so long — I mean, it’s kind of a Nixon to China thing. There was nobody who was harder on Trump…It will probably accomplish very little, but you gotta try, man, you gotta try.’
Trump has launched a series of harsh attacks against major institutions, the latest being some of the world’s biggest law firms. Skadden, Arps has agreed to provide $100 million in free services to the White House. Paul, Weiss has agreed to $40 million in pro bono work.
The alternative: Getting hit with an executive order which would bar the firms from reviewing classified documents, and therefore unable to help corporate clients. And sometimes that’s because a single prosecutor who investigated Trump works or worked there.
Three other large law firms have sued the administration and won an initial round in court.
As for academia, Columbia University has been acting conciliatory in hopes of regaining $400 million in frozen federal funds because of its failure to crack down on anti-Semitism. Unable to work it out, the school’s interim president has resigned, with longtime television journalist Claire Shipman taking over on a temporary basis. Columbia is obviously a test case.
And then there are Trump’s lawsuits against CBS, NBC and the Des Moines Register. Remember, ABC paid Trump $16 million to settle a suit about George Stephanopoulos’ comments about sexual assault.
The New York Times says:
‘An Ivy League university. Distinguished law firms with Fortune 500 clients. The highest levels of government in the nation’s largest city.
‘As President Trump seeks to extract concessions from elite institutions and punish his perceived enemies, some of New York’s most powerful people are suddenly confronting excruciating decisions.
‘The hard choices they face seem almost to be pulled from the pages of a college ethics textbook.’
Politico co-founder John Harris, with his staff, conjured up a great phrase on the reaction to these aggressive moves by Trump: the ‘Great Grovel.’
‘One after another, a parade of the wealthiest and most elite institutions in American life since last November have found themselves confronted by unprecedented demands from President Donald Trump and his team of retribution-seekers.
‘One after another, these establishment pillars have met these demands with the same response: capitulation and compliance.’
Two themes are consistent: ‘The first is an effort — far more organized and disciplined than any precedent from Trump’s first term — to bring institutions who have earned the president’s ire to heel.’ Even more surprising: ‘The swiftness with which supposedly powerful and supposedly independent institutions have responded — with something akin to the trembling acquiescence of a child surrendering his lunch money to a big kid on the morning walk to school.’
And there’s more: ‘Trump’s actions have illuminated more vividly than ever just how many wealthy private institutions have their finances and policies enmeshed with the federal government — though it is hardly a new phenomenon. What is different is the willingness of Trump and his lieutenants to use this leverage so unabashedly. Along the way, he has revealed the institutions to be more vulnerable to intimidation than their leaders themselves may have recognized.’
Whether or not you agree with Donald Trump, there’s no question that he has changed the boundaries of what’s deemed acceptable, probably forever.
: Pew Research has a fascinating study about how heavily people are consuming news about Trump, and why, with both Republicans and Democrats paying lots of attention, sometimes for different reasons.