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Trump Press Relations Tag

In this time of rampant Trump Derangement Syndrome saturating formerly credible news outlets, it's become the norm to expect the media to lie intentionally about President Trump. While it does not appear that the Wall Street Journal was lying intentionally, it has become clear that they (willfully?) misheard a quote from the president and then ran with its implications in a full article.

In her post "Bannon v. Trump v. Bannon," Kemberlee laid out the latest White House drama that has the left salivating at the thought of managing to undo the 2016 election. The drama started, as Kemberlee wrote, with an "article published in The Guardian Wednesday lifted passages from a new book ‘Fire and Fury’ by Michael Wolff. Bannon was quoted heavily in the book, calling the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians 'treasonous'." One star of this latest batch of leftist hysteria has been White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

During Monday's White House press briefing, CNN's Jim Acosta worked to make himself a story. Again. Acosta asked about Trump's claim that media is "fake news", which lead to a heated exchange with White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

Earlier this week, White House press secretary asked reporters what they were thankful for and has since been castigated for "humiliating" and "degrading" the press. CNN reports:
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders encouraged reporters to first state things they were thankful for before asking their questions. Most of them obliged. They shouldn't have. Reporters ask questions at press briefings. Spokespeople answer them.

After a week of news treats, President Trump had some Halloween fun with the children of the press corps.
Mr. Trump invited children of the White House press corps to the Oval Office in their costumes to meet him and pose for pictures during the annual Halloween festivities at the White House Friday. As the kids dressed as Darth Vader, a unicorn and Princess Leia gathered around the Resolute Desk for a photo with the president, Mr. Trump teased some of their journalist parents who were in attendance. “I cannot believe the media produced such beautiful children,” the president said to laughter. “How the media did this, I don’t know.”

Pew Research Center has released an extensive report on the media coverage of President Trump's first 100 days.  There are a lot of interesting tidbits throughout, but the overriding conclusion is the right-leaning outlets were more neutral in their coverage than left-leaning or "mixed" outlets. Further, Pew found that right-leaning outlets were more likely to present negative Trump stories than left-leaning outlets were likely to present positive Trump stories.

During a press conference Tuesday President Trump once again commented on the violence in Charlottesville. Naturally, his remarks were instantly mischaracterized to portray Trump as condoning the very neo-Nazis and white supremacists he condemned in a brief speech Monday. In no time, the political media set began virtue signalling based on inaccurate summations of what Trump said. Heaven forbid media actually listen to or watch the words on which they comment.

On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough  said that President Trump "revealed himself as the jackass that leaked top secret Israeli intel,"  adding that the intel that President Trump allegedly leaked was "about somebody on the inside of a terror organization that killed 20 little girls and their mothers last night." Scarborough first observed that in denying that he had mentioned Israel in his meeting with the Russians, Trump was denying something of which he had not been accused. Scarborough said that was like a man who runs into a police station saying "my wife's missing and it's not my gun that's at the bottom of the pond in the back of our house by her body."

Lately it seems as though there's a story a day reporting some new Trump administration scandal based on a leak from an anonymous government "official." We are asked to take the facts in those stories on trust, without a chance to evaluate the veracity or motives of the source of the remarks. This over-reliance on the anonymous source gives both the journalist and his/her informant an overwhelming power. The most famous anonymous source of them all, of course, was Deep Throat of Watergate fame. He was not only a seminal figure in Nixon's denouement (and thus a hero to liberals everywhere), but he was so renowned that he had his own nickname, taken from a popular porn flick. The reporters involved in the story became famous too; Bob Woodward was played by movie star Robert Redford and Carl Bernstein by Dustin Hoffman in the film "All the Presidents Men."

The most egregious part of the Trump administration is the media's coverage of the Trump administration. Dating back to campaign season Trump, political media disproportionately focused on Trump's every coming, going, meal, and insignificant oddity. Not much has changed post-election.

The "nerd prom" is a hideous display in which journalists mingle with celebrities to pat each other on the backs. Trump, who is constantly feuding with the celebrity journalists, declined to appear, as Professor Jacobson wrote in late February, Trump bows out of White House Correspondents Association “Nerd Prom”:
The White House Correspondents Association annual dinner is referred to by the members as “Nerd Prom.” Is there possibly a more annoying title in the world? They are not nerds. But they do think of themselves as being smarter than their readers and viewers. It’s a disgusting spectacle of insiders patting insiders on the back, and the in-the-know crowd rubbing of self-important elbows. Inevitably, “conservative” correspondents hoping to be accepted into the fold attend.
Not only that, Trump decided to counter-program his own 100-day rally to compete for eyeballs and media attention. I wrote about this recently, Trump Expertly Trolls Journalists Over “Nerd Prom” with Competing Rally: