Donald Trump’s plan to punish the press has backfired, according to The New Republic’s Daily Blast podcast, as a recent tantrum from the president showed how he has deprived himself of something he “really badly” craves.
On the Monday edition of The Daily Blast, host Greg Sargent welcomed commentator Paul Waldman to discuss Trump’s ongoing press ban, which remains a source of scandal for the administration. Last week, MS NOW, CNN and Politico were barred from entering the White House after Trump accused them of knowingly spreading “fake news” about him. Despite various court orders mandating that the outlets be allowed back, the administration continued to try to block them.
During his conversation with Waldman, Sargent highlighted a “funny and revealing” moment that exposed how the ban has backfired against Trump.
“As you mentioned, news organizations banded together. They did this by agreeing to suspend the pool coverage,” Sargent detailed. “And as a result, participating networks didn’t end up covering Xi Jinping’s arrival at the White House.”
“Yeah, you’d have to think so, because this was really the worst outcome possible for him,” Waldman responded. “I mean, he lives to be on television… and you can just imagine how infuriated he must have been when this state visit from Xi Jinping — that he had been so looking forward to, and he was going to show off his helipad that he must have made sure was going to be finished in time for Xi to get here, and they rolled out a literal red carpet, and all this was going to make for great TV.
He continued: “Trump loves to put on a show. And then it wasn’t broadcast, and all these news organizations did reports on it with, you know — TV news did reports on it with still photos, because they didn’t have audio and video, because the pools weren’t there. And that must have just killed him.”
Sargent noted further that Trump did, in fact, lash out against the agencies for what he saw as their lacking coverage of the “magnificent” visit from Xi, accusing them of refusing to cover the event because they did not want “credit to be given to Trump.”
Waldman argued that this was a “reflection of his genuine sentiment,” given how much Trump craves media attention.
“He wants their attention,” he added. “But he also wants to be in this kind of conflict with them. That’s been the story since he was a young real estate developer in New York, trying to get onto the gossip pages of the New York tabloids. And this sort of push and pull, back and forth, is something that, when you’re the president, it has to be done with some subtlety. And Trump doesn’t have a lot of subtlety. And so he just went too far this time. And the news organizations said, you know, we’re not going to do it.”