Getting Ready to Interview Trump: An Exercise
Update: 2024-11-21
Share
Description
We hire a freelancer to research every comment Donald Trump has made about the press. He ends up telling his wrestling buddy about the assignment, and using it to see if he can get him to trust in journalism.
You can find more work by Sam Eagan here.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Comments
Top Podcasts
The Best New Comedy Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best News Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Business Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Sports Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New True Crime Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Joe Rogan Experience Podcast Right Now – June 20The Best New Dan Bongino Show Podcast Right Now – June 20The Best New Mark Levin Podcast – June 2024
In Channel
United States
00:00
00:00
1.0x
0.5x
0.8x
1.0x
1.25x
1.5x
2.0x
3.0x
Sleep Timer
Off
End of Episode
5 Minutes
10 Minutes
15 Minutes
30 Minutes
45 Minutes
60 Minutes
120 Minutes
Transcript
00:00:00
A few weeks before the election, I thought I might actually get an interview with Donald Trump.
00:00:04
Our executive producer was texting with the campaign's press team.
00:00:07
We were like, "Trump seems to like going on podcasts, we have a podcast," and they seemed to be entertaining it.
00:00:12
I had one main thing I wanted to ask him.
00:00:16
In a second term, how is it going to treat journalists?
00:00:19
Trump's been quite clear about his other goals for a second term, dismantling the civil service, seeking retribution against enemies, and while he certainly has maligned the media a lot,
00:00:29
I wanted to use any time I might get with him on this show, about journalism, to ask what he was thinking about doing to the press.
00:00:36
In as much detail as I could get, because I think it's important to know what possibly lies ahead, especially now that he's won.
00:00:42
Obviously, the interview was a long shot, but it seemed conceivable enough that I still had to get ready.
00:00:49
And that's what today's show is about.
00:00:51
My week of preparation for an interview with Donald Trump, the guy who helped me prepare for that interview, and his old wrestling buddy.
00:01:00
From this side, it looks like you guys are just repeating what you're told to repeat from people who are funding whoever you're working for.
00:01:06
This is Question Everything from KCRW and Placement Theory.
00:01:12
I'm Brian Reed, stick around.
00:01:23
It's pretty clear to everyone by now that social media has changed everything, from the way we live to how we discuss politics and what we think we know about the world around us, which begs the question, who's in charge here?
00:01:33
Hi, I'm John Favreau, former Obama speechwriter turned chronically online host of Offline with John Favreau.
00:01:38
Join me every week just outside your social media field echo chamber for a smarter, lighter conversation about the real-time changes in real-world effects of social media and the internet on all of our lives.
00:01:48
Check out Offline with John Favreau every Sunday wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:52
If I was going to talk meaningfully with Donald Trump about his plans for the press, I wanted to go in with more than just, I know you call us fake news.
00:02:01
I wanted to do my due diligence.
00:02:04
Compile every last thing Trump has ever said about reporters, the press, the media.
00:02:08
To do that, I brought in Sam Egan.
00:02:11
It was a doozy of an assignment.
00:02:14
Yeah.
00:02:15
Sam produces a political podcast for the New Yorker.
00:02:18
He worked at Vice and he also freelances with our show.
00:02:20
It was mid-October and we told Sam this interview with Trump could come through any moment.
00:02:24
We needed a master list of every comment Trump has made about the media since he started running for the presidency in 2015.
00:02:31
What Sam came back with was massive.
00:02:34
First off, he found this spreadsheet that the US press freedom tracker had put together.
00:02:38
I've just tweets alone from Donald Trump about the media, which totaled well over 2000.
00:02:43
It was overwhelming to behold.
00:02:45
My eyes almost glazed over, confronted with it.
00:02:48
November 26, 2015, the failing New York Times should focus on fair and balanced reporting, rather than constant hit jobs on me.
00:02:56
Yesterday, three boring articles today too.
00:02:59
August 30, 2018, I just cannot state strongly enough how totally dishonest much of the media is.
00:03:04
Truth doesn't matter to them.
00:03:06
They only have their hatred and agenda.
00:03:07
And on and on.
00:03:08
So terrible.
00:03:09
Such a disgrace.
00:03:10
So wrong.
00:03:11
So dirty.
00:03:11
Just row after row after row of vitriol towards the press.
00:03:15
And that was just the tweets.
00:03:16
Sam spent hours scrubbing through Trump's rallies, press conferences, interviews, post-Suntri social, and pulled together pages of comments, which he sure are still my comprehensive.
00:03:28
I mean, I had two days to do this.
00:03:30
I was like, you're exposing what a great manager I am making.
00:03:33
So there could conceivably be something that have been missed.
00:03:36
Yeah, this is this, yeah, a ton more, I'm sure.
00:03:39
As Sam created this timeline, basically, laying out Trump's comments about the press chronologically over the past nine years, he began to see an evolution to the president's remarks.
00:03:48
You could break them down into three progressive phases.
00:03:52
Phase one began back in 2015 with Trump the brawler clapping back, picking fights.
00:03:58
New York tabloidy guy, like having this like tit for tab battle with the press.
00:04:02
And he's like a bunch of immerse scumbags, but some of them are good.
00:04:05
It's something he like frequently said when he was first running.
00:04:09
And not exactly.
00:04:11
That being reported, you would say something to the effect of like 30% of them are great and 30% of them are all right, but about 15 to 20% of them are like horrible evil people, which is, you know,
00:04:22
not great nuance, but any nuance on the media from President Trump is surprising to read him in hindsight.
00:04:29
And I think after his election is when that kind of started to shift, which brings us to Trump's next stage of development in his attitude towards the press.
00:04:38
There was a rally that I believe, if I remember the day correctly, it was February 18th, 2017.
00:04:43
While making the master list, Sam pinpointed what he thought might have been the actual time and place when Trump pivoted from phase one to phase two.
00:04:52
He was a Melbourne Florida doing a rally.
00:04:55
And he most of his rallies are kind of the same.
00:04:59
And he does his stick over here about this.
00:05:02
He does his stick about here for this.
00:05:04
And then somewhere 20 to 40 minutes and a lot of the time, he's like, and look over there at the press box.
00:05:09
They suck to hell with them.
00:05:11
And everyone's like, they move on.
00:05:14
But it's typically like a line, two lines.
00:05:17
So what was different about this, the Melbourne, the Melbourne, launched into this very long.
00:05:22
Do we read it?
00:05:23
Yeah.
00:05:23
I also want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news, the dishonest media, which has published one false story after another with no sources.
00:05:32
Even as they pretend they have them, they make them up in many cases.
00:05:34
They just don't want to report the truth and they've been calling us wrong for two years.
00:05:38
They don't get it, but they're starting to get it.
00:05:40
I can tell you that.
00:05:41
They've become a big part of the problem.
00:05:43
They are part of the corrupt system.
00:05:45
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln, many of our greatest presidents fought with the media and called them out, oftentimes underlies.
00:05:54
When the media lies to people, I will never, ever let them get away with it.
00:05:57
I will do whatever I can so that they don't get away with it.
00:06:00
They have their own agenda.
00:06:01
Their agenda is not your agenda.
00:06:03
In fact, Thomas Jefferson said nothing can be believed, which is seen in a newspaper.
00:06:07
Truth itself, he said, becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
00:06:10
That was June 14th, my birthday, 1807.
00:06:13
It will continue to expose them for what they are.
00:06:17
And most importantly, we will continue to win, win, win.
00:06:20
Most of his comments prior to that were like, "Ah, these greasy media guys.
00:06:26
They're out to get there.
00:06:27
They're unfair to me all the time."
00:06:29
At this point, he is saying, "Oh, it's not just me.
00:06:32
These people are a part of a system that's doing what it's designed to do."
00:06:34
And he begins to project himself as the solution to that system.
00:06:39
If phase one was disqualify the press, then phase two was demonize us.
00:06:45
We're actually not American.
00:06:46
We're trying to undermine the America.
00:06:48
We're in opposition to America.
00:06:50
Exactly.
00:06:50
The Kabal.
00:06:51
What strikes me about is what you just read, this statement at the rally, this seems researched down to the date that Thomas Jefferson made a comment about newspapers.
00:07:02
Actually, he got that date wrong by three days.
00:07:05
I guess he wanted to say it was on his birthday, but still.
00:07:08
There's something strategic about it.
00:07:11
So this is February 18, 2017.
00:07:14
It's the first month of his presidency.
00:07:17
After having assessed all this, do you make anything more of why that happened then and what that shift means in retrospect?
00:07:26
I mean, this feels like conjecture, but I think it reads to me like someone who realized they were actually the president.
00:07:36
I had to now do this for four years.
00:07:39
Even if you're Donald Trump, you can, to some effect, duck in and out of the media pre-hymbing the president.
00:07:50
You're not the most reported on person alive.
00:07:53
If I had to guess, then the first month of his presidency and it's probably setting in that people are going to write dozens or hundreds of articles about me day in,
00:08:03
day out every day for the next four years, potentially beyond that.
00:08:07
You know, the rest of my life.
00:08:10
reading this compilation brought me back to that time to the first month of Trump's first term, particularly poignant as we're about to enter the first month of term number two.
00:08:20
It brought me back to just how much strife there already was in that short period.
00:08:25
Already in that first month, there've been the women's march with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators descending on D.C.
00:08:31
and arresting shots on cable news of a sea of pink hats on the national mall.
00:08:35
News organizations had brought in crowd counting experts who estimated that there were about three times as many people at the march than there were at Trump's inauguration, which infuriated him.
00:08:45
Trump had also instituted the travel ban from majority Muslim countries that first month, which led to reporters putting out story after story of flash protests and chaos and immigration lawyers rushing to airports across the country.
00:08:59
That's what was going on when Trump made that new kind of speech in Melbourne, Florida.
00:09:03
And you know, like right around this time, he uses the term, the enemy of the American people for the first time on Twitter referencing, you know, like the press.
00:09:13
It's interesting.
00:09:14
I mean, obviously, I know he did that.
00:09:16
It's just interesting to kind of think about when it happened and to see it and to see it laid out.
00:09:21
Yeah.
00:09:21
Yeah.
00:09:21
I mean, hindsight, all is such a blur.
00:09:23
Like it happened the first month of his presidency.
00:09:25
Yeah.
00:09:26
In my head, I would have just kind of compressed it all and fake news and enemy of the people kind of all happened or in his campaign or something.
00:09:34
So phase one, disqualify the press phase two demonize.
00:09:39
And then in the document, you can see phase three begin phase three is if the press is bad, if the press is other.
00:09:47
Now what do we do about it?
00:09:49
Here are actionable things that we can do.
00:09:51
Phase three picked up after Trump left office after the coverage of January 6th and his impeachment and of the criminal cases against him and of his most recent campaign.
00:10:01
Trump started threatening more and more things he and the government would do to the press.
00:10:07
So for instance, not just trying to find leakers who give information to journalists, but threatening to go after the journalists themselves.
00:10:14
That in particular is like a theme that he's a confirmed back to a lot.
00:10:17
There's certainly like every administration kind of is like we need to shore up our leaks, but like I think he was somewhat unique in being like like like almost being like, hey screw going after the leakers, like we could go to the reporter.
00:10:28
And he starts doing things like, I don't know if you remember that he went out.
00:10:31
He wanted to go out to CBS.
00:10:32
What are their FCC license revoked?
00:10:34
Because of the way that they edited the Kamal Harris interview that they did.
00:10:39
He attacked the Comcast CEO.
00:10:41
He was constantly talking about reshaping libel laws and kind of hypothesizing live on truth social how he's going to sort of materialize his larger qualms with the press that he had for his first term and beyond into like actionable steps to diminish their ability to report on his administration fairly.
00:11:04
In case this wasn't obvious, I never got the interview with Trump.
00:11:09
His campaign declined our request the day after they wrote us that he went on Joe Rogan less than two weeks after that he won the election, which is how Sam and I found ourselves doing this kind of post mortem analysis on the document he made.
00:11:21
A document that has only become more foreboding, I'd say, in the days since Sam stopped adding to it.
00:11:27
I don't even think I have it on there because it was in the last week or two.
00:11:30
He was talking really having a reporter shot, wasn't he?
00:11:32
Yeah, that's how I ended my last episode.
00:11:34
Yeah, he talked about it.
00:11:36
I believe the day before election day.
00:11:39
Exactly.
00:11:40
So it's crazy.
00:11:41
Also new since Sam finished the document, the Columbia journalism review recently reported that a week before the election, Trump's attorney sent a legal threat to both the New York Times and Penguin Random House demanding $10 billion in damages for libel and his attorney filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission about the Washington Post claiming the way they promoted their coverage amounted to an in-kind contribution to Kamala Harris' campaign.
00:12:07
In the last three weeks, Trump did sue CBS for $10 billion, which of course is an example of Trump making good on these threats.
00:12:16
That's what I'm wondering if we'll come to see more of.
00:12:18
This week, Trump named his choice to head up the Federal Communications Commission, a man named Brendan Carr, who has shown a willingness to strip networks of their licenses for choices they make in editorial coverage,
00:12:30
even though that's not allowed under FCC rules, he could be in a position to take real action against broadcasters.
00:12:36
So I feel like that brings us up to where we are.
00:12:38
Now we're at Punish.
00:12:40
Yeah.
00:12:40
Punish the press, the rubber meeting the road, so to speak.
00:12:44
You're like a slight, I don't know, smirk or grin on your face, like why?
00:12:48
I don't know.
00:12:50
That's a good question.
00:12:54
Probably at some level of an uncomfortable laugh in there.
00:12:58
I'm a little bit nervous about it.
00:13:00
But also, as far as a journalist, there is no before time for me.
00:13:07
There's a whole class of journalists.
00:13:09
This is all that they've ever known.
00:13:12
I never knew a civil media era in the United States.
00:13:18
What's that been like?
00:13:20
You know, I think it's almost feels like asking what it was like before you were born.
00:13:30
I don't exactly know.
00:13:33
It sounds nice.
00:13:35
What it was like before when I hear stories about it.
00:13:40
But on some level, there's more of a sense of conviction.
00:13:46
What do you mean?
00:13:47
It gives our work greater purpose in a way?
00:13:49
I think so, and this week I'm struggling with that.
00:13:56
So we had this document, this odd artifact, which memorializes Trump's evolving relationship with the press in the last nine years.
00:14:04
And now, without an interview with Trump and with him having just one, I was trying to figure out what to do with it.
00:14:10
We seriously considered reading it all allowed, or having AI read it, and releasing a six-hour podcast of it.
00:14:16
It'd be a piece of performance art, basically.
00:14:19
Like Andy Kaufman reading the entirety of Great Gatsby.
00:14:22
We ended up mixing that idea.
00:14:24
I'm trying to figure out what's the value of it.
00:14:27
I have a sense that there is value to it, you know.
00:14:29
But I mean, I will share this with you.
00:14:31
I had an exchange a couple of days ago with a friend of mine from Wyoming.
00:14:37
Sam's from Utah and went to college in Wyoming.
00:14:40
He was a D1 wrestler there.
00:14:42
Where I'm from, like most people on the only journalist that they know.
00:14:45
They have never, especially Bill Nyeh, have never met a journalist in their lives, except for me.
00:14:50
How old are you?
00:14:52
I'm 29, just turned 29.
00:14:54
So I get roped in these conversations a lot.
00:14:56
And on the day after the election, Sam posted a somber selfie online.
00:15:00
So I was shit posting on my close friend's story on Instagram, expressing my concerns about Trump's rhetoric about the media.
00:15:07
On top of the selfie, he wrote "Real Weimar Republic Vibes" at the New Yorker today, having conversations about what we're all going to do if Trump begins targeting members of the news media.
00:15:18
I do not know what timeline I expected to live through, but it was not this one.
00:15:23
A guy from Sam's old wrestling team, the end of him.
00:15:26
And he was sort of like, I feel like you're being dramatic.
00:15:30
If a Republican did this like the day after the election and Kamala had one, you would call it silly.
00:15:35
And I referenced this document.
00:15:36
I was like, "Hey man, I spent two days compiling a 13 page document that I know is not 1,000% comprehensive.
00:15:46
There's stuff that's missing, it's still that long of just comments that were like ranging from vaguely threatening to like pointed threats at the media.
00:15:54
So I don't really can think this is overreacting."
00:15:57
And he was, you could not believe it.
00:15:58
He did not believe me.
00:15:58
He was like share of me.
00:16:00
The only reason I didn't share is because I don't know what you're doing with it.
00:16:02
And I was like, I'm going to, you know, he was like email it to me.
00:16:05
Is it Trump supporter?
00:16:06
Oh yeah.
00:16:07
And you're pretty good friends with this guy.
00:16:09
Great friends with this guy.
00:16:10
After seeing the pages of invective of threats, would Sam's friends still think he was being dramatic?
00:16:17
Would he see why Sam was feeling scared as a journalist?
00:16:20
It seemed like a conversation worth having in these raw weeks after the election.
00:16:24
Do you think it'd be interesting to talk to him about it?
00:16:27
Yeah.
00:16:28
Was that Sammy talking to me?
00:16:32
Yes.
00:16:32
It's both of us.
00:16:33
Yeah.
00:16:34
Sammy?
00:16:35
We're both here and we're not on video just because we're sitting across from each other at a table in like a tiny cramped studio so you don't have to be on video if you're not feeling it.
00:16:42
It's kind of wanting to see your pretty face, Sammy.
00:16:45
After a quick break, we bring this document Sam made to an old friend of his who doesn't trust journalists but does trust Sam to see how the list looks to him.
00:16:55
And he makes the case for why we should see it differently.
00:16:57
We're going to share the list in our newsletter.
00:17:00
You can sign up at case here at w.com/questioneverything.
00:17:06
Sam's friend Chaz is 30, married with two kids, one brand new just over a month old.
00:17:17
He works for a roofing company in Colorado and is pursuing a professional MMA career.
00:17:22
Sam says he's a great fighter.
00:17:24
Chaz says he voted for Trump, not particularly enthusiastically, but because he's anti-abortion.
00:17:30
So did you get a chance to look at the at the sort of master list of Trump statements about the media?
00:17:35
Yes, yes, and I have it here.
00:17:37
Did you print it out?
00:17:38
Dude, I had it print it out.
00:17:41
What are you 80?
00:17:42
You're a father of two now and you're printing stuff all the sudden.
00:17:45
Sam sent Chaz the list before we got on the phone.
00:17:50
When Sam went to write Chaz, he was a little embarrassed to see in his DMs that in his post-election ship posting mood, when Chaz had chimed in saying it seemed like he was overreacting and Sam had responded,
00:18:01
telling him, if you think I'm overreacting, how about this document I just spent two days making?
00:18:06
Sam had described the document to Chaz as a list of every time Trump had called for violence against the media, which that's not what this document is.
00:18:14
It's mostly insults, accusations, and other kinds of threats.
00:18:17
Honestly, nothing surprised me.
00:18:20
I feel like these were things that I've seen or heard him say before.
00:18:25
Looking at Trump statements laid out chronologically, Chaz quickly noticed the same early evolution that Sam did.
00:18:33
It looked like over time, it got progressively more like the media is the devil from 2015 when we have here.
00:18:43
Like, much of the press has been terrific or honorable people.
00:18:46
I've had amazing people like 30% and then it kind of moves towards, they're just the worst people ever and totally dishonest.
00:18:52
I tend to lean more towards that direction.
00:18:58
You lean which direction, just to be clear, you lean towards more skepticism of traditional news media, like TV, newspaper, radio, pretty skeptical and not just of liberal news media,
00:19:13
of all news media too.
00:19:15
I'm pretty skeptical of what I'm hearing.
00:19:18
Where do you get your news?
00:19:18
I primarily might be silly YouTube.
00:19:24
That's not surprising to me at all.
00:19:26
Honestly, I expected you to say YouTube.
00:19:29
YouTube, yeah.
00:19:30
I like, I really enjoy long form podcasts where we get to sit down and listen to people talk a little more human, you know, this,
00:19:40
I love Joe Rogan, huge Jordan Peterson fan.
00:19:43
When I'm listening to podcasts, it seems more natural to where it's two people having a conversation as opposed to like a corporation through one reporter.
00:19:52
To Sam's list, we asked Chaz if there's anything in there that jumped out at him for one reason or another that would help us see how it was landing with him.
00:20:00
He turns to a section of a speech Trump gave when the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade had been leaked ahead of time to a political reporter.
00:20:09
In the document, Sam has summarized this moment as, quote, "Trump threatens reporter with prison rape if they do not reveal the identity of the Roe Supreme Court leaker."
00:20:20
I felt like that was a bit of a stretch.
00:20:22
Like, I felt like, like, could that have been heard as a joke?
00:20:31
That's how I read it.
00:20:34
Can you just read what I just want to make sure we're talking about the same part?
00:20:37
Yep.
00:20:37
Okay.
00:20:38
Yeah.
00:20:38
Trump states, "Take the writer and/or the publisher of the paper and say, "Who is the leaker?"
00:20:44
And they say, "We're not going to tell you."
00:20:47
They say, "That's okay.
00:20:49
You're going to jail."
00:20:50
And when this person realizes he's going to be the bride of another prisoner very shortly, he will say, "I'd very much like to tell you exactly who the leaker is."
00:20:59
It reads like a joke to me based off like how he, I mean, he is, who he is, brash and not a polished politician in that way.
00:21:09
Even if you take the bride of another prisoner, say that is like, you know, a bit of a prison joke.
00:21:17
Sure.
00:21:17
I think the idea of a president saying, "We're going to threaten the reporter with jail if they don't reveal a source."
00:21:25
Like, what do you think of that idea?
00:21:28
If there was anything that was done after that, I would take it more seriously.
00:21:34
Like, if there was any concrete steps to like, all right, we're going to arrest him and question him.
00:21:39
Sure, I'd take that seriously.
00:21:42
But if it was just that and it was left where it was and there was no follow-up on that whatsoever, then I don't know how you could take it more seriously than Trump being Trump and how he speaks.
00:21:51
Well, that was in 2022 and he was in the president.
00:21:54
Now, getting back to like what originally spawned this whole conversation, do you see how that could be something that I find concerning?
00:22:03
I guess I'm not in your world.
00:22:06
I'm not a journalist, I'm an adult.
00:22:10
I don't doubt your sincerity or your fear in that.
00:22:14
But to me, it seems silly for you to be afraid of that.
00:22:18
It just seems silly.
00:22:23
So you said that you were aware that Trump spoke about the press in this way.
00:22:31
I'm just curious how his rhetoric, I mean, it's been going on for a decade now.
00:22:35
This is how he spoke about the media for a decade.
00:22:37
I'm curious if you think that this has affected your own perception of journalists at all?
00:22:43
Yeah, I would say yeah.
00:22:45
I would say his interaction with the media certainly has contributed to more skepticism of traditional news outlets.
00:22:54
Yeah.
00:22:56
Chaz tells us about a recent experience he had, trying to figure out what to make of a policy.
00:23:01
JD Vance said something during the vice presidential debate about how the Biden administration was using asylum laws to grant legal status to immigrants.
00:23:09
Chaz was a polyside major in college and he says he's always made a point of seeking out sources from across the political spectrum.
00:23:16
So after JD Vance made that claim at the debate, Chaz did that.
00:23:20
I started to look into the Harris or the Biden administration, how they were consuring these numbers to show that they've actually gotten tougher on the border when it doesn't,
00:23:31
it doesn't look like that, but it could look like that based off how they're presenting this information.
00:23:36
Sure.
00:23:37
I looked into it enough to think, I don't really know who to believe here.
00:23:44
And so what's the point here?
00:23:46
Oh, that's not a very good outcome.
00:23:49
It wasn't.
00:23:51
Yeah, it was like, yeah, I don't know who to believe.
00:23:56
It's interesting because I kind of imagined that you would come out of this with more right-wing conviction.
00:24:03
I guess you might call it if I'm being candid with you, but like it sounds like usually what you're coming out of this like with is apathy.
00:24:09
Yeah, 100%.
00:24:12
So Chaz goes on to say what's really influenced him, maybe more than what Trump says about the media, is how the media has responded to Trump.
00:24:21
I felt like there was a lot of clickbait over the last 10 years.
00:24:25
That probably could have been, I don't want to say ignored, but shouldn't have been made into the mountain that the Mole Hill was,
00:24:37
I guess.
00:24:37
Chaz gives Sam and me a few examples, pieces of media that he's come across that have contributed to this impression he has.
00:24:45
For one, he mentions a book called The Grey Lady Winked, which digs into certain narratives the New York Times has promulgated over the last 100 years, including some stories that got wrong.
00:24:55
Perhaps telling me about the way algorithms really dictate our media intake these days.
00:24:59
Chaz learned about this book on one of the podcasts he listens to, yet neither Sam nor I nor anyone in this office actually, despite all working in media in New York, had ever heard of it.
00:25:10
Chaz also sends us two videos that he saw recently.
00:25:14
The first is a woman on YouTube talking about how Trump was embraced by the media before he entered politics, which is true obviously.
00:25:21
He was a media personality part of the industry basically for a long time.
00:25:25
I'm like literally guys, I don't know if you guys remember this, Oprah wrote him a letter, and it was like if you ever run for president, you know, consider me as your running mate.
00:25:31
She plays a clip of Trump on the Ellen DeGeneres show, circa 2004.
00:25:35
Got engaged, Melania is that how you say Melania and she's going to join us in a minute and we'll see what you're really like.
00:25:43
Okay.
00:25:43
All right, we'll be right back.
00:25:45
So he seems like an actual human being here.
00:25:47
Yeah, well, he is.
00:25:48
So much that he seems so kind and gentle.
00:25:49
What happened?
00:25:50
You guys just sort of believe in the media, instead of actually believing him.
00:25:53
And to illustrate the flip, Chaz sends a second video, a mashup of TV news coverage from Trump's first term, called scripted journalists all saying the same thing compilation.
00:26:06
Today was historically bad for president Trump.
00:26:08
Today is a turning point.
00:26:09
Today was a turning point.
00:26:11
We're a turning point here.
00:26:13
I gather that Chaz had a similar experience watching this video of the press talking about Trump that Sam and I had reading the list Sam put together of Trump talking about the press.
00:26:24
The beginning of the end for the Trump presence.
00:26:27
I believe this is the beginning of the end.
00:26:28
I did too.
00:26:29
That's really the beginning of the end.
00:26:31
He may be feeling the walls closing in on him.
00:26:33
All the walls closing in on him.
00:26:34
The walls closing in on him.
00:26:36
Trump will decide.
00:26:37
Trump is going to resign.
00:26:38
Is this the tipping point?
00:26:40
I know we've said it over and over.
00:26:42
You think this is a tipping point?
00:26:43
They have an agenda.
00:26:44
I felt like that the agenda was I'm going to try to paint this guy in the worst light possible.
00:26:51
Watching these videos, putting on Chaz's glasses, so to speak.
00:26:54
And imagining how many dozens, hundreds of more like them, he's viewed over time.
00:27:00
I can see from his perspective, how journalists look.
00:27:03
It's not good.
00:27:05
I mean, this shows about how to make journalism better.
00:27:07
I don't have some rosy picture of it.
00:27:09
As someone who's worked in the traditional media, NPR, the New York Times, what I see in that mashup is groupthink.
00:27:16
I see unoriginality.
00:27:18
I see cable hosts who make millions of dollars and are disconnected from average voters.
00:27:23
I see pontificating that is very unhelpful, if not plain wrong.
00:27:27
I see poor business models and managerial decisions that incentivize punditry over real reporting and force programs to chase the same stories night after night in a superficial way.
00:27:38
A lot of real failings amidst all the essential and strong reporting that does get done that end up looking to Chaz.
00:27:45
It looks like you guys are just repeating what you're told to repeat from people who are funding whoever you're working for.
00:27:52
That's what that's what that's the perception.
00:27:55
Not for me, necessarily, but that's that's like the kind of the vibe that I pick up on.
00:28:00
You know, when I talk about some of these things is like the like journalists journalists tend to have that.
00:28:08
Again, I know Sam, you might only friend person in my life that is a journalist.
00:28:17
I don't even think I've met another one.
00:28:20
So this isn't Sam, but for like the perception of the media is that they've been weaponized, that they've been bought, that they're told you need to push this right now to sell the story.
00:28:35
And then they do it.
00:28:38
Who's pushing this?
00:28:41
Total conspiracy theory.
00:28:44
Cabal.
00:28:46
I don't know.
00:28:46
I don't know who.
00:28:47
You know, I'm not saying I'm not saying I'm saying this.
00:28:51
I'm saying that that's the perception that I get from a lot of people that I'm around.
00:28:57
We're reporting on Trump in a negative light because a secret cabal of sorts, a deep state and Trump is the person who promises to expose them.
00:29:09
That's a pretty popular thought out there right now.
00:29:14
Do you believe that?
00:29:19
I don't believe it fully.
00:29:22
I think that there is some probably some some deep state stuff going on.
00:29:29
I think Chaz epitomizes what I'm most frightened about in the second Trump term.
00:29:35
Here's a guy who wants to be informed.
00:29:38
He's study political science.
00:29:40
He has close friends like Sam who he disagrees with and he's not afraid of engaging with them on their disagreements.
00:29:45
He's not some hardcore Trump Stan.
00:29:47
And yet his experience trying to inform himself in our current political and information ecosystem has led him to believe that there might be some deep state involvement in how the press is covering the president.
00:29:59
And maybe even worse, it has led him to in some instances give up on the idea that the truth can be established to throw his hands up and say what's the point in even trying.
00:30:11
After the election, I had a conversation with Jody Ginsburg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, for organization defense journalists all around the world.
00:30:22
And she told me this is what she's concerned about too, the environment that Trump's attitude towards the press engenders.
00:30:27
She did list a bunch of specific worries that track with things Trump has said, an increase in harassment of reporters, a burst of legal threats and lawsuits.
00:30:36
She's worried that a landmark supreme court case times versus Sullivan, which is the key legal precedent that protects journalists reporting on political leaders against libel claims could get overturned like Roe v Wade was.
00:30:48
Two of the conservative justices have signaled their willingness to revisit it.
00:30:53
She's afraid of authorities using subpoenas to go after journalists sources.
00:30:57
As of now, she's less afraid of those authorities using actual prosecution and jail time.
00:31:02
She's also paying attention to the way the federal government could wield funding to go after the press, cutting off money for public media, but also possibly government advertising budgets like for the army or health department,
00:31:15
which could staunch revenue for some news outlets.
00:31:18
All that said, Jody told me, "When I don't want people to think and focus on is, oh well, as long as Donald Trump doesn't push for the abolition of New York times versus Sullivan,
00:31:32
or as long as he doesn't defund NPRR, then everything will be okay."
00:31:39
Because it's the small incremental changes that get enabled, that create the environment in which damage is done.
00:31:51
What we've seen over and over again in all sorts of countries is it doesn't require big headline grabbing,
00:32:02
sweeping, legislative change for severe and serious damage to be done.
00:32:09
I mean, what has he done?
00:32:12
What has he done other than the words?
00:32:14
He sued a lot of people.
00:32:17
He sued the New York Times.
00:32:19
He sued Bob Woodward.
00:32:21
Is there any grounds for it or is it all just like do you think that the media has portrayed him in a fair way?
00:32:28
Like they haven't ever clipped his things or taking things out of context.
00:32:33
I would not be comfortable saying that the media has never done that.
00:32:36
Yeah, I think that's where I get thrown off.
00:32:38
I'm always going to be way more skeptical of the politician than I am a reporter.
00:32:43
I don't care who the politician is.
00:32:45
I guess that's been blended.
00:32:46
I feel like that was the orientation for a long time.
00:32:50
We're supposed to be aligned with you guys.
00:32:53
You know what I mean?
00:32:55
We're a civilian press corps.
00:32:58
And that's not what it feels like.
00:33:00
That's the first time I've heard those words and I like how that was said.
00:33:04
I would love an advocate that I felt like I could trust because I'm not against journalism.
00:33:12
I don't think anybody is against someone seeing something and like, oh, yeah, that look what's going on.
00:33:17
You know, I feel like that's how that's how we got the gospel.
00:33:23
I think what Sam was hoping for in this conversation was for Chaz to give a little more ground.
00:33:28
You can see that there are plenty of other journalists like Sam and we aren't just making stuff up.
00:33:33
We're doing our best to do the work and the way we think is right.
00:33:36
If you're attacking the press, like ultimately what you're saying is like you don't trip, like you don't trust what they say and nobody should trust what they say.
00:33:42
Okay.
00:33:43
But if you would humor me and assume for a moment, like what the press is like reporting largely is like generally true and typically quite well researched.
00:33:50
Wouldn't that be troubling?
00:33:51
Well, what would be troubling?
00:33:54
His remarks about the press is if I believe that that overall journalism as a whole has maintained its integrity in our system.
00:34:05
Exactly.
00:34:05
Over the past 10 years.
00:34:07
Yeah, of course.
00:34:08
Of course.
00:34:10
I just don't think that that's true.
00:34:13
Chaz, can I like, can I just put like a thought experiment forward for you?
00:34:18
I found it interesting when Sam asked you to like kind of just like suspend disbelief for a minute.
00:34:28
Imagine that the majority of what we're publishing is true.
00:34:33
And then he asked you to like think about what it would mean if Donald Trump was just saying over and over again, what we're doing is dishonest.
00:34:40
We're dirty.
00:34:40
We're not to be trusted.
00:34:42
We're enemies of the American people.
00:34:44
We're undermining democracy.
00:34:46
We're conspiring against everybody, regular people.
00:34:49
Would that be troubling?
00:34:50
And you seem to very honestly just be like, yeah, it would be.
00:34:53
Can you just inhabit that like reality for a second?
00:34:56
Take a second and think about it.
00:34:58
And just is that is that how it looks when you do inhabit it?
00:35:02
Yeah.
00:35:03
But that is that is that all, you know, that that scenario.
00:35:08
Does that include me totally accepting everything that has been said from the media about Trump?
00:35:17
Not everything.
00:35:18
I'm asking, I guess the premise I'm asking you to humor for this exercise is we're definitely not a cabal.
00:35:28
But even aside from that, we are operating good faith.
00:35:34
We do care about the truth.
00:35:37
We do care about giving a well-rounded view.
00:35:42
When we're looking at something, we're trying to like put it in kind of perspective in the way that feels right based on the evidence, you know, and certain values,
00:35:53
I guess, of like transparency and holding power to account and all that.
00:35:58
So that's the premise I'm asking you to accept for the purposes of this exercise.
00:36:03
And then if you were to accept that and look again at this list of comments that Sam compiled of Trump just talking, saying that the, you know, the press is totally not to be trusted.
00:36:13
Like how do if you put them on those glasses, how does it look?
00:36:16
It would look like his, his thoughts on an immediate or totally basis.
00:36:23
And that in a system that's supposed to be designed to operate on an informed public would be troubling.
00:36:30
In that exercise, certainly a threat to democracy would be present.
00:36:37
With those glasses on, Chaz could see things the way Sam and I saw them.
00:36:42
But of course, the glasses were imaginary.
00:36:46
All right, you can take the glasses off unless you want to leave them on.
00:36:49
But, you know, it's so weird.
00:36:57
Chaz Poulson in Colorado.
00:37:00
Question everything is a production of Placement Theory at KCRW.
00:37:05
Please let us know how you're liking the show.
00:37:08
Leave a comment on Apple podcasts or Spotify or YouTube or head us up on Instagram at KCRW at Placement Theory.
00:37:15
Today's episode was produced by me with Sam Egan and edited by Neil Drumming.
00:37:23
Our show is made by executive producer Robin Semyon, producer Zach St.
00:37:27
Louis and Sophie Cazis and production intern Emily Milter.
00:37:30
Jonathan Goldstein is a contributing editor.
00:37:33
Back checking by Maggie Duffy, sound design by Brendan Baker.
00:37:36
Our music is by Matt McKinley.
00:37:38
Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Cipoll, Gina Delvack, Tasia Lajemara, and Jennifer Farrow.
00:37:47
Thanks for listening.
00:37:50
We'll see you next time.
00:37:53
[BLANK_AUDIO]
00:38:03