In Revoking Press Credentials, Trump Casts Himself as Punisher in Chief
There is no obvious consistency to it, from a candidate who can also be as accessible as any in history. After all, The Wall Street Journal’s similar headline, that Mr. Trump “Links Obama to Extremists,” didn’t cost that paper its official entree.
.. I did get a call back from Mr. Trump, who said that he was exercising his right to choose whom he grants credentials to as he runs a campaign that he has mostly paid for himself. “I’m from a different world, other than politics,” he said. “In my world, when people don’t treat you fairly … ” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to: You cut them off.
.. It was “the last straw,” he told me. At The Washington Post, he said, “virtually every article is negative even when I have big victories.”
.. When I noted that Mr. Trump had not removed The Times’s credentials, Mr. Trump said, “You’re marginal, you’re marginal,” apparently meaning we, too, were close to losing credentials to cover him. He added, “It’s always possible, anything’s possible.”
.. I asked Mr. Trump what, exactly, will prompt a credential ban.
“If people don’t cover me fairly, or if they actually make things up, I don’t know why anybody should be allowed,” he said.
.. But Mr. Trump said he would not impose similar credential bans if he won the presidency. “That’s different from me taking something away — there I’m taking something away where I’m representing the nation,” he said. As for The Post, he said, “If they start covering me accurately, not even well, just accurately — I don’t want anything — they will get the credentials back.”
.. “Anybody who aspires to be president of the United States should exhibit behavior as a candidate that he or she would display as president of the United States,” he said.
.. A notable exception: Vice President Dick Cheney, who tended to not make room for New York Times reporters on his plane. I personally was on the wrong end of that deal once.
.. “We’re not locking the doors where they can’t get in,” he said, though Mr. Schreckinger of Politico was recently escorted out of an event.