The traditional way of reporting on a president is dead. And Trump’s press secretary killed it.
“This is called a statement you’re told to make by the President. And you know the President is watching,” Fleischer wrote. (MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski pegged it as “Sean Spicer’s first hostage video.”)
Spicer’s statement should be seen for what it is: Remarks made over the casket at the funeral of access journalism.
As Jessica Huseman of ProPublica put it: “Journalists aren’t going to get answers from Spicer. We are going to get answers by digging. By getting our hands dirty. So let’s all do that.”
Saturday made clearer than ever that President Trump intends to make the American media his foremost enemy.
Trump wants a flat-out war with the nation’s media for one well-calculated reason: Because he believes it will continue to serve his political purposes, as it has for months.