President Donald Trump and members of his new administration including press secretary Sean Spicer tangled with the news media in the first days following the inauguration, which may foreshadow an extension of a combative relationship. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday reports. Photo: Associated Press
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.
Spicer earns Four Pinocchios for false claims on inauguration crowd size
This is an appalling performance by the new press secretary. He managed to make a series of false and misleading claims in service of a relatively minor issue. Presumably he was ordered to do this by Trump, who conjured up fantastic numbers in his own mind, but part of a flack’s job is to tell the boss when lies are necessary — and when they are not.
Spicer earns Four Pinocchios, but seriously, we wish we could give five.
Kellyanne Conway says Donald Trump’s team has ‘alternative facts.’ Which pretty much says it all.
“Fake news” is so yesterday. “Alternative facts” is where it’s at now.
This, of course, isn’t the first time the Trump team and its supporters have responded to journalists calling out their falsehoods by claiming the truth isn’t so black and white or that it’s not a big deal.
.. pro-Trump CNN pundit Scottie Nell Hughes offered this on Diane Rehm’s show:
One thing that’s been interesting this campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts — they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way — it’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There’s no such thing, unfortunately anymore, of facts.
.. what Conway is arguing today — that there are so many shades of gray that clear facts just don’t really exist.
This, of course, is a hugely cynical worldview. But it’s about the only way the Trump team can fight back