An old adage says that you should never start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Updated for the 21st century, this might reference someone who buys server space by the petabyte (not quite as catchy, I know). But before he was even president for a full weekend, Donald Trump was all but promising that his war with the American press will last as long as he's president-four years, or, heaven help us, eight. This might seem like political lunacy, not to mention an attack on an institution so central to our democracy that the framers made sure to protect it right in the First Amendment. But there's a method at work-or if not anything so carefully considered as a method, at least a purpose.
But before I explain what that purpose is, let's take a moment to marvel at the bitter, petty, vindictive attack that Trump and his aides launched at the press at the very moment that they should have been basking in the majesty and wonder of their ascent to power. A day after his inauguration, Trump went to the CIA and complimented them on what he imagined their support for him was ("Probably almost everybody in this room voted for me") despite having compared them to Nazis not long ago, before launching into an attack on the news media. "The reason you're my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media," he said, then went on a long, rambling discourse about the media's sins against him, particularly how they downplayed his massive inaugural crowd.
At that very moment, as it happens, there was a bigger crowd assembling in Washington, one that came out to protest Trump's election. And just imagine how angry he must have been when he learned that the Women's March was substantially larger than his inaugural celebration-which isn't even to mention the millions that marched against him in dozens of cities and towns all over the country, in what appears to be the single largest protest in American history.
So his people were dispatched to push back. In an absolutely bizarre event, new White House spokesperson Sean Spicer decided to make his first press briefing an assault on the people he'll be working with as long as he's in that job. He walked to the podium and delivered an angry, hectoring rant to the White House press corps, much of which was devoted to an extended "Nuh-uh!" to accurate reporting about the size of the inaugural crowd. "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration-period-both in person and around the globe," Spicer said, a claim that would have been worthy of Saddam Hussein's spokesperson. He even threw in some bogus numbers trying to claim that more people rode the D.C. Metro on Friday than had on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009, when in fact, according to WMATA, the agency that runs the Metro, there were around half as many trips taken last Friday as there were on Inauguration Day in 2009, and there were far more people at both of Obama's inaugurations.
In fact, the 2009 inaugural was the busiest day in Metro's history. The second-biggest day? Saturday's protests. After offering up his screed full of falsehoods, Spicer stormed out without taking any questions, setting a tone of comity and cooperation for the new White House. As Kellyanne Conway said the next morning, Spicer wasn't lying, he was merely offering "alternative facts."
Spicer was also carrying out his boss's wishes. As The New York Times reported, "On Saturday, Mr. Trump told his advisers that he wanted to push back hard on 'dishonest media' coverage-mostly referring to a Twitter post from a New York Times reporter showing side-by-side frames of Mr. Trump's crowd and Mr. Obama's in 2009. But most of Mr. Trump's advisers urged him to focus on the responsibilities of his office during his first full day as president." No such luck.
You might think this is a trivial matter, but not to Donald Trump. In fact, it goes right to the heart of his psyche. Other politicians might be driven by a need to please; Trump needs to be adored. More than that, he needs everyone to acknowledge that he is adored. Which is why he has spent so much time over the last two years talking about how great he's doing in the polls, how big his victories are, how huge the crowds at his rallies are, and how much of a landslide victory he achieved.
The press, having at least some commitment to pointing out lies when they see them, will correct Trump's claims. That in itself is enough to earn them Trump's wrath, but there's something else at work, too. Trump got to the White House on a campaign that presented itself as an assault on entrenched power, both economic and political. He would storm the castle on behalf of ordinary people, then throw out those whose boots had been on the little guy's neck for so long.
But here's the problem: Once you've become the most powerful person in the country (not to mention the world), shaking your fist at the powerful becomes rather awkward. You can't decry "Washington" when you run Washington.
So Trump needs an enemy to use as a foil, and the external enemies are just not that threatening in a time when we enjoy a great deal of safety (all the apocalyptic warnings about ISIS, which poses almost no threat to the United States, notwithstanding). So the press is the natural choice, because he's already been railing against it, it has obvious power, it's going to be critical of him (or at least critical enough that he'll have something to point at), and it can be cast as part of the elite without any suggestion that, like the economic elite, it's actually in cahoots with him.
But this is a fight that Trump can't win over the long run, even if he's being cheered on by his supporters. The media has an even bigger megaphone than him-indeed, they are the megaphone-so they'll always be able to push back, even if they don't always do it as skillfully or thoughtfully as they should. But more importantly, when Trump rides into battle against the media, he's not doing it on anyone's behalf but his own. He can't say, "I'm attacking the media in order to help you, the people"-or maybe he can say it, but it won't be very convincing. It's a pure expression of his narcissistic self-absorption.
But we're going to get a lot of that in the days to come. And since Trump would satisfied with nothing less than an American version of Pravda spread out over the entire news media, he'll never be pleased, and he'll never stop fighting those who report on him.
