By admin 
Donald Trump’s war on the press usually comes from a place of strength. After all, not only has Trump traditionally been a ratings magnet, but he’s also the president of the United States. That’s a position that tends to give you pretty good leverage.
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In his second term, he has consistently picked when he has had the advantage. In his legally dubious lawsuits against CBS over the network editing an interview of Kamala Harris, he had the leverage of the company’s pending merger with Skydance—a merger which required approval from a top Trump ally on the Federal Communications Commission. It was the same when he tried to ban the Associated Press from the White House unless they adopted his preferred nomenclature of “Gulf of America” for the Gulf of Mexico. Either the company that writes the definitive stylebook for the American media would bend to his will or it would weaken the nonprofit press syndicate by making it far more difficult to provide White House coverage at a time when print journalism is facing increased financial pressure.
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That’s not the case with the latest offensive he’s launched in a war with the media that started long before his entry into presidential politics and dates back to various feuds with local reporters when Trump was simply a New York real estate investor.
His effort to expel CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House does not come from a place of leverage. Instead, it happened impulsively, at a time when Trump’s political fortunes are at a nadir. His favorability rating in polling is even lower than it was in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and when polling suggests Republicans are poised to lose at least one chamber of Congress in the coming midterms. Trump has always had an outsize interest in the media and certain savvy in maximizing his coverage. After all, the former host of Celebrity Apprentice has long had an abiding appreciation of what camera angles are best to capture him and a taste for even relatively obscure media gossip. But this maneuver feels more like a desperate gesture to try to do something to refocus the public’s attention as Trump sinks lower in opinion polls than a calculated effort to change the narrative.
Trump’s lashing out at the networks was reportedly prompted by his aide Natalie Harp, who, as Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report in their book Regime Change, serves as a human binkie for Trump. On a Friday afternoon, while senior White House staffers were off campus, she showed Trump snippets of coverage that led to his sudden decision to ban the three outlets from the White House.
The three outlets quickly won a legal order from a federal judge to be allowed back into the White House. After being forced to let offending media outlets back in, Trump then tried to block CNN’s ability to participate in the White House Television Pool, a group that also includes NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox News, in which each network alternates turns in the small group of reporters that travels with the president and is granted access to all public events.
Since Trump’s decision to ban CNN, the other television networks had refused to provide pool coverage of Trump in solidarity. The White House has been inconsistent about giving access to CNN in recent days since a federal judge ordered the administration to allow CNN back on White House grounds. However, they blocked CNN from covering Trump’s trip to a football game in Tennessee on Saturday. Other networks refused to fill in. However, the networks, according to the New York Times, have decided everything is too important to leave the president without any up-close television coverage indefinitely. The Associated Press’ litigation over being banned from the White House pool has gone on for nearly a year and a half without a resolution.
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In other words, Trump has gone through an epic feud with the media over the past 10 days simply to ensure that he does not face questions from CNN, at least in the short term, in situations where only pool reporters are available to ask him questions. After all, while CNN’s reporters may not be allowed in the Oval Office, he’ll still face questions from CBS, ABC, and NBC (not to mention Fox, which is justifiably wary of a precedent that could allow, say, President Ocasio-Cortez to enact a similar ban on them).
The costs, though, have been high. At a time when the conflict with Iran is stalemated and gas prices keep on rising, it did not convey to voters that Trump had his priorities in order when he seemed far more focused on besting Kaitlan Collins than on Khamenei. It also meant that Trump’s much-vaunted state visit from Chinese strongman Xi Jinping went uncovered while other networks were refusing to participate in the television pool. Certainly, the attempts from niche right-wing streamers (let alone the White House’s own Trump TV) have not proved to be effective substitutes. (After all, even C-SPAN relies on the television when they broadcast events live.) Even those moments that were covered, such as Trump’s unveiling of the new White House helicopter pad, featured nearly unusable audio, as it turns out MAGA YouTubers do not have quite the same technical abilities as broadcast television networks.
The problem for Trump is that there is no way for him to declare victory. He’s not making any demands of CNN (or Politico or MS NOW, for that matter). He’s a dedicated cable news viewer, and it means he’ll get that much less coverage on the network. It also has become the first time the television networks have banded together to refuse to provide pool coverage, which sets a precedent if he chooses to go after another network.
And with Trump’s political fortunes waning and the likelihood of Democratic control of at least one chamber of Congress constraining him in his last two years of office, it’s not likely his position will get any stronger any time soon. Trump’s tantrum toward CNN and the other outlets may be a precursor of more to come and a White House that retreats to bunker mode. There’s precedent for that. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump shut himself away, holding few, if any, public events and simply putting out as his schedule the boilerplate: “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings.”
Needless to say, Trump’s stewardship of the nation during that period was not exactly his finest hour.
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