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The Daily
Nixon Dreamed of Breaking the Media. Trump Is Doing It.
00:45:27
As President Trump set out to systematically eliminate or intimidate those who stood in his way — inspectors general, judges, law firms — the news media loomed as one of his most stubborn obstacles. Or so it seemed. Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The New York Times, explains how Mr. Trump is circumventing and undermining the fourth estate in a way no president before him ever has.
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- [00:00]
Unknown Host
This podcast is supported by dsw.
- [00:03]
Unknown Advertiser
This season, let your shoes do the talking. Designer Shoe Warehouse is packed with fresh styles that speak to your whole vibe without saying a word. From cool sneakers that look good with everything, the easy sandals you'll want to wear on repeat. DSW has you covered. Find a shoe for every hue from the brands you love, like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, New Balance and more. Head to your DSW store or visit dsw.com today.
- [00:34]
Michael Balbaro
From the New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro. This is the Daily As President Trump set out to systematically eliminate or intimidate those who stand in his way, from inspectors general to judges to law firms, the news media loomed as one of his most stubborn obstacles, or so it seemed. Today, my colleague Jim Rutenberg on how Trump is both circumventing and undermining the Fourth Estate in a way no president before him ever has. It's Tuesday, March 25th.
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Jim Rutenberg
Jim, we are talking today about the state of the news media under President Trump in his second term. And when we brought this subject to you, a student of the media for many.
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Unknown Host
I'm not going to say how many. We don't talk in decades.
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Jim Rutenberg
We don't talk in decades.
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Unknown Host
Many years.
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Jim Rutenberg
Yep. Former media columnist here at the Times. You're writing a book about the news media. When we brought this subject to you, you kept pointing us to Richard Nixon. Former President Nixon. Why?
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Unknown Host
Well, in many ways, we would not be where we are in the media sphere were it not for Richard Nixon. And I mean that on a couple of different levels. Nixon was the first president to really face the full force of an independent, truly challenging press corps. It started Johnson was facing some during the Vietnam War and was very angry about it. Nixon inherits this news media that's in its kind of full flower of independence. Direct from our newsroom in New York.
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Walter Cronkite
In color, this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
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Unknown Host
It is challenging presidents and government in ways that weren't non existent but weren't as common.
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Walter Cronkite
The big question is whether the Vietnamese can take over and hold on as the United States withdraws.
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Unknown Host
In his view, the media was hounding him about Vietnam.
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Walter Cronkite
The bugging of the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington's Watergate Hotel was back in the news today with the name.
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Unknown Host
And then, of course, we move into these stories about the break in at the Watergate.
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Walter Cronkite
Good evening. The country tonight is in the midst of what may be the most serious constitutional crisis in its history. The president has fired special Watergate prosecutor.
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Unknown Host
ARCHIBALD so it's just ramping up along with Nixon's own fury. And, you know, I've spent a lot of time in the Nixon archives, and you see the memos every day where Nixon's aides are sending him the scripts from the evening news. Because the evening news, especially Walter Cronkite of cbs, I mean, they are kind of this behemoth. They are getting tens of millions of viewers every night, and they are calling it straight, but they are not calling it in favor of Nixon. And so Nixon would get these scripts and circle them like, who's talking to them? And just Cronkite, I'm gonna stop this. You know, he was just yelling at his aides to get on top of this. We have to stop.
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Jim Rutenberg
Do something about it.
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Unknown Host
Do something. And he began a campaign to beat back what he and his aides called these unelected communication powers. They start politically just going after the press. No reporter from the Washington Post is ever to be in the White House again. And no photographer either. No photographer. Is that clear? Yes, sir. Very unusual to this degree from a White House. They see about using kind of the mechanisms of power, using, for instance, the Federal Communications Commission, which, you know is the fcc, to punish stations for their licenses. They try to stop the New York Times from publishing the secret war history known as the Pentagon Papers. They go to court, but they lose. When they try to do things at the fcc, they realize it's kind of a bridge too far. They can try to enact some changes of regulation, but that's years away. They can't really just snap their fingers. And ultimately, what Nixon can't do is stop the railroad train coming at his White House of Watergate. And basically, it is ultimately the powerful independent press that gives him no option but to resign. You know, the media is always talking about the imperial presidency, the power of the imperial presidency. I think we ought to hear a little bit of discussion of the imperial media and its power.
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Jim Rutenberg
So in the end, Richard Nixon's relationship with the media is. He's furious with it, wants to weaken it, wants to stop. It can't. And the media quite literally conquers him.
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Unknown Host
Yeah, the press, the power of the press prevails. And the reason I've been thinking about it a lot lately is that the echoes to that moment, to that period in time, are so loud in these early days of the new Trump administration. Strikingly so. He's going after the press in ways that are very similar to the ways Nixon did. But he's going farther than Nixon did already in just the first couple months. At the same time, he's completely able to make an end run around the press, around its journalistic narratives, to this huge new media sphere that will present the world only on the terms that Trump wants it presented on. And that is something that Nixon could have only dreamed of.
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Jim Rutenberg
So talk to us about the mechanics of how Trump is doing what Nixon couldn't. Realizing Nixon's fantasy of a relationship with the media, starting with Trump's ability, as you just said, to go around this monolithic media.
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Unknown Host
Let's start with, like the baseline he had even the first time around, his first administration.
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Jim Rutenberg
2016.
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Unknown Host
2020, yeah, 2016. So he already had Fox News, which always was very friendly to Republicans, especially its primetime hosts. For Trump, after a bumpy period in the beginning, they really get into his corner, and that just grows through his administration. They're even more in corner night after night, kind of parroting what he's saying, and he's kind of sometimes parroting them. And there's a real symbiosis. And that, for its time, was really new. But then when he leaves office, in just a short period of time, we're only talking four years, right? When Trump is shooed out of Washington following the violence of January 6, the media will go on to radically change. And perhaps most importantly, it's changed in a place where so many people now get their news. And that's, of course, social media. And you know, where I'm going, right? Where I'm heading here now is to talk about X, formerly Twitter.
- [08:04]
Jim Rutenberg
Right.
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Unknown Host
Since 2020, it goes through this enormous change. Of course, it's come under the control of Elon Musk, and he goes on to reconfigure it from a place where, think about this. Trump couldn't even post by early 2021. He'd been completely banned after the insurrection. So now it goes from that to being a real megaphone for his message, for his supporters message. It's reaching tens of millions of monthly active users in the US Many more globally. And by the way, it's a place where information moves out algorithmically to the top of people's feeds, and that is controlled by said Trump fan Elon Musk.
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Jim Rutenberg
Right.
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Unknown Host
That's huge.
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Jim Rutenberg
Can I just pause? I think it's worth just describing this. If you open up X, what used to be Twitter under Elon Musk, and now in the era of Donald Trump, you experience something very different than what you did a couple of years ago. I mean, I could open mind and show you this, but essentially, whether it's Elon Musk himself coming on to praise President Trump.
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Unknown Host
Or.
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Jim Rutenberg
Or a bunch of conservative accounts I had never followed suddenly are very prominent on my feed. I used to just follow a bunch of journalists and use it for informational purposes, but very much it now feels like a daily megaphone for Trump and the entire MAGA movement. In my experience, radically same for you.
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Unknown Host
Mine too. And people have done experiments because these algorithms are sort of still bafflingly among the least understood things in American politics right now. But that is my experience. That's the experience of people who try to do kind of neutral studies. And that's a big deal for Trump because as you note, these are Trumpian narratives that take over the platform and support whatever he's saying that day. Right.
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Jim Rutenberg
And it just seems important to note that suddenly one of the most important widely used social media platforms in the country, if not the world, is. Is being managed for the president empirically.
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Unknown Host
It seems that way. Musk won't always say that. Sometimes he'll deny that. Often he'll deny that. But I mean, it's just universally study after study finds that. And that is directly tied to something that gets a ton of promotion on X. But it's its own media sphere and it's emerged in this entirely new way, and that's this world of male dominated media, largely podcasts, often referred to as.
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Jim Rutenberg
The manosphere, which has grown exponentially since Trump was last in office, in number.
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Unknown Host
Of shows, in popularity. And so who are these people? These are like, they're kind of just bros. The best way to describe what they do is bro, casual. They're reaching this disaffected young male audience that's historically been very hard to reach. These guys have. Are talking to them and they're talking to them about video games or silly pranks or, you know, mixed martial arts or professional wrestling, if you.
- [11:19]
Unknown Advertiser
If you'd like to.
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Unknown Host
Yeah, we're rolling right now.
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Walter Cronkite
Let me haven't seen one of these.
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Unknown Host
Some high quality mics.
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Walter Cronkite
That's pretty cool.
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Michael Balbaro
We walked in on the other side.
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Unknown Host
And Trump starts showing up on these shows.
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Walter Cronkite
My son's a big fan of yours, Baron.
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Unknown Host
Really?
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Walter Cronkite
Baron is? Yeah. Oh, nice.
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Unknown Host
He just graduated high school.
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Walter Cronkite
That's right. He just said he knows you very well. He said, dad, he's big. Wow.
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Jim Rutenberg
Big one.
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Unknown Host
That's cool.
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Walter Cronkite
That's where it is nowadays, right?
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Unknown Host
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. He actually credits his son Baron for showing him that these shows could be a powerful way to reach what his team termed low propensity. Voters.
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Walter Cronkite
I like doing stuff like this. You know, I like it. I like conversation. I don't seem to get much.
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Unknown Host
It plays to Trump's personality, yet it's, like, perfect for his freewheeling style. And so he proves to be quite the match for a lot of these shows.
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Walter Cronkite
And if you bring down the cost of energy and if you do some very basic things.
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Unknown Host
Get rid of the windmills.
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Walter Cronkite
The windmills.
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Unknown Host
That's why I didn't go to Coachella this year, because when you drive to Palm Springs, you gotta see all the windmills. And ever since you said that, looks like it just pisses me off when I see all the windmills.
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Walter Cronkite
How about the old ones that are sitting there rusting, just kind of shooting.
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Unknown Host
The breeze sometimes about politics, but all sorts of other things. So, you know, we know how it's like a constant weave. Remember how he would do the speech? He would call it a weave because he would weave all over the place. These things are built for that.
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Walter Cronkite
And you know what? He plays golf and he plays well. He hit a perfect drive with me. I said, do you play?
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Unknown Host
But no one at that world is more important. And I would say few are more important now in modern media than the prototypical star of the manosphere, and that is Joe Rogan.
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Joe Rogan
I was 100% a left leaning person who lived in Los Angeles. I never voted Republican my whole life. I was very left leaning. But California went nuts.
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Unknown Host
Man, Joe Rogan has incredible credibility with this crowd because he was a Bernie Sanders guy. His podcast is really breezy.
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Joe Rogan
Well, they canceled the Apprentice when you were running for president, correct?
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Walter Cronkite
No, they had Arnold Schwarzenegger do it.
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Unknown Host
And he has an interview with Trump during the campaign.
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Walter Cronkite
Do you know Elon Musk? Yes. He endorsed me, by the way. He gave me the nicest endorsement, too. He said, the country's gonna fail. You should do the same thing, Joe, because you cannot be voting for Kamala. Kamala. You're not a Kamala person. I know you.
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Unknown Host
And get this. That interview with Trump has racked up more than 50 million views on YouTube alone. Now, those aren't ratings points. Right? We don't. 50 million views. We don't know how long those people were there, but that is a lot of people. Now we're talking, like, Cronkite level person.
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Joe Rogan
We need, like, a realist, someone who's, like, conservative fiscally and understands foreign policy and how to deal with dictators. But also.
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Unknown Host
And he's going basically all in with.
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Jim Rutenberg
Trump, actually endorses him.
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Unknown Host
Yeah.
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Walter Cronkite
And it just Came over the wires that, that Joe Rogan just endorsed me. Is that good? Thank you, Joe.
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Unknown Host
And endorsements only go so far in this world. That's a big endorsement.
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Walter Cronkite
That's so nice.
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Jim Rutenberg
Right? That one went, as best we can.
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Unknown Host
Tell, real far because we see it in the exit polls and the post polling analyses that Trump gained with young voters overall, with young men. And that's all well and good for a campaign, but here's the thing now, is that that's all still here for Trump. And so as Trump has set out to reorder government and really push the limits of anything that establishment Washington has certainly seen, he still has this media world to promote his agenda.
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Unknown Guest
The Dem leadership, or, you know, political leadership. They issue their instructions and their puppets carry it out. Yeah, they're just like puppets.
- [15:18]
Unknown Host
For example, Elon Musk, who's really the face, certainly the biggest spokesperson for what the administration is calling the Department of Government Efficiency. He's come onto Rogan a couple of times recently. Once was during the election, but more recently after. And both interviews were really striking for what they said about a Joe Rogan versus a Walter Cronkite. And certainly Cronkite successors, the evening news broadcast on the main networks now because their networks, a Walter Cronkite, they're rooted in news. You couldn't like them or hate them, but they try to traffic in verifiable fact, following the rules of journalism. Rogan doesn't. He's free to say and go wherever he wants, as his guests can go on and on about things, no matter how far they may be veering from the verifiable facts.
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Unknown Guest
For example, they pay themselves enormous sums through these non profits.
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Joe Rogan
It's so insane that that's been going on for so long.
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Unknown Guest
It's a gigantic scam, like one of the biggest, maybe the biggest scam ever.
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Unknown Host
During this last appearance last month, Musk talks with Rogan about all the receipts, right. All the fraud. He's finding things that the newscasters are really treating skeptically and finding a lot of flaws with. But Rogan is kind of just wowed by this.
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Joe Rogan
It's feeding hungry people. People are gonna starve. Elon. This is horrible. And then you find out, actually it's like $250 million for transgender animal studies.
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Unknown Guest
Literally mut. Mutilating animals. Mutilating animals in demented studies. Yes, that are.
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Unknown Host
You know, it's just because at face value, it all does sound really crazy.
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Joe Rogan
Everybody should be celebrating that we've found a way to cut out fraud and Waste.
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Unknown Guest
Yeah.
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Joe Rogan
If you pay taxes and you don't like that, you have to pay so much in taxes.
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Unknown Host
So you could see how a show like his, again, which has a ton of credibility with its audience, can be a really powerful vehicle for the Trump administration as it sets out on this aggressive agenda that's being challenged a lot of cases by journalists and certainly the courts.
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Jim Rutenberg
Right. Just to say, Jim, by my informal math, if you take X and you add in Joe Rogan alone, you are looking at an audience of what, 70, 80 million.
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Unknown Host
Yeah. Easily huge. Yeah. No president has had anything close to this in terms of basically like media cheerleading and support. And on top of that, there are kind of new organisms coming out of this petri dish. Right. And they're really. We've never seen anything like them.
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Jim Rutenberg
Such as.
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Unknown Host
Well, I'm thinking about, in this case, Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action.
- [18:26]
Charlie Kirk
Hey, everybody, Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, 12 years. It's been a 12 year journey. Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action is stronger than ever.
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Unknown Host
And this is an organization. Listeners will have probably heard of him, people on social media. Charlie Kirk is kind of the.
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Jim Rutenberg
He's the face of this, of this.
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Unknown Host
Organization and this organization. Think about it this way. Take Sean Hannity of Fox News and then put him on a podcast, a big giant one, and then layer on top of that an actual political organization. It's got chapters on more than 850 college campuses. And there they're getting people active in politics for the first time. But conservative politics, organizing people, getting people out to vote. That's basically what you have with Turning Point. Look, when I started covering media, we talked about Fox News and Roger Ailes. And people would say derisively, Roger Ailes is like a part of the Republican Party or the chairman of the Republican Party. Charlie Kirk is running his own political operation and a giant media operation. And they're all rowing in the same direction.
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Jim Rutenberg
And that direction is Donald Trump.
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Unknown Host
It's Donald Trump. And now that Trump has moved into governing, Kirk can use this sort of get out the vote machinery meets media machine to act as something of a Trump enforcer.
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Jim Rutenberg
Hmm. Just give us an example of that.
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Unknown Host
There's a great example that was contained in a really good story about Charlie Kirk and Turning Point in the New York Times Magazine by our colleague Robert Draper, where Robert Draper is with Charlie Kirk having dinner in Palm beach in December. Pete Hegseth has been nominated as Defense Secretary.
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Jim Rutenberg
Right.
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Unknown Host
There's a lot of controversy around him.
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Jim Rutenberg
Right. Accusations of sexual assault.
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Unknown Host
And Joni Ernst, Senator From Iowa is on the fence. Good Republican, but on the fence.
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Jim Rutenberg
And a key vote.
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Unknown Host
Key vote. And Charlie meets us to Draper at dinner. You know, I think we're gonna have to consider primarying some. Some these Republicans who don't step in line with the agenda, who sort of take the Trump base for granted, and maybe we'll primary some people. And among the people he mentions is Joni Ernst and Michael. Charlie Kirk proceeds to do just that.
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Charlie Kirk
The funding has already been put together. Donors are calling like crazy. Primaries are going to be launched.
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Unknown Host
He. He says what he said to Draper. He says on his show to millions.
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Charlie Kirk
Of people, you go up against Pete Hegseth, the president, repeatedly, then don't be surprised. Joni Ernst, all of a sudden you got a primary challenge in Iowa, but.
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Unknown Host
Most importantly, her right.
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Jim Rutenberg
That we will potentially recruit someone to run against you in a Republican primary in Iowa and make sure that you are no longer a member of the United States Senate.
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Unknown Host
This will cost you your seat.
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Charlie Kirk
The old rnc, the old way of doing things is dead. Okay. You think that we at Turning Point action, Turning Point pack are just going to kind of rest on our laurels.
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Unknown Host
No, no, no, no. And circulates that around on X because it always comes back to X one way or another. Wow.
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Jim Rutenberg
Feel full circle moment here.
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Unknown Host
That's what I'm talking about. And then gets to announce that he has word that she will be endorsing Hegseth.
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Jim Rutenberg
Right. In other words, Kirk has effectuated the change in vote that Hegseth needs from Joni Ernst to become the next Secretary of Defense. And what you're describing is a very new form of not just cheerleading and not just supporting, but active media coordination with enforcement of the President's agenda.
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Unknown Host
Exactly.
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Jim Rutenberg
So to go back to Nixon for just a moment, what he wanted, by your account most was to somehow get around journalists like Walter Cronkite, who he was so frustrated with and so frustrated that he couldn't get around with Trump. That dynamic has been kind of inverted. Right. Trump doesn't have to go around the mainstream media. This new Trumposphere in the media is already working with him and for him. And in that sense, Trump doesn't even need the mainstream media.
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Unknown Host
Exactly. That's why you'll hear it come up again and again. Slogans among this cohort. We are the media. That's their kind of we're at now. Bye bye.
- [23:11]
Michael Balbaro
Us.
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Unknown Host
Us. You. You. Well, they didn't mention either of us.
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Unknown Guest
By name, but as Elon says, we are the media now. So it's not just that commentators are popping up and there's all these new podcasters, but it's normal people who finally have a voice.
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Jim Rutenberg
And importantly, they can back that claim up with their numbers, with their audience.
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Unknown Host
Again, you know, apples and oranges in the metrics, but no matter what, we see it in the views, millions and millions of people are inhaling this stuff.
- [23:44]
Unknown Guest
People are just hungry for independent voices who are authentic and honest with their audiences.
- [23:51]
Unknown Host
So this is really now a completely uncharted media environment that we're only beginning to understand.
- [23:59]
Jim Rutenberg
Mm.
- [24:00]
Unknown Host
No president has had anything like this. Nothing close. And yet, for all of that, it's not enough for Trump, because he still really does care what the mainstream media has to say, what this old media sphere has to say, and he's been making it increasingly clear he wants it entirely either out of his way or solely serving his interests.
- [24:37]
Michael Balbaro
We'll be right back.
- [24:46]
Unknown Host
This podcast is supported by dsw.
- [24:49]
Unknown Advertiser
This season, let your shoes do the talking. Designer Shoe warehouse is packed with fresh styles that speak to your whole vibe without saying a word. From cool sneakers that look good with everything, the easy sandals you'll want to wear on repeat. DSW has you covered. Find a shoe for every heel from the brands you love, like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, New Balance and more. Head to your DSW store or visit dsw.com today.
- [25:19]
Unknown Host
I use New York Times cooking at least three to four times a week.
- [25:22]
Unknown Guest
Sam Sifton's miso chicken is quote, better than rotisserie chicken according to my six year old.
- [25:28]
Unknown Host
I love that I can open the app and it will just throw out these suggestions that inspire me to make something I never even thought of. I start kind of expanding my horizon a little bit. I also read the comments. Seeing how I can simplify substitute.
- [25:43]
Michael Balbaro
It just makes it that much easier.
- [25:44]
Unknown Host
Those little tiny snapshots, they make your mouth water a little bit.
- [25:47]
Unknown Guest
One of my college roommates and I stay in touch by sending each other recipes. It is literally 98% of our text thread.
- [25:54]
Unknown Host
My dad, he's a subscriber as well. We'll go back and forth sharing recipes. I'll usually tune them over some pictures of what I actually made.
- [26:00]
Unknown Guest
If I didn't have New York Times cooking, I think I would be a lot more stressed for weeknight meals.
- [26:04]
Walter Cronkite
If I didn't have New York Times.
- [26:06]
Unknown Host
Cooking, I think there'd be a hole in my day. Hey, it's Eric Kim from New York Times Cooking. Come cook with us. Go to nytcooking.com.
- [26:18]
Jim Rutenberg
Jim as we turn to Trump's efforts to try to break the back of the traditional mainstream media. I think we have to ask the very simple question of why this remains a priority of his. If he has the enormous influence in this new Trump adjacent media you just described, he doesn't in some sense need, it would seem, the mainstream media. The mainstream media has significant economic problems we've talked about for years on this show with you. And trust in the mainstream media, I believe, is at an all time low. So why is Trump so determined to try to cripple it?
- [26:57]
Unknown Host
Right. Let's just say if you listen to people around Trump like Elon Musk, crippling, it would apparently be like the nice thing to do after Trump's election. Musk, for instance, wrote on X literally, the legacy media must die. That's the real quote. Wow. But there's one sort of easy answer, and that is that there are still millions of people who watch network television. There are still big newspapers doing journalism, and they get scoops about his administration that his sort of podcast friendlies don't get. Right. They're digging stuff up. Some of that is like winding up in these court cases against his agenda. I think he just sees it as, hey, there's still part of the media system. For all of the advantages I have elsewhere, this old part is still out to get me and I gotta cut it off. It's in the way.
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Jim Rutenberg
Just the way Cronkite was to Nixon.
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Unknown Host
Exactly.
- [27:57]
Jim Rutenberg
So with that in mind, how is the President, in this second run at being president, attempting to go after and maybe even destroy the mainstream media?
- [28:11]
Unknown Host
Well, let's start with the courts. He's been bringing some pretty aggressive lawsuits. And where he has done this in the past, now that he's kind of won the popular vote, he's feeling more powerful. We're watching as he's getting very different results.
- [28:32]
Jim Rutenberg
Hmm. Just explain that.
- [28:34]
Unknown Host
Well, there have been a couple that Trump filed from even before he became president, and one that everybody probably remembers was against ABC News, which settled for $15 million. People saw it as a real capitulation, a real shrinking in the face of a threat. But let's focus on the one he brought against CBS, 60 Minutes, and CBS's parent company, Paramount. This one was based on his view or this idea that when 60 Minutes interviewed Kamala Harris during the campaign, it had edited one of her answers to make her sound better. Because in two different places, two different excerpts of this same interview, they show different answers to the same question, which is really just different parts of a Longer answer.
- [29:19]
Jim Rutenberg
Right.
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Unknown Host
And this was like, unheard of to sue over this idea that somehow CBS was like playing games with the sound to help her in her campaign. I mean, it was just like, as far as First Amendment lawyers were concerned, a no brainer that this would not stand. It was almost like a frivolous lawsuit.
- [29:36]
Jim Rutenberg
Mm. And what happens?
- [29:38]
Unknown Host
Well, something shocking happens. Word gets out that CBS's parent company, Paramount, is preparing to enter talks to settle this lawsuit. And this is happening just as Trump is taking office. And this has huge ramifications inside of CBS News at 60 Minutes, which, by the way, we can talk about network news not being what it once was. 60 Minutes is still a giant television show. It's like the last of them. And it is a serious journalistic operation. So the idea that the parent company is going to make them settle this lawsuit about an actual answer that the Democratic nominee and sitting vice president made, I mean, that's just unbelievable to them. But there's a bigger thing at stake involved in this.
- [30:28]
Jim Rutenberg
Which is what?
- [30:29]
Unknown Host
Behind the scenes, the Trump administration is dangling, basically, punishment against Paramount and its primary business interests because Paramount is trying to affect a sale to another media company called Skydance.
- [30:46]
Jim Rutenberg
Right.
- [30:47]
Unknown Host
That deal is going to need approval from the federal government, including the Federal Communications Commission, which controls station licenses for CBS News. And so the fear is that the FCC will somehow seek to block this merger because of Trump's personal peak at.
- [31:09]
Jim Rutenberg
The network over this edit of this interview with Kamala Harris.
- [31:12]
Unknown Host
Yeah. And so here's Paramount wanting to just get this out of the way by folding on this very kind of central question about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. And sure enough, the man who Trump had just recently appointed as the chair of the fcc, Brendan Carr, opens an investigation based on a complaint that the FCC under Biden, had just dismissed. And that involves CBS's handling of this interview edit. And Carr will even go on to say fairly explicitly that approval of that deal could hinge on what the FCC finds. So now CBS has asked, show us your script, show us your raw material. And CBS complies, which yet again, in journalism world is seen as this complete caving.
- [32:00]
Jim Rutenberg
Right. And we should say, I think it's during this process of CBS participating in this FCC investigation that we all finally get a look at the original transcript and the editing. And basically, we all learn simultaneously that there's nothing to see here. This is a very natural editing process. There was no effort to protect Kamala Harris.
- [32:20]
Unknown Host
Right. It's just how the editing process works. You see, it, it's kind of boring, but it shows you can talk anything into anything. And the FCC is expected to kind of know that. It had known that. But here we were.
- [32:34]
Jim Rutenberg
Right. And the reason this would seem to matter. Back to this question of how is Trump trying to break the back of the news media? Is that he seems to be pretty effectively transforming the regulatory body that oversees, especially TV news and turning it into this pretty invasive weapon that can be wielded against the major news outlets and presumably have a chilling effect. If you're CBS, 60 Minutes or anything else inside CBS, or if you're any of the shows at NBC, you're thinking to yourselves, we have to be really careful about how we cover Donald Trump because if we get crosswise with him, then the FCC might come after us.
- [33:20]
Unknown Host
Yeah. And it does something that Nixon was only threatening to do in the Nixon years. They were threatening to bring the FCC after the biased networks in New York and la Washington. Whatever they were threatening FCC power, they held back from really asserting it. And it's not clear that this will end with the fcc, which is a regulatory body. Right. A few weeks ago, Trump. Trump gave a speech at the Department of Justice.
- [33:47]
Walter Cronkite
Well, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you.
- [33:51]
Unknown Host
Where he essentially argued that he would like to transform the DOJ itself into a cudgel against the press.
- [33:58]
Walter Cronkite
And I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party. And in my opinion, they're really corrupt and they're illegal.
- [34:13]
Unknown Host
He literally said that the press, in reporting some stories he personally didn't like, was probably acting illegally.
- [34:22]
Walter Cronkite
And it has to stop. It has to be illegal. It's influencing judges and it's intro. It's really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don't believe it's legal.
- [34:36]
Unknown Host
And Right.
- [34:37]
Jim Rutenberg
And even if he's only musing at this point, this once again adds to the chilling effect we've seen in TV news. But also I think we should add in print, where we've seen the owners of the LA Times and the Washington Post block their editorial boards from endorsing Kamala Harris, as both plan to. It's been widely noted in the case of the Washington Post that its owner, Jeff Bezos, has a lot of government contracts before Trump, and Trump has threatened his government contracts in the past.
- [35:09]
Michael Balbaro
So we have a clear sense now.
- [35:10]
Jim Rutenberg
Of how Trump is using both the.
- [35:13]
Michael Balbaro
Courts and the power of the federal.
- [35:15]
Jim Rutenberg
Government against the media.
- [35:18]
Unknown Host
Exactly. But these actions he's taking in the courts with the fcc, possibly now, doj, they take time. And so in the interim, he's doing what he can now to curtail access and punish outlets for not going along with his narrative. And I think the best example of this is what he did against the Associated Press. As you may remember, he has declared that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America. The Associated Press has not updated its style book on the Gulf of America, and the White House was very angry about this. So the Associated Press was pulled out of the press pool, excluded basically from.
- [36:04]
Jim Rutenberg
Access to things like Oval Office meeting between Trump and the leader of a foreign country.
- [36:09]
Unknown Host
Yeah. And by the way, that's one thing for us, right? The New York Times, we write a story a day or how many stories out of that. The AP is a wire service. It goes to newspapers across the country. It feeds 15,000 other media outlets. A lot of them who don't can't afford to have.
- [36:26]
Jim Rutenberg
The AP is kind of the eyes and the ears for a lot of local media around the country.
- [36:31]
Unknown Host
Thank you. You said it better than I was saying it. That's why you're. That's the job. That's what you do. And this was, again, kind of. This was unheard of. And again, put the press on notice that now you need to use the language that the President wants you to use or you are going to be punished. And there's something else that's going on here that's very important not to maybe the average listener until they think about it, but because the pressure needs to be independent, it has always insisted that it will control the pool at the White House. The people covering the White House determined who each day was going to be assigned to play this role.
- [37:11]
Jim Rutenberg
Right.
- [37:11]
Unknown Host
So for the first time in memory, the Trump White House, a White House, is saying, no, we're controlling the pool. We're gonna decide who's in the room.
- [37:21]
Jim Rutenberg
And why exactly does that matter?
- [37:24]
Unknown Host
Well, the whole press pool, the whole tradition looks. Starting to look very different.
- [37:30]
Jim Rutenberg
And what's an example of that?
- [37:31]
Unknown Host
There was a really stark example of this recently.
- [37:34]
Walter Cronkite
Well, thank you very much. It's an honor to have President Zelensky of Ukraine.
- [37:39]
Unknown Host
When President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine came to the White House to discuss war and peace in his country.
- [37:46]
Jim Rutenberg
Right.
- [37:46]
Unknown Host
How they were going to end this rank death and destruction in Ukraine. And in this setting, one of the new members of the pool, a gentleman from right side broadcasting an online, very pro Trump network, was given a question.
- [38:02]
Walter Cronkite
That would not have been a good situation. What was Your second question. My second question for President Zelensky now, do you ever.
- [38:08]
Unknown Host
Why don't you wear a suit? And that question was, why are you, President Zelensky, dressed like this in the Oval Office?
- [38:16]
Walter Cronkite
Just want to see.
- [38:16]
Unknown Host
Do you own a suit?
- [38:18]
Walter Cronkite
Yeah.
- [38:18]
Unknown Host
Yeah. A lot of Americans have problems with.
- [38:21]
Walter Cronkite
You not respecting the safety of his office.
- [38:24]
Unknown Host
I will wear costume after this war will finish. Which President Trump had already made a crack about that he didn't like it. That President Zelensky was, as he often does, wearing kind of a more of a military field uniform, not a suit.
- [38:38]
Jim Rutenberg
A pretty vivid example of what a new pool looks and sounds like. It kind of looks like journalists parroting Trump.
- [38:46]
Unknown Host
Parroting Trump on a thing that has nothing to do with the life and death matter at hand, but very much pleases this president, who loved seeing that play out while he's having these talks. But more than that, it was a question that played to President Trump's end goal that day, which was to take a newly hard line with Ukraine in a way that isn't necessarily comfortable or popular with the American public. That remains to be seen. So now you have the pool kind of echoing the strategy of the White House. I'm sorry, that is fundamentally different than what we have seen heretofore in these major moments of war and peace.
- [39:28]
Jim Rutenberg
So, Jim, where do you think all of this goes from here? I think you have demonstrated very powerfully just how radically the media ecosystem has changed in between the two Trump presidencies and how willing he is to change the government's relationship to the media. Based on all your reporting and your observations here, where does that go?
- [39:55]
Unknown Host
Well, there are two ways to answer that question. On the one hand, I think in terms of the way our government works, Trump has shown that he can, in ways he didn't quite pull off the first time around, create his own reality and then move government policy based on that reality, no matter how far away from actual facts or accuracy, it is that he has this whole other world that will give him the power to create any justification to do anything, and then the courts take over, whatever. So what the mainstream press does to fact check becomes less and less powerful. And at the same time, as he makes these moves against the networks, against reporters, against news organizations, there's no way to argue that that doesn't further weaken the press and further erode trust at the same time. If they'd already basically killed journalism, disempowered journalism, they wouldn't be bothering with all of this.
- [41:14]
Michael Balbaro
But if we're being Honest.
- [41:17]
Jim Rutenberg
Is it the case that the mainstream media, both in terms of audience and these attacks, appears to be in a losing battle against this approach to government and this approach to media?
- [41:33]
Unknown Host
Yeah. There's no question if the mission of the mainstream media, basically traditional American journalism, is to keep the, in part, the national debate honest, to tie it to facts, to inform voters based on what's happening in corporal reality, that mission has never seemed more challenged in our lifetimes than it does now. And I'm not saying, by the way, that the press is always functioning at a science level. Not at all. But I wanna say one thing that's optimistic for American journalism, for the msm, but for the traditional role the press has played.
- [42:14]
Jim Rutenberg
I think you're allowed. You are an embodiment of.
- [42:16]
Unknown Host
Give me that, give me that. The traditional media, and that is that we didn't talk about this, but there was a point when Nixon was going after the press where he thought he won because Watergate started breaking. A lot of the big stories happened toward the end of his reelection campaign. They were even on Cronkite, the CBS News. Nixon was very angry about that. But what happened was Nixon won that election in a landslide. And after that, they said literally to major people in the press, we're coming for you now. We do not like how you treated us. You're gonna pay. Made all kinds of threats very similar to right now. And as we all know, Nixon couldn't outrun the facts or the truth, and journalism was vindicated. It's a reminder that we don't know what's around the corner. And we can't assume that what we're experiencing in these first few months, the whole country says what we're going to be experiencing months from now. But there's no question that the fundamentals are really challenging, and Trump is going to do everything he can to make them more so over the next four years.
- [43:41]
Michael Balbaro
Well, Jim, I really appreciate it.
- [43:43]
Jim Rutenberg
Thank you very much.
- [43:43]
Unknown Host
Thanks for having me.
- [43:52]
Michael Balbaro
Since we spoke with Jim, President Trump's attacks on the traditional media have only intensified. On social media. Over the weekend, Trump issued highly personal attacks against two White House reporters for the New York Times, Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker, as well as Baker's wife, Susan Glaser, a writer for the New Yorker magazine, suggesting that all three of them are biased against him. In response, the Times defended both White House reporters and said, quote, intimidation tactics against Times reporters or their family members have never caused us to back down from our mission. Meanwhile, Republican allies of Trump in Congress are scheduled to hold a hearing tomorrow in which they will make the case that NPR and PBS present biased and partisan coverage and are no longer worthy of federal funding. The Republican congresswoman who will oversee the hearing will Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said, quote, I want to hear why NPR and PBS think they should ever again receive a single cent from the American taxpayer. We'll be right back.
- [45:21]
Unknown Host
This podcast is supported by DSWell.
- [45:25]
Unknown Advertiser
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- [45:54]
Josh Haner
Hi, I'm Josh Haner and I'm a staff photographer at the New York Times covering climate change. For years, we've sort of imagined this picture of a polar bear floating on a piece of ice. Those have been the images associated with climate change. My challenge is to find stories that show you how climate change is affecting our world right now. If you want to support the kind of journalism that we're working on here on the Climate and Environment desk at the New York Times, please subscribe on our website or our app.
- [46:27]
Michael Balbaro
Here's what else you need to know. Today, the White House has confirmed an extraordinary breach of national security involving top government officials, including Vice President J.D. vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who discussed plans for military strikes in a group chat that inadvertently included a journalist. Instead of using highly secure government channels to discuss their war plans, the officials exchanged messages over the commercial messaging app Signal and included Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine on all their messages. And in the most sweet, sweeping move of its kind, West Virginia has banned foods containing most artificial food dyes and two different preservatives, citing their potential health risks. The action, signed into law by the state's governor on Monday, suggests that states are moving faster than the federal government to restrict food additives, a target of the Trump administration. At least 20 different states are considering similar restrictions to West Virginia's. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zepko and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Michael Benoit and Patricia Willins, was fact checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano and Pat McCusker and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.
- [48:32]
Unknown Guest
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