Media Failure Has Become a Bipartisan Consensus Issue
Plus, more Biden blunders; Menendez; the Republicans’ second night
In the heat of a presidential campaign, frequently there doesn’t seem to be much about which the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign agree. Yet at least one thing is emerging as an area of rare bipartisan consensus: the press is terrible.
Republicans have complained about the press for years, from Nixon’s “enemies list” and Spiro Agnew’s speech about “The Responsibilities of Television” to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney using an obscenity in 2000 to describe Adam Clymer of the New York Times. And Hillary Clinton’s 2017 book faulted the New York Times: “Over the years, going all the way back to the Whitewater inquisition, it’s seemed as if many of those in charge of political coverage at the New York Times have viewed me with hostility and skepticism.”
The past few days, though, have featured the somewhat unusual situation of both campaigns picking fights with the media.
NPR flagged it in a dispatch from Detroit on July 12: “In what may be a first at a Biden rally, supporters booed the press as Biden complained about coverage of his political woes…. ‘But guess what: Donald Trump has gotten a free pass,’ he said, criticizing the media for failing to cover the former president.”
Here’s the transcript:
Now, I’m not complaining; I’m just saying. You may have noticed that since the debate, the press — and they’re good guys and women up there — they’ve been hammering me. I — I make a lot of mistakes.
AUDIENCE: Booo —
THE PRESIDENT: No, no, I — I —
AUDIENCE: Booo —
THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s okay. They — they’ve been hammering me because I sometimes confuse names. I say that’s Charlie instead of Bill.
But guess what? Donald Trump has gotten a free pass….Today we’re going to shine a spotlight on Donald Trump. We’re going to do what the press, so far, hasn’t, but I think they’re going to soon.
Likewise, Biden spent some of his Monday, July 15 interview with Lester Holt of NBC News snapping at Holt:
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Lester, look, why don’t you guys ever talk about the 18 — the 28 lies he told? Where — where are you on this? Why doesn’t the press ever talk about that? Twenty-eight times, it’s confirmed, he lied in that debate. …And by the way, seriously, you won’t answer the question, but why doesn’t the press talk about all the lies he told? ..
LESTER HOLT: We — we have reported many of the issues that came of that —
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: No you haven’t —
LESTER HOLT: — that debate.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: No you haven’t.
LESTER HOLT: Well, we’ll provide you with them.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: God love you….
LESTER HOLT: All right. Mr. President, it’s always good to talk to you. Good to see you. Thank you for making some time for us.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Sometimes come and talk to me about what we should be talking about.
LESTER HOLT: All right.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Okay? The issues.
LESTER HOLT: Always happy to talk.
Republicans are also devoting significant time at their convention to attacking not only Biden, but the press. Kari Lake, a U.S. Senate candidate in Arizona, gestured toward the press: “You guys up there in the fake news have worn out your welcome. They lied about everything. Every day more and more people are turning off the fake news,” she said.
Eric Hovde, the Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin, said, “the media—you have to stop dividing us.”
A rap performance that was part of the same Tuesday night convention program as the remarks by Lake and Hovde featured artists singing, “the media is the enemy of the people.”
Dr. Benjamin Carson, a Trump cabinet secretary who also spoke Tuesday night, said, “The free press has abused the public trust. They divide us…rather than uniting us.”
Carson and Hovde may be missing something when they say the press is dividing us; strangely enough, frustration with the political coverage is an area of broad consensus, though there’s disagreement over the precise nature of the failure.
Editors and publishers typically point to complaints from both sides, as with coverage of Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, as a sign that they are doing something right by being independent rather than beholden to either camp. That’s typical defensive self-congratulation, the sort of arrogance that only fuels customer frustration. It’s good for business here at The Editors because we try to bring you stories that are different from the rest of the crowd, we’re not in the partisan tank for anyone, and we place a high priority on accuracy and trustworthiness.
Speaking of media failure: Much of the press has remained inexplicably resistant to straightforward reporting on Biden’s verbal miscues, which are ongoing. The White House transcripts are honest about it, with brackets and strikethroughs when Biden misspeaks.
From Sunday night’s Oval Office address to the nation:
But in America, we resolve our differences at the
battol[ballot] box. You know, that’s how we do it, at thebattol[ballot] box, not with bullets.
From Biden’s remarks in Northville, Michigan, July 12, 2024:
But in the meantime, what’s happened? We’ve grown the middle class. We’ve created 800,000 manufacturing jobs, 1.6 million —
1.6 million[16 million] new jobs — more than any president has in American history in this — in that period of time.We’ve moved our — (applause) — well, thank you, but we — well, the other thing we’ve done is we provided heal- — health care shouldn’t be a — an option. You know, we — I was able to change the Affordable Care Act and another
800,000[8 million] people — anyway — access to insurance, access to health care. (Applause.)
In the Lester Holt interview, Biden twice referred to a Clarence Thomas “dissent” in a presidential immunity decision when in fact it was a concurring opinion to a majority opinion in which Thomas also joined in full.
Speaking July 16 in Las Vegas at the NAACP national convention:
Look, folks, the idea -- the idea that corporate-owned housing is able to raise your rent 3-, 400 bucks a month or something -- under what I'm about to announce, they can't raise it more than
$55[5 percent].
These examples might seem trivial “gotchas” one at a time, or even all put together. But they undercut Biden’s claim that the debate was just “a bad night” because he had a cold, or his new explanation, after confusing Zelensky and Putin and Harris and Trump in a single day, that “I sometimes confuse names.” They suggest, instead, an ongoing difficulty when it comes to clarity in communicating publicly, which isn’t the only part of a president’s job but is a significant component of it.
Speaking of the Republican National Convention: Highlights of the second night (Tuesday): The chief executive officer of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matthew Brooks, opened by telling the crowd, “let me hear you cheer if you support Israel.” He said he couldn’t have tried that at the Democratic convention: “There is only one pro-Israel party and it is the Republican Party.” I’m not sure that’s accurate, and it’s certainly not good for Israel or for America for that to be the case. Brooks did fault Biden for withholding arms to Israel and credit Trump (“the most pro-Israel president in history”) for moving the embassy to Jerusalem, weakening the Iranian regime, and reaching the Abraham Accords. He said that in a second Trump administration, “American Jews can once again wear a kippa and walk the streets without fear.” He concluded, “Am Yisrael Chai!”
A Michigan businessman named Perry Johnson said Trump “has the heart of a lion, the brain of a genius.” He said, “Make America great again, again.”
A considerable number of the Republican speakers and candidates were veterans of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. They were effective in hammering home the main Republican criticisms of Biden—inflation, uncontrolled immigration, the chaotic and “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Mike Rogers, who is running for Senate in Michigan, promised to “make groceries affordable again.”
One got the sense that the Republicans have a deep reservoir of talent beyond Trump. Speaker Mike Johnson was solid. The mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson, who switched from the Democratic Party, was effective. Senator Ted Cruz spoke, emphasizing the illegal immigration issue. So did Senator Tom Cotton: “Joe Biden thinks borders are racist.” Nikki Haley was terrific: “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100 percent of the time to vote for him….Biden is pressuring Israel instead of the terrorists….the Jewish community is facing an obscene rise in antisemitism.”
Ron DeSantis was also effective: “America cannot afford four more years of a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ presidency…We stand for parents rights including universal school choice.”
Trump’s former White House spokesman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, said, “God spared President Trump from that assassin because God is not finished with him yet.” Ben Carson reinforced the religious message: “Faith in God above all else…joyful warriors for Christ.” Senator Rubio also said Trump had been spared “by the hand of God.”
It’s a measure of Trump’s effectiveness as a politician that he’s able to memorably and dismissively define his opponents. In this context, it works to his disadvantage, as when watching Haley, I could almost hear Trump saying “birdbrain,” watching DeSantis, I almost heard Trump saying “Ron Desanctimonious,” and watching Rubio, I almost heard Trump saying “Lil’ Marco.” So the people praising Trump had been somewhat discredited by Trump himself. Still, on the scale between disastrously-off-the-rails and slickly-professional-and-relentlessly-on-message, the second night was pretty well done, I thought. I wasn’t crazy about Lara Trump, Donald’s daughter-in-law, who closed the night out, but all in all, the speakers reinforced the message Trump himself has been using on the campaign trail and that seems to be resonating with the electorate. It’s a message largely about Biden’s weaknesses on inflation, immigration, and national security, with Trump’s main agenda being fixing those problems.
Menendez: Senator Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, has a good shot of getting at least some of his convictions overturned on appeal, as appellate courts have been extremely reluctant to uphold criminal convictions of the sort that a jury delivered this week. I’m not endorsing the guy or his behavior, I’m just saying these honest services fraud and Foreign Agents Registration Act type cases are notoriously susceptible to being brought by ambitious and overreaching prosecutors who wind up criminalizing behavior that falls within, or at least within a reasonable doubt of to, the bounds of ordinary politics.
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