I had specific suggestions for Trump on how to run his press conferences. Obviously, he did not take my suggestion seriously. I doubt that he ever saw this.
In a recent tweet, he identified the media as the enemy of the American people. That threw down the gauntlet.
The media are surely enemies of Trump. He can never get them to be anything except completely opposed to him and his presidency. They have shown that there is no trace of neutrality in the media. Those of us who knew that back in the 1950's can point to this as confirmation. Trump now has received the memo.
Why should Trump ever hold another press conference? Why should he have a press secretary? Why should he give the media the time of day?
The media needs news. Presidents have provided low-cost, easy-access news ever since Teddy Roosevelt began the tradition in 1901. It has always favored the Left.
In the past, the Presidents have tried to put their spin on particular stories. They have done this by letting reporters have access to them. But there will be no positive spin for Trump or his policies. The media are 100% on attack mode. So, he can get no positive spin through them.
Why should he seek to get any spin at all? He doesn't need the media. The media are opposed to him, and he can never win them back. Why should he show up at a press conference? What benefit is this going to give him?
What good is a press secretary? Why should a President allow some salaried employee to speak on behalf of the presidency? The President should speak for the President. Nobody else should.
If Trump wants to cut the media people off at the knees, he should let them post their questions in writing on the White House website. He can assign someone on his staff to send each question to a committee. The committee will put together each answer. He should have half a dozen people writing his responses. His appointees seem divided, so let them spin the material through a committee. He then signs the document, or else he can tell the spinmeisters to rewrite it. Or maybe he will write it himself. He has it posted on the White House website. He has somebody convert the White House link to a Bitly.com short link. Then he tweets his response with this bit.ly link to his readers.
If the media want to do something with what he writes, fine. That is suitable for newspapers. But it is not suitable for the television networks. They need his talking head. Why should he provide anything of benefit to the television networks?
Here is an amazing fact about the television networks. The combined viewing audience of the three networks is approximately the same as the number of readers that Trump has on his Twitter account. The networks combined have 25 million people. Trump has 25 million. But here is the crucial difference: Trump's Twitter account is growing rapidly. In mid-January, it was 20 million people. Here is the grim plight of network news:
But viewership is trending down vs. 2016, when the presidential primaries filled the news cycle. Nightly News was down -4 percent in viewers and down -8 percent in the demo; World News Tonight was down -1 percent in viewers and down -9 percent in the demo; the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley was down -5 percent in viewers and down -16 percent in the demo.
The television news shows are slowly losing market share. The newsmen are in panic mode. Evidence of this is the fact that the three television news anchormen got together this month to discuss why television network news is relevant. This is the classic mark of an institution that is losing relevance. The newscasters want to pat each other on the back, and tell each other how important they are. They are not as important as Donald Trump's Twitter account.
The TV news shows can devote maybe five minutes to Donald Trump. They have to sell advertising. They have to have stories about flooding and fires and sports, which are the lifeblood of television news. Meanwhile, Trump is 100% Trump all the time. He tweets at all hours. He is tweeting to hard-core followers. These are people who are interested in Trump. Television news viewers are interested in fires and floods and sports events.
Why does Trump have to meet with any of these people? They offer no benefit whatsoever to him. Yet they need him to get their soundbites. Why should he deal with his enemies? It does not make sense to me. He can go directly to the public with his Twitter account. He can create video messages at any time, post them on the White House website, and then link to the videos for his Twitter followers or anybody else to view. If the network news teams want to use these videos, fine. He can craft them to get his message to his people. He can target his voter base. The network news can use his videos to run.
They would hate this. That is because they like to use brief snippets that make him look bad. They extract these snippets from Trump's long presentations. Instead of letting them do this, all Trump needs to do is to get the snippet to look good to his voter base, and the networks will have nothing of value to them to post on their news shows.
He can arrange exclusive interviews with those news outlets that go directly to his supporters: Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and any other Web-based broadcaster who will let him tell his story his way.
What could the network news do about this? He has made an announcement about them: enemy of the people. So, he just stops having press conferences. The media never see him again. They will notice the fact that there are no more meetings with his press secretary. They no longer come into a room where they can yell and scream and wave their hands in the air trying to get attention. The room is used for other purposes.
His press secretary is still listed as press secretary, but the only function he has is to direct specific questions posted on the White House website to the committees that will answer them. These people are faceless entities. Nobody ever sees them. They never appear on television news shows. Nobody appears on television news shows who represents the President of the United States.
The media can yell and scream about this, but how long will that work? Maybe for a month. After that, the absence of press conferences and daily meetings with the press becomes old news. Nobody cares. Anyway, nobody cares who is not part of the mainstream media.
The strategy here is simple: don't give the mainstream media ammunition that can be used against Trump in the evening news broadcast. Do an end run around them. They provide no benefits to Trump, and they provide liabilities. But if there is no one to put on the TV screen, the talking heads will have to carry their message to their audience by means of talking. But TV is a visual medium. If all viewers get is talking heads on the screen, they change the channel.
Viewers want to see fires and floods and great plays in a sporting event. They don't want to see the commentator every night, because the commentator is simply reading a script provided by a professional script writer.
Trump is in control. This should be reflected in the way that he deals with the media. He has nothing but contempt for them. They have nothing but contempt for him. So, his task now is to get his message to his supporters. He can do this by refusing ever to meet with the mainstream media again. He can send them a message: " don't need you." It also sends this message: "You need me, because your ratings are falling."
By the time 2020 rolls around, Trump is going to have 50 million Twitter readers, or maybe 83 million the way Obama does. Meanwhile, the big three TV newscasters are going to have about 20 million. They are dinosaurs.
It is interesting that Obama did nothing with his Twitter account. He has 83 million readers, yet we never hear anything about him. He never figured out how to use Twitter. Trump has understood from day one.
Twitter could counter by cutting off Trump's account. That would hurt him. He is dependent on Twitter to communicate with his base. But it would infuriate 25 million readers, and that would be bad business for Twitter. It would also look like censorship. That would backfire.
If Trump wants to thumb his nose at the media, he can do it in a straightforward way. He never lets any of them get access to him again. He cuts off all relations with them. He publicly demonstrates in no uncertain terms that he recognizes that they are finished in terms of their influence. The World Wide Web is eliminating them.
This would make a great tweet.
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Update, Feb. 24. Trump has taken the first step of barring news media. The story is here.
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