The Narrative is All

Offered without (much) comment:

Barry Sussman: The problem is the media have allowed Trump to set the agenda. When he changes the subject, they change the subject. They follow him wherever he goes. He leads the press around by the nose. That was even true on the Russia investigation. How many weeks did we go, months, where there were front-page stories questioning whether Trump would even testify? Imbeciles like Giuliani were getting press attention as though they had something to say, when all they were doing was trying to stretch things out and humiliate the press. That’s my main difficulty, not only with the Russia investigation but with everything else.

The press didn’t even cover the presidents every single day until Reagan. You may remember this. It was Reagan’s sharp advisers who decided to make him the center of attention and pretty much get stories day by day, every day. Before then, there was not even daily coverage of presidents. I think that we might keep that in mind as Trump is covered.

The way Trump is covered now is that he is covered first. If there’s any room for anything, or anybody else, or anything else, it will follow, if there’s room. I think that we have such a great list of real problems that need to be dealt with, that are newsworthy and important, starting of course with climate change, but the list is a very, very strong list. Even some Trump issues make the list, like immigration.

Just because Trump wants people to pay attention to immigration doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. We just don’t have to pay attention to him on immigration. My solution to this is that the press, especially the elite press that already has beats on all the important subjects, it should pay attention to what’s going on. It should write about them as needed, and when there’s room left over, they give us Trump. Turn things around on their face.

Trump & Nixon: The Ties That Bind

Sussman: Well, one thing that could happen is exactly what happened to Nixon. It’s his taxes could become public. Nixon was guilty of criminal fraud in his taxes. He backdated his taxes and took a $570,000 deduction that was illegal. He ended up having to repay the government $470,000 in taxes. Had he been anybody else, he would have been charged for that. As a matter of fact, Nixon’s taxes made it into one of the articles of impeachment in the drafts of the impeachment proceedings.

They were dropped in the end. There were only three items of impeachment. His taxes were dropped, but the issue was clear to the people. Nixon always said that Watergate was false, as usual. He also called Watergate a third-rate burglary, but his main approach was that, “Well, this happens on both sides.” People didn’t know how to deal with that. Some people believed that, and to an extent, things did happen on both sides. But the taxes weren’t complicated. When you have the president claiming less than $900 in taxes two years in a row on his federal income taxes, people are going to understand that, because it’s less than anybody paid. When it’s not only just paying a little bit but the tax deduction is illegal, and the way president claimed it was criminal fraud, that’s not complicated.                      

We don’t know what’s going to happen with Trump’s taxes, if and when they become public, but there have been possibilities that something similar could happen, and that would be the end.

About who sets the news agenda, again:

Sussman: That’s exactly right, but it’s only right for one reason. The reason is the press doesn’t stay with the story long enough. It’s again a case of them being led around by the nose by Trump. If his taxes show the kind of fraud that some people think could be there, and the press writes about it, that’s not a one-day story. That’s not a two-day story. It’s a story that they have to get into, dig deep, and actually it’s dealt with properly, incrementally.

If they write what they find and keep finding more, then Trump won’t be able to change the subject and it will take effect. Because not all of Trump’s supporters are loony. Many of them are disaffected for other reasons, and some of them for very good reasons. That’s why they stay with Trump, because they don’t like the alternatives. I think that’s fair for a lot of people, but if they see that, “Well, no, this is just too much,” which they would see if the press did a better job, a more straightforward, better job, instead of following Trump around by the nose, dealing with other issues.

The issues I’m talking about, I’m talking about climate change and a whole list, these are issues where Trump comes out poorly. People will know that, too. A main problem that I have is not just Trump. It’s the Republican Party, who are very happy to have Trump there because they’re getting what they want, to the detriment of everybody else and the planet. The problem is just flat-out poor press coverage, not well thought-out press coverage.

A funny thing happened on the way to the front page....

What are we not covering day by day that should be covered? Where does Trump fit into all this? Because he’ll do a tweet, and lead everybody around by the nose with a tweet. “Lock her up” is still an expression. Last week, he went after John Kerry. What in the world is that about? The point of it is just to change the subject.                      

If there were less coverage, could Trump set the agenda to a lesser degree? If he were not allowed to set the agenda, the investigative coverage would stand out more, because there would be less of the foolish coverage, the unnecessary, foolish coverage.

I will make one comment on the number of people on Twitter and elsewhere on-line, who denounce any refusal to "pay attention" to what Trump just tweeted as "normalizing" what Trump does.  Clearly there is an alternate point of view to consider, and another side to the question of what it means to "normalize" public behavior.