Drop the Curtain on the Trump Follies
Why
does the nation need to be subjected to the president’s daily carnival of
misinformation, preening and political venom?
Ms.
Cottle is a member of the editorial board.
·
April 7, 2020
Even as the Trump administration slowly
finds its footing in the war against Covid-19, one high-profile element of its
response remains stubbornly awful: President Trump’s performance in the daily
news briefings on the pandemic.
Early on, Mr. Trump discovered that he
could use the briefings to satisfy his need for everything to be all about him.
As the death toll rises, that imperative has not changed. Most nights, he comes
before an uneasy public, typically for an hour or more, to spew a thick fog of
self-congratulation, political attacks, misinformation and nonsense.
Since Mr. Trump took office, a debate
has raged among the news media about how to cover a man-child apparently
untethered from reality. But with a lethal pandemic on the prowl, the
president’s insistence on grabbing center stage and deceiving the public isn’t
merely endangering the metaphorical health of the Republic. It is risking the
health — and lives — of millions of Americans. A better leader would curb his
baser instincts in the face of this crisis. Since Mr. Trump is not wired that
way, it falls to the media to serve the public interest by no longer airing his
briefings live.
For
those who have managed to avoid these nightly spectacles, it is hard to convey
their tragic absurdity. Mr. Trump typically starts by reading a somber
statement that he seems to have never seen before. Next come remarks from other
administration officials or corporate executives involved in the relief effort,
generally laden with praise for the president’s peerless leadership. Vice President
Mike Pence is particularly gifted at this.
After the testimonials comes the Q. and
A., which is where the president lets his id off the leash. His constant goal
seems to be to stress that he is in no way responsible for this nightmare —
including any glitches in his administration’s response. All failures he
assigns to past administrations, Democrats, governors, the media and so on.
Some of Mr. Trump’s misleading claims
are fairy tales about his perfect response to this crisis. On March 15, he reassured the public that his administration had
“tremendous control over” the virus. (No.) On March 17, he claimed to have
“felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” (Really?)
Other fabrications are more
specific. On April 1, he assured people that safeguards were in place for
travelers. “They’re doing tests on airlines — very strong tests — for getting
on, getting off. They’re doing tests on trains — getting on, getting off,” he
said. (No.)
Testing
is a particularly touchy issue. Mr. Trump has claimed that, starting out, his team was burdened by “old, obsolete”
tests inherited from the Obama administration. (No.) In ducking a question
about the United States’ rate of per capita testing, he asserted that Seoul,
South Korea, has a population of 38 million. (Try less than 10 million.) He
continues to deny reports of testing problems in hard-hit states.
At Monday’s briefing, two journalists
asked about a new report by the inspector general of the Department of Health
and Human Services indicating that many hospitals were still grappling with
testing delays. Mr. Trump first dismissed anyone with the job of inspector
general. “Did I hear the word ‘inspector general’? Really?” Suggesting the
report was politically motivated, he demanded to know the official’s name
(Christi Grimm), when she had been appointed (this January) and how long she had served in government. When told she
had served in the inspector general’s office since 1999, he erupted as if he’d
uncovered a coup.
“You’re a third-rate reporter, and what
you just said is a disgrace!” he ranted
at Jonathan Karl of
ABC News, pronouncing, “You will never make it!”
The closest the president came to
addressing the original question was to assert that testing isn’t really his
problem: “We’re the federal government! We’re not supposed to stand on street
corners testing!”
He then lectured Fox News’s Kristin
Fisher for being so negative. “You should say, ‘Congratulations! Great job!’
Instead of being so horrid in the way you ask the question!”
Such scoldings are a staple of the
briefings, with Mr. Trump denouncing inquiries he dislikes as “gotcha,”
“nasty,”
“threatening” or “snarky.”
He tells reporters they should be “ashamed” for not taking a more positive
approach — as if they were on hand to flatter.
Public officials critical of the
administration are mocked as
ungrateful whiners with “insatiable appetites.” At one briefing, Mr. Trump said
he’d told the vice president not to call Washington State’s Jay Inslee or “the
woman in
Michigan,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “If
they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” he said. He has made sneering
reference to one Republican-in-name-only malcontent (presumably Maryland’s Gov.
Larry Hogan); called Senator Chuck Schumer of New York “a disgrace”;
and accused Illinois’s governor, J.B. Pritzker, of “always complaining.” He has also repeatedly
claimed that
New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo “had a chance to get 16,000 ventilators a few
years ago, and they turned it down.” (No.)
Critics
of the president may be appalled to witness such behavior. But those inclined
to trust him — and to view the media as illegitimate — may well wind up
believing his spin.
Mr. Trump basically acknowledged as
much on Monday. The public is “starting to find out” what an amazing job we’re
doing, he bragged. “One of the reasons I do these news conferences, because, if
I didn’t, they would believe Fake News. And we can’t let them believe Fake
News.”
The president has a captive audience,
and he has no intention of missing an opportunity to preen. On March 29,
he boasted on Twitter
about the terrific TV ratings his briefings were enjoying.
If the cameras were taken away, perhaps
Mr. Trump would worry less about putting on a show. Better still, perhaps he
would leave the briefings to the officials who have useful information to
impart. The daily briefings should be covered — consistently, aggressively and
accurately. But coverage is not the same as running a live, raw feed of Mr.
Trump disgorging whatever he feels in the moment. The events could continue to
air on a public service channel, such as C-SPAN, to alleviate concerns about
censorship or transparency.
In
using his platform to mislead the public, the president is not serving any
interest but his own. In facilitating this farce, neither is the media.
