Media can't fall into 'opposition party' trap in covering Trump, argues White House reporter jonkarl
WASHINGTON — Jonathan Karl writes in his new book that President Trump is waging “an assault on truth,” but also details the ways in which the celebrity star turned commander in chief strategically baits the press into personal grudge matches that undercut the credibility of the media.
What’s clear from the book — “Front Row at the Trump Show” — is that Karl and Trump know each other well, and have something of a working relationship, even though Trump called Karl “a third-rate reporter” earlier this month during a press briefing. The 52-year-old journalist describes multiple occasions when the 73-year-old president has switched on a dime from friendly and magnanimous toward him in private to hostile and angry in front of a crowd, or vice versa. At a Florida rally in the fall of 2018, Trump praised Karl to others backstage after an interview and then minutes later encouraged a large crowd to jeer at Karl and others in the press pen.
The artifice of it all, Karl argues, demonstrates that it is part of Trump’s intentional strategy. “He wants to define the media as the opposition party,” Karl writes in his book. And Karl relates a comment Trump made to Lesley Stahl, a CBS journalist for “60 Minutes.” Trump told her he attacks the media “so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”
But in an interview, Karl said that “it’s not really so much any individual. It’s kind of the cumulative effect.”
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