Transcript: Trump Rage over Failing Press Ban Erupts in Epic Self-Own

As Trump’s fury at news organizations grows after he loses in court, the writer of a piece on Trump’s shrinking stature explains how the media can collectively resist his abuses of power.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 28 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

After we recorded, Trump again did a ban, yet this time it was only CNN and it was more narrow, excluding it from Air Force One. But’s unclear whether that will last.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump is in a fury because news organizations have joined together to resist his effort to ban some of them from the White House. He exploded over this, but in the process revealed something important. Collective institutional resistance to Trump actually works.

Unfortunately, this lesson has been learned kind of late, after a whole lot of elite capitulation has already happened. But still, it’s good to see, and we’re wondering now if this will steel the media to go after Trump harder on things that it’s mostly avoided, like his deteriorating mental state.

Paul Waldman’s been writing well on Trump’s waning power on his Substack, The Cross Section. So we’re talking to him about all of it. Paul, thanks for coming on.

Paul Waldman: My pleasure.

Sargent: So a quick recap. Donald Trump banned CNN, Politico, and MS Now from the White House grounds in a fit of tyrannical rage. And then the White House pretended it had something to do with national security. A judge has blocked this, and it appears the news organizations are now allowed back in.

Paul, what are your general thoughts on this whole thing?

Waldman: Yeah, it’s really hard to see what Trump thought this would accomplish. I mean, what did he really have to gain by doing this? Maybe he didn’t realize that the other news organizations were going to rally behind their colleagues. But is one more fight with the media really something that is good for him at this point? Does it do anything for him? Does it make Republicans any less likely to lose the midterms? It’s really hard to see.

And I think there’s a clue in the news organizations that he chose. Sure, MS Now is liberal. CNN, he’s long hated. But Politico—like, that’s not some kind of liberal organization. It seems like it was very impulsive.

And as time goes on, I think more and more of his impulses are going to get translated into action and policy. And that’s never good for anybody.

Sargent: Yeah, that’s where it’s going to be heading, I think. So here’s where it gets funny and revealing. As you mentioned, news organizations banded together. They did this by agreeing to suspend the pool coverage. And as a result, participating networks didn’t end up covering Xi Jinping’s arrival at the White House.

Before we get into the guts of this, Paul, what do you think of that decision by all these news organizations? It seems like Trump wasn’t anticipating that. He just assumed he’d divide and conquer them, right?

Waldman: Yeah, you’d have to think so, because this was really the worst outcome possible for him. I mean, he lives to be on television. Right. And you can just imagine how infuriated he must have been when this state visit from Xi Jinping—that he had been so looking forward to, and he was going to show off his helipad that he must have made sure was going to be finished in time for Xi to get here, and they rolled out a literal red carpet, and all this was going to make for great TV.

Trump loves to put on a show. And then it wasn’t broadcast, and all these news organizations did reports on it with, you know—TV news did reports on it with still photos, because they didn’t have audio and video, because the pools weren’t there. And that must have just killed him.

So it’s hard to imagine that there was really well-thought-out strategy at work here. And maybe he just didn’t even contemplate the idea that the other news organizations would say, you know, we’re not going to tolerate this. But that’s what they did.

Sargent: And in fact, Trump did explode in rage over the failure of networks to carry the arrival at the White House. He posted this:

“CNN and MS NOW refused to cover one of the biggest and most beautiful events to take place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the highly respected president of China...the event was magnificent, but because they’re Fake News, and because they didn’t want credit to be given to Trump, they refused to be there.”

Trump also claimed that the media refuses to give Trump credit for his world historical successes and for his popularity. Paul, what do you make of that explosion from Trump?

Waldman: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a reflection of his genuine sentiment. You know, he’s always had this kind of back-and-forth with the media that was in part strategic. He starts fights with them, but then he is quick to make up.

He wants their attention. But he also wants to be in this kind of conflict with them. That’s been the........

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