Donald Trump is not the first US president to go to war with the press. George Washington in private lamented the “arrows of malevolence” aimed at him by the media. John Adams was so incensed by the yellow journalism of his rivals that he tried to have them prosecuted. Most of the press loathed FDR, engaging in a decade-long campaign against him. Even the sainted Eisenhower raged against the “sensation-seeking columnists and commentators”.

Richard Nixon spent his entire career in a cold war with the media, which he regarded, unfairly, as being universally against him. In fact, 78 per cent of papers had endorsed him in 1960, and 93 per cent in 1972. He blamed the press for almost costing him the vice-presidency in 1952 over a slush-fund scandal. When Nixon lost a race for California governor in 1962, he castigated the media, saying they would be sad not to “have Nixon to kick around any more”. As president, Nixon initially bullied the media into submission. His vice-president, Spiro Agnew, said that TV networks were controlled by “an unelected elite” and it was “time that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the people they serve”. Nixon had journalists surveilled, wiretapped and harassed for daring to question him.

Coming from the world of television, Trump understood how to bend the medium to his will. Initially, the media loved covering Trump, because he would always give an outrageous quote on which a piece could be hung. His complaints with the media were petty; weeks of assaults followed the reporting of crowd sizes at........

© The Irish Times