Mediaite reports on Trump’s hasty use of political capital:
CNN reported Wednesday on a senior administration official admitting that the White House intentionally misled reporters ahead of President Donald Trump‘s congressional address in order to get generate positive press coverage as part of a “misdirection play.”
Multiple reports Tuesday indicated that Trump would embrace a more moderate tone on immigration and would announce that he was willing to negotiate granting millions of illegal immigrants legal status. Most of those reports, cited to a “senior administration official,” came immediately after anchors lunched with Trump. Some of those outlets then just attributed the claim to the president himself.
But when it was time for Trump to actually give the speech, he said nothing of the sort. CNN’s Sara Murray complained the next day about “the bait and switch that the president pulled when it came to immigration yesterday. He had this meeting with the anchors, he talked about a path to legal status.”
Multiple news organizations are now reportedly wondering why they should ever trust Trump again. My feeling is that the Trump Administration has, at the very best, a very flawed conception of planning. They have four years ahead of them, if they’re lucky, and they just lost any last hope they had of gaining positive coverage from the mainstream press – all for a momentary uptick in positive coverage.
Are they that desperate? Or do they really believe their own fantasies that the mainstream press is about to roll over and die? About all they can really expect is that they won’t lose anyone in their base – they’ll probably not hear about it, and if they do, they’ll figure the press deserved what they got. After all, by wide report, his base thinks he’s doing wonderful and don’t understand why he’s not receiving plaudits from the press.
