Donald Trump Is Playing the Media Like a Harp - Newsweek
Soon after President Donald Trump took action against the "fake news" media this weekend, blocking White House access to some of his least favorite outlets, the finger of blame began pointing to one blonde aide in particular.
Natalie Harp, the White House executive assistant whose intense devotion to Trump and gushing handwritten notes have fueled unsubstantiated gossip about their relationship, was the alleged trigger for the sudden ban.
Multiple reports citing anonymous sources from the White House claim Harp had shown Trump examples of unfavorable coverage on Friday, igniting a fury that resulted in him banning CNN, MS Now, and Politico.
Those media organizations are now suing the Trump administration on First Amendment grounds. And the fallout is spreading. CNN was the broadcaster on pool duty Monday, the opening day of the U.N. General Assembly.
Cut out from the White House, an alternative needed to be found. But other networks have refused to step in at short notice, including Fox News.
All of this media-focused furor is unfurling at a moment that Trump experiences his lowest-ever approval rating, as public anger boils over amid a cost-of-living crunch caused in no small part by his Iran war’s upending of the global energy markets.
The timing is perfect. Trump is, if polls are to be believed, in for a punishing set of midterm elections where his Republican Party may lose not one, but both of their congressional majorities due to widespread economic discontent.
Now, a good chunk of media coverage is going to be dominated by the one thing journalists love talking about more than anything else: themselves.
This is a gift to Trump who, despite his own unpopularity, knows that the media is trusted perhaps even less than he is.
Voters incensed by Trump’s ravaging of their household finances, who are paying over $4 a gallon for gas on average, and $6 for diesel, will turn on their TVs to watch wealthy, perma-tanned journalists complaining at length about their travails.
None of this is to say that Trump is right or justified in locking out critical media from the White House because he doesn’t like their reporting. One can only imagine what his administration would say were the same happening in Europe.
There is clearly much Trump would rather the media didn’t know or talk about, from the depletion of American arms stockpiles to critical levels, to his son’s Russian oligarch-funded wedding party, to the inflationary blowback of his own policies.
And everything else in-between. But the media will inevitably give undue prominence to the story about themselves, and so follows a Trump versus the media fight, in which many voters will simply wish a plague on both their houses.
"The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish," the president said in a post on Truth Social, a claim presented, to use a phrase popular in Trump-era media coverage, without evidence.
"It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America.
"It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!"
Overwrought, exaggerated, hyperbole. Of course it is. This is Trump. But a lot of people will recognize a grain of truth in there from their own experiences consuming media these past few years, as the president intuits.
And so this is a fight Trump is glad to have with the media, in the media. Because, while many voters aren’t rooting for him in this brawl, they’re certainly not rooting for the media either.
As Trump plays the media like a harp, his Rome burns in the background.
