Journalists as Trump’s ‘human shields’ should be the WHCA’s last straw
One thing about Donald Trump. He’s has told us all along exactly who he is and what he expected to be able to get away with.
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” he famously claimed in a 2016 campaign rally. Since then, he’s found out just how accurately he was reading the room.
He hasn’t literally shot anyone, but he certainly has gotten away with everything from innumerable lies to constant grifting. And real harm to many, as Norman Ornstein points out in this new piece.
In a particular outrage — or what should be one — his administration last month endangered the lives of members of his own team, including the Secretary of State, as well as journalists in the White House press corps.
I’m not using “endangered the lives” in some metaphorical way. It was all too real.
Thanks to the Washington Post’s reporting, we know that Trump secretly flew on an alternate military aircraft from Turkey after July’s NATO summit, amid a credible threat from Iran, leaving Air Force One to serve as a decoy. Journalists and some administration officials thought they were on the same plane as Trump. They were duped. And endangered.
Even after Trump landed safely, the White House didn’t come clean. That put the press in the position of inadvertently deceiving the public, and it had certainly put them in danger.
Disgraceful, right?
So what did the White House Correspondents Association do?
Its new president, Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox News correspondent, had a talk last week with White House officials to express the organization’s concerns and to suggest different protocols. She also sent an off-the-record memo to WHCA members explaining she had had a “candid and productive meeting” with White House officials.
And that, apparently, was that. A quiet meeting and a quiet memo — sadly weak — along the lines of all those pointless “thoughts and prayers” we hear about after a mass shooting.
Frank Figliuzzi, a longtime FBI special agent, sounded more outraged than the press association:
“Trump was the honored guest at the White House Correspondents Dinner on July 24. Less than three weeks earlier, he secretly left some of them to face death on an Air Force 1 targeted by Iran.”
But, this former FBI assisant director predicted, “they’ll invite him again next year.”
I have little doubt he’s right. As I wrote after this year’s dinner — where Trump verbally abused the reporters and their work, sometimes in extraordinarily personal terms — the WHCA has become an embarrassment and their annual dinner is a joke.
I discussed all of this with Greg Sargent on his podcast, the Daily Blast, last week. As Greg wrote in promoting the podcast: “Trump leaving journos on decoy plane after viciously attacking them at a press dinner that feted his power neatly encapsulates how media submits to his authoritarian abuses.”
Greg asked me, why are many in the White House press so wimpy? I offered two answers: fear of losing access; and the habit of normalization and deference to the presidency.
Separately, the New York Times offered its readers a useful look into what had happened and how some of their most prominent journalists were reacting.
Doug Mills, the renowned Times photographer who has covered many presidents — and who was aboard the decoy plane — acknowledged the inherent danger of covering any president, but especially this one.
“Riding on Air Force 1, I would always tell my family: I’m on the safest plane in the world. And now I’m not.”
Peter Baker, the paper’s chief White House correspondent, said he had talked with veterans of past White Houses after the news broke: “Some said it was outrageous that officials and reporters were made into ‘human shields’, as one put it. Others said, hey, if you travel with the president, you know there are certain risks.” Similar ruses have occurred with the travel of other presidents, the Times article noted, but none with the ongoing deception of this one.
All the journalists quoted objected to that deception, which might have continued indefinitely if not for the Post’s reporting. (And remember, the Trump administration recently went far outside the bounds of past practice by subpoenaing Times journalists, even showing up at their homes to deliver the demands. I wrote about that for the Guardian US here.)
“The White House didn’t respond when I sent an email asking about the deception and the possible danger for those still on the decoy plane,” Baker said.
As one Times reader aptly commented, “There’s nothing wrong with protecting the president. There’s everything wrong about leaving a planeful of decoys to take a bullet and missile for you. And there’s everything wrong about not telling the American public the truth about what happened after everyone had been safely returned to the USA … until a newspaper informs that public about it. Remember, there is no bottom to this administration. It’s lies, deception, corruption, cruelty, self-dealing and wasted taxpayer billions all the way down.”
What should the press organization do? Certainly taking a strong and transparent public stance on the way its members had been duped and endangered would be a start. Call a press conference and pull back the curtain on all of this. Make the case that this is wrong — and why.
And certainly, stop the destructive charade of treating Trump as someone who deserves yet another helping of polite deference — and a return invitation to “the dinner.” (In fact, and obviously, cancel this dinner altogether.)
Sargent asked me if I thought this new outrage would “move the needle” for the public, in the phrase that journalist and author Craig Unger used recently about Trump.
No, I said; it certainly won’t. The only thing that will move the needle is what happens in the midterm elections. And Trump surely knows this, which he is laying the groundwork to foil the midterm vote in any way possible, including illegal ways.
This is a president who is terrified of democracy. So let’s stop pretending otherwise, shall we?
Readers, what do you think is the appropriate response on the part of the press corps to being treated as decoys and, in the words referenced above, ‘human shields’? Please let me know in the comments.
Thank you all for being here and thanks especially to American Crisis subscribers, new and old. As those all-important midterms approach, I’ll be tracking all the developments, with a particular eye on press coverage. I hope you’ll be here with me.
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My background: I am a Lackawanna, NY native who started my career as a summer intern at the Buffalo News, my hometown daily. After years as a reporter and editor, I was named the paper’s first woman editor in chief in 1999, and ran the 200-person newsroom for almost 13 years. Starting in 2012, I served as the first woman “public editor” of the New York Times — an internal media critic and reader representative — and later was the media columnist for the Washington Post. These days, I write here on Substack, as well as for the Guardian US. I’ve also written two books, taught journalism ethics, and won a few awards, including three for defending First Amendment principles.
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