MEDIA’S TRUMP DUMP

The media elites attending this meeting thought it was going to be a generic, reasonably friendly, get-together to discuss the parameters of press coverage during Donald Trump’s presidential administration.

But they forgot the meeting was being run by Donald Trump – a thin-skinned egotistical man who (with great justification) deeply resented the coverage they gave him throughout the just-concluded presidential campaign.

Here is the first part of Emily Smith and Daniel Halper’s article for the New York Post – and I urge you to use the link to see the rest as well:

Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.

“It was like a f–ing firing squad,” one source said of the encounter.

“Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said ‘I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,’ ” the source said.

“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added.

A second source confirmed the fireworks.

“The meeting took place in a big board room and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks,” the other source said.

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said.

Let’s start with the obvious fact that putting media big-shots in a room to tell them they’re a bunch of liars – and worse – is not going to endear Mr. Trump to these people.

But let’s also note the obvious fact that Mr. Trump has very little to lose by getting this anger this off his chest.  If media already hate him, what are they going to do about his comments?  Really hate him?

To paraphrase Mr. Trump’s message to Black inner city voters who, after decades of exclusively Democrat governance, live in devastated, near hopeless conditions, “what the hell does he have to lose”?

The downside of attacking the media who hate him, is about the same as the downside of inner city Blacks voting Republican.  Pretty much nothing.

In fact, it can be argued, the dressing-down Donald Trump gave these people might result in more positive coverage, because, having been called out this way, some media conceivably will now try to “prove” they report evenhandedly – which can do nothing but make their coverage of Mr. Trump more positive.

Is this going to be an interesting four years, or what?