Nattering Nabobs, Fake News, and Now Pentagon Papers 2.0: Responding to Trump’s War on the Press

Presidents have belittled and besmirched the press since the beginning of our Republic. Although Thomas Jefferson famously said he would prefer newspapers without a government over a government without newspapers, during his presidency he stated his grievances in a letter saying “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” Richard Nixon’s Veep Spiro Agnew, prior to his resignation after corruption charges, colorfully called the media the “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Nixon himself compiled an “enemies list” which included many journalists, and the Watergate tapes reveal he described my old employer The New York Times in scurrilous antisemitic terms.  

But our current president has stooped far lower than that. In his first term he described the press as “the enemy of the people.” And he repeatedly used and popularized the term “fake news” to describe the media’s reporting on any news he did not favor. This was not mindless bloviating. As he once explained to Lesley Stahl, it was part of a specific strategy: he felt that by constantly impugning the media’s credibility, when the media criticized him, as they inevitably would, the public would then not believe the media – and sadly, that strategy has worked successfully for him.

But in the last few weeks, in relation to his Administration’s bombing of Iran, his lambasting of the press has reached new shameful and outrageous lows. After the American attack, Trump, in typically understated fashion, announced that it was a “spectacular military success” and that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.” He also bragged that it was the most complex and secretive military operation in history- somehow seeming to forget the D-Day invasion into continental Europe. However, shortly thereafter CNN, followed by The Times, reported on a preliminary U.S. intelligence report which suggested Iran’s nuclear sites had not been destroyed and that its program might have been set back only a matter of months. Though the report had been leaked, there appears to be nothing wrong or even controversial about such reporting. I mean measuring the success of the American bombing was the biggest question in the world, and here was a preliminary report by the American government– so described – giving the first documented American evaluation.

Nonetheless, the President, Defense Secretary Hegseth, a former Fox journalist, and  presidential press secretary Karoline Leavitt all lashed out at the media over the reporting – notwithstanding they didn’t deny the existence of the government report or that the media hadaccurately summarized it. In fact, Trump went so outlandishly far as to smear the reporter and call on CNN to fire her. And not surprisingly, Trump threatened The Times with a defamation lawsuit. However, I would bet my bottom dollar that no case is filed: Trump has learned that The Times won’t settle or concede and is aware that he has failed in any such litigation he has undertaken against the newspaper, not to mention it’s hard to conjure up how he even could state a libel claim on these facts. As Times lawyer David McCraw answered the President’s lawyer’s letter: “No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.”

Perhaps more ominously, days after all this, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem now have threatened the CNN reporters with prosecution for their reports. Noem said ”We’re working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that.” And Trump added, ”They may be prosecuted also for false reporting on the attacks on Iran”, although he somehow managed to ignore what the supposed falsities were. Whether this another example of  bloviating and threatening or the first steps in Pentagon Papers 2.0 only time will tell. If it is the Administration’s attempt to go directly after the press, not just the leakers, under the Espionage Act, this would seem to be an advantageous fact situation for  the media – an after the fact report, based on American government documents evaluating a costly, risky and historic attack.

Even more shamelessly, the President and his press secretary have somehow tried to impugn CNN and the Times’ patriotism in their reporting by suggesting they did not support the brave fighter pilots and “warriors” who executed the mission. Yet those courageous servicepersons had nothing to do with the evaluations of damage which the pieces were about, were not mentioned in the pieces, and were not involved in the reporting which the White House criticized. This was just a gratuitous slur at the media to somehow unconnectedly bring in concepts of bravery, patriotism and the military – all the more unwarranted and ironic given that the President himself was a draft dodger. He got out of military service in the Vietnam War era somehow on account of a claimed bone spur according to testimony by Michael Cohen; as one comedian put it, his alleged injury seems not to have impeded thousands of rounds of golf since then.

As Maureen Dowd wrote, “It is patriotic to tell the public the truth on life-or-death matters, and for the press to challenge power. It is unpatriotic to mislead the public in order to control it and suppress dissent, or as a way of puffing up your own ego.” I would only add that this has nothing to do with aversion to Trump or differing views on political issues. This is all about his devoted strategy of demeaning the media for his own ends, and his trying to use the First Amendment to further his views but crush any opposition or dissent. Whatever our views on political issues, we should be united in protecting First Amendment values and sustaining our independent media.

In a sense this scenario repeated itself even more recently when the Washington Post reported on intercepted calls between senior Iranian officials remarking that the bombing was less devastating than they had expected. The White House did not dispute the intercepted communications, only the underlying assessment. But, per usual, it lashed out at the Post. But the Post cleverly responded: “The Trump administration has  criticized some media outlets for failing to note that the (early) report, which it deems ‘low confidence’, cautions that a full battle damage assessment requires ‘days-to-weeks to accumulate the necessary data to assess effects on the target system.’ However, the administration has not waited to assert its own sweeping conclusions that the strikes have set back Iran’s program for ‘years’.

What to do about this sorry situation? How can the media defend itself against a White House with an intentional strategy of demeaning the press and impugning its credibility, with no hesitation about lying? How to survive against an Administration which seems to believe that our independent media is supposed to act like state media, like TASS and Pravda during the Cold War, and be 100% supportive of the government whatever the truth?

Marty Baron, former editor of the Washington Post, said we should just go to work reporting: “We’re not at war with the administration; we’re at work.” As much as I admire such a position, I think it is lacking against a President who is such a terrific salesman and public relations savant and will stoop to unprecedented lows to get his way. If he is at war with the media, we somehow have to respond in kind. To me anyhow, the old theory that we should never write about ourselves or our own travails is off the board. One step would be to strongly defend ourselves. The Post’s piece above, pointing out the administrations’s hypocrisy, is one way of doing it, although pointing out the irony of their criticizing the media’s reporting of early assessments when the President himself did exactly the same thing might be too subtle by one degree.

Another step would be for the media to defend its own in concert. Thus, when Secretary Hegseth berated a Fox reporter – strangely, a former colleague – saying she has “been the worst…misrepresenting the most intentionally what the President says”, the reporter not only pushed back at the press conference itself, but many in the media, from Fox to the Post and the Times, praised her reporting and cited her career-long professionalism .

Video might be used to make the point more easily. For example, Hegseth claimed the media didn’t use the word “destroyed” in referring to the damage done. Anderson Cooper showed video directly contradicting him, playing multiple clips of CNN using that very word. These types of tactics have to be used with careful discretion. For the media to complain about petty slights or to “whine” when not really warranted can well backfire in the land of public opinion. But when the attacks warrant, such as in the unfounded lies and complaints discussed above, we need to respond in kind. The media’s future depends on it.

George Freeman is executive director of MLRC. All opinions are his own and not those of the organization. Responses welcome at gfreeman@medialaw.org.