President Trump, media escalate feud

The war between the White House and the press is escalating 200 days into the administration, with President Donald Trump launching daily attacks on the press and an emboldened news media becoming increasingly transparent about its hostility towards the president.

Trump’s aides and outside allies are astonished by how quickly the mainstream press has taken to ridiculing the administration or engaging in what they see as petty score-settling. Top mainstream media figures and news outlets are tweaking President Trump for taking a 17-day “working vacation,” writing stories about the personal lives of administration officials that are meant to cast them as hypocrites, and adopting a sneering tone that Trump’s allies say is unprecedented. “Both sides could stand to dial it back, but I don’t think this is a relationship that can be repaired,” said former Trump adviser Barry Bennett. Tensions have exploded since last week’s briefing room showdown between Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller, who relishes sparring with the news media, and CNN’s White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who has become one of the leading administration critics in the White House press corps. Both sides believe they won the exchange.

Trump’s allies say that social media has finally pulled back the curtain on reporter biases. “It is as if they can no longer report without their personal bias,” said Katrina Pierson, a spokesperson for the pro-Trump group America First Polices. “In other words, newspapers have become essentially opinion blogs instead of public information and education. The Twitter feed of some so-called journalists tells you everything you need to know.” But some media experts say the reaction from the press has been fair, usually coming in response to one of Trump’s attacks.