Aaron Blake

President Donald Trump has shifted lately from labeling the media “fake news” to the “enemy of the American people.” And his White House has taken an increasingly adversarial posture toward the press, including cutting off access and sharply scaling back its use of daily briefings. It seems it has decided the media is no longer worth dealing with and is much more valuable as a boogeyman. None of this is completely new, but the relationship has degraded considerably. President Trump seems to want a war with his “enemy.” But should the media oblige him?

Mark Leibovich's New York Times Magazine profile of outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is essentially a series of attempts to get Speaker Ryan to account for his regular punts on President Trump's tweets. Speaker Ryan argues that the president of the United States is saying, doing and speculating about things he doesn't believe to elicit a reaction.

Researchers at Ohio State University find that fake news probably played a significant role in depressing Hillary Clinton's support on Election Day.

Some of the 19 agencies President Donald Trump's budget would kill:

Corporation for Public Broadcasting This is the agency that helps fund public broadcasters nationwide, including NPR and PBS.
National Endowment for the Arts: This is the agency that delivers grants to fund and promote various fine arts across the country. Having recently turned 50, it was launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson as a way of helping foster the arts as part of the Great Society. Its budget is $148 million.
National Endowment for the Humanities: Similar to the NEA — and with the same $148 million budget and launch date — the NEH deals with grants for education programs related to culture.
Institute of Museum and Library Services: Launched 20 years ago under President Bill Clinton, this agency is the main federal funder of local libraries and museums across the United States. It had a budget of $230 million in 2016. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) has targeted it for elimination before, arguing museums and libraries should be funded by the private sector.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused the media of being “accomplices” to Russia's efforts to meddle in the 2016 election. “I think the press were accomplices in the undermining of our election by the Russians by not pointing out this stuff [the e-mails] is worthless,” Rep Pelosi said. “Because it comes from an undermining of our election, or at least reminding the public where this — these e-mails, the leaking of these e-mails came from.”

Some instantly saw a media double standard. The press was apoplectic when President Trump labeled it the “enemy of the American people,” after all. So now that Rep Pelosi was apparently charging it with a crime against American democracy and aiding an adversarial foreign power, why no outcry? One of the reasons for the disparate reactions is that Rep Pelosi's accusation doesn't require that the press willingly worked against the American people. Being an accomplice doesn't require you to collude or act deliberately; there is such thing as an “unwitting accomplice.” So when the press sees Rep Pelosi call it an accomplice, it registers more as a criticism of its choices rather than its loyalties — as Trump's “enemy” comment does.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that while people may be broadly unhappy with the mainstream media, they still think it's more credible than President Donald Trump. The president regularly accuses the press of “fake news,” but people see more “fake news” coming out of his own mouth. The poll asked who registered voters “trust more to tell you the truth about important issues.” A majority — 52 percent — picked the media. Just 37 percent picked Trump.

The poll did find that registered voters by a narrow margin think the media has treated Trump unfairly, with 50 percent saying they disapproved of the coverage of Trump and 45 percent approving. But voters are even more critical of Trump's treatment of the media, with 61 percent disapproving and 35 percent approving. Even 23 percent of Republicans say Trump is mistreating the media, and independents disapprove 59-35.

Toward the end of its extensive dive into the Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the New York Times included this potent little sentence: Every major publication, including The Times, published multiple stories citing the Democratic National Committee and [Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta e-mails posted by WikiLeaks, becoming a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.

The questions are: What if we don't immediately know where the e-mails came from? Do we ignore hacked e-mails until we can determine their origins? Do we ignore them completely, regardless of origin? And even if many of us agree to either approach, do we all agree to hold off together? How do we formalize that process? And what if some outlets decline to join us? The simplest solution probably would be a blanket ban on publicizing any hacked e-mails, but again, that would be easier said than done, and the information would still be out there for anybody to disseminate — again, without fact-checking and proper context. That's a recipe for plenty of additional misinformation after an election already plagued by “fake news.”

A campaign shake-up and strong, largely disciplined speeches recently led to the usual debate over whether Donald Trump was finally changing his ways and adjusting to the demands of the general election. His new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who has been getting some credit for the New Trump, even appeared on the Sunday shows and assured viewers that Trump wasn't into name-calling. "He doesn't hurl personal insults,” said Conway, who had said before joining Trump's campaign that she was uncomfortable with such name-calling and questions about people's mental capacity.

In that case, Aug 21 and 22 must have been particularly uncomfortable. Trump, as he often does, reacted to what he was seeing on cable news with a mix of personal insults and rumor-mongering. First, he called MSNBC's Donny Deutsch "little," "a failure" and "irrelevant." Then he turned to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

[Commentary] Hillary Clinton's campaign just threw down the gauntlet, challenging Donald Trump to accept the three presidential debates that have been scheduled. Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, announced that Clinton would participate in the debates and said the "only issue now is whether Donald Trump is going to show up." It's apparent that Trump might very well skip one or more debates anyway — becoming the first candidate to do so since 1972.

For a few reasons:
1) He's not very good at them
2) He can be baited, and Clinton is good at it
3) He's already hinted strongly that he won't

A day after making comments calling on Russia to find Hillary Clinton's deleted e-mails, Donald Trump has a novel explanation for all of it: I was joking! Here's his exchange with "Fox and Friends" from July 28:

BRIAN KILMEADE: Clinton campaign says this is a national security issue. Now, the idea that you'd have any American calling for a foreign power to commit espionage in the US for the purpose of somehow changing an election, I think that we're now in a national security space. Your reaction?
TRUMP: You have to be kidding. His client, his person, deleted 33,000 e-mails illegally. You look at that. And when I'm being sarcastic with something —
KILMEADE: Were you being sarcastic?
TRUMP: Of course, I'm being sarcastic. But you have 33,000 e-mails deleted, and the real problem is what was said in those e-mails from the Democratic National Committee. You take a look at what was said in those e-mails — it's disgraceful. It's disgraceful. They talk about religion, they talk about race, they talk about all sorts of things, including women, and what they said in those e-mails is a disgrace.

Trump backer and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani offered the same explanation later on CNN: "No. He was telling a joke. When he got off the plane, he tweeted out the e-mails should be sent to the FBI. He was joking around."