I Like This New Thing

 

     Every time Trump says or does something stupid, which is approximately every time he exhales, there's the inevitable stepping on a rake effect. Take his new fascist initiative: Removing CNN's, MS Now's and Politico's press credentials, essentially banning these three major media outlets from covering the White House at the White House.

     Naturally, this resulted in a federal lawsuit launched by the aforementioned media outlets because revoking their press credentials, including their hard passes, banning them from even entering the White House, is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Trump pulled this shit once before in his first illegitimate term, when he tried to ban CNN's Jim Acosta. A federal judge put a stop to that immediately and Acosta's access was immediately restored.

     Trump's reason for this blatantly illegal act was he didn't like the coverage he was getting in the press (Hitler and the Nazis had a word for that: Lügenpresse, which even Trump's own supporters were using a decade ago). Authoritarian leaders hate the very idea of a free press because it's a conduit to the people and if the people knew the truth about your agenda, well... It generally doesn't end up very well for the dictator.

     But the MSM didn't just stop there at the lawsuit. Several of them did something that should've been done a decade ago: They responded by simply not covering Trump. Even Fox got in on the action. So, when Trump had a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the helipad on what used to be the South Lawn of the White House, it was covered only by the White House's official video feed. Trump made some remarks and all anyone heard was eight minutes of static.

     The MSM,  in solidarity with their colleagues, decided to starve Trump from the attention he gets from the press by not sending the press pool. The press pool is a smaller detachment of journalists, photographers, videographers, boom mic operators and so forth that follow the president, that is, when we actually have one, so he's not followed around by the literally hundreds of other journalists on the White House beat.

     Because the fact is, although he'll never admit it, Trump needs the press that he's always sneering and howling at. He likes the attention they give him, an adulation and coverage that even Truth Social can't give him. He wants and needs their constant attention but not the disclosure that comes with it.