The Trump White House is forcing reporters to review the fundamentals. For instance, as reporters on the White House beat go through their daily paces, they are asking themselves: What do I know? What did I find out today?
In a Recode podcast episode hosted by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Axios national political reporter Jonathan Swan discussed how President Donald Trump's flighty temperament and the unreliability of White House sources lead to absurdly straitened presentations in his news stories.
"I'm now hedging in a way that's almost comical," said Swan. "So, like, I recently broke the story that Trump had settled on Pat Cipollone for his White House counsel. And when I wrote that story . . . The fact I had was that Pat Cipollone had started filling out his paperwork. So my lead sentence wasn't . . . 'Donald Trump has decided . . .' I literally wrote, 'Pat Cipollone has begun filling out his paperwork' because I knew that was a fact."
Axios again hedged its language in a Dec. 7 article on the trouble ahead for Trump. Under the headline "Trump's trio of traps ahead of 2020," Swan and colleague Mike Allen addressed coming problems and staffing issues: "One sign of a new sense of urgency: West Wing officials widely believe that chief of staff John Kelly's departure is imminent and that Nick Ayers, chief of staff to Vice President Pence, will replace him."
That same day, CNN's Kaitlan Collins went a bit further: "Kelly expected to resign soon, no longer on speaking terms with Trump," read the headline on the story. It included this credit: "News of Kelly's imminent departure was first reported by Axios."
Other outlets found their own ways of contending with the flimsy-sources problem. The Washington Post, for instance, published this lede: "President Trump on Friday accelerated a long-anticipated shake-up of his Cabinet in the wake of the midterm elections, naming new picks for attorney general and UN ambassador amid widespread speculation that embattled White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly could soon depart."
The report by Josh Dawey and John Wagner included this context: "One senior administration official said Friday that it's clear Kelly will be leaving, though it's not certain that the departure was imminent as CNN reported."
Vince Coglianese, editorial director of the Daily Caller, chimed in on Friday with his own reporting:
"Knowledgeable source tells me COS John Kelly has no intention of resigning in coming days," Coglianese tweeted, "and that he merely took the day off today--which is why he wasn't spotted in the West Wing this morning."
Coglianese updated things the next day:
"Source close to Kelly tells us Trump [and] he talked yesterday, mutually agreed to part," he tweeted in response to his earlier message. "Kelly intended to announce Monday. Source wouldn't characterize as resignation nor firing."
Another consideration: What might be true at one moment can become false the next. "He likes to embarrass reporters . . . he likes to create situations where he can say you got it wrong," said Haberman in the Recode podcast. Or: He likes to be a coward. As we've seen with James Comey, Jeff Sessions and others, Trump often avoids speaking directly to those whose services he no longer wishes to retain--creating a situation in which he and his close aides know far more about an appointee's future than the appointee does. In such an environment, conflicting accounts emerge.
On Saturday, however, Trump confirmed the thrust of mainstream-media reporting on his chief of staff: "John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year," said the president. The leading candidate for Kelly's replacement, Ayers, was cited widely as the leading candidate to replace Kelly. He announced on Sunday that he wouldn't do so.
Editorial on 12/12/2018