The Press Pool Endures
Donald Trump is the worst person ever. OK, maybe not ever, but pretty close. The two most recent examples of his awfulness should be sufficient to clinch the deal. His administration is apparently readying a plan to disrupt the midterms by means of martial law. And to make sure that that nobody has a chance to ask him about it, he has thrown the liberal media out of the White House. Everybody knows that you can’t really do that and still claim that you are loyal to the Constitution. I mean, it says it right there in the First Amendment. Once you suspend that, you might as well buy a dacha. The right place for you is a cottage in PutinLand.
But that is not the most important story here. It’s the Big Beautiful Blackout by the networks themselves. I must admit that it caught me by surprise. When the Trumpsters came after American universities, they collapsed in a heap of whining capitulation. Hardly any of the name-brand players offered more than a murmur of resistance.
Things have gotten slightly better, but this is the theme of Jacob Weisberg’s new book, “Profiles in Cowardice,” published this month. His poster child for the groveling of the academy is Sian Beilock, president of Dartmouth. During Drumpf 1.0, she behaved like a champion at Barnard, foregrounding woke projects like DEI. At Dartmouth during the Trump 2.0 Catastrophe (ongoing), she has been quiet as a door mouse licking her tiny paws. Apparently, she was convinced that zipping her lips would protect her grant funds, her subsidies, and her endowment.
The situation in Big Law was even worse. One after another, the leading firms collapsed, crawling quickly to Washington to offer their heads on the chopping block. Woe to Paul Weiss and Co., headed by the venal Brad Karp. The firm dropped off a bushel basket of cash, amounting to $40 million in free pro bono work, all in the name of protecting access to the government. Ultimately Karp could not survive. That’s what happens when you are entangled with Jeffrey Epstein. But he should have been canned for sh-tting his pants. Paul Weiss was supposed to be bigger than that.
All of which brings us to the behavior of the networks. After the universities and the law firms, you might have thought the worst, that they would collapse just like the others. Trump’s obvious strategy was to divide and conquer, counting on the force of fierce competitiveness to win concessions from all the players.
Wonder of wonders, the opposite happened. Think what you want about the leadership of Fox, but rather than desert Rachel and Chris, they actually rose to the defense of their colleagues. Against the expectation of cynical people like me, they said that everyone was in this together. They would not tolerate the cancellation of the liberals, knowing that they would inevitably be next.
The result is that the press pool agreement is intact, resistant to the manipulations of this brutal Administration. If CNN and MSNOW cannot be present at the White House, no one will broadcast this president’s voice or image. That is a relief to those of us who are tired of living in Mordor, but it is a much more significant victory than that. It shows us the virtues of solidarity and cooperation. When we band together in a moment of mutual acknowledgment, there is nothing we cannot accomplish as Americans.
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No robots were involved in the writing of this article.