The media’s week

We, the media, had a tough week. That’ s because President Donald Trump twice launched fullscale assaults on the free and independent press.

The first came at what was billed as an announcement ceremony for Trump’s new labor secretary nominee. Trump dispatched with that news in short order and then got to why he was really there: to tell reporters—and everyone else watching—how bad the media is.

Here’s a sampling of what he said: “Many of our nation’s reporters will not tell you the truth.” “The press honestly is out of control.” “The level of dishonesty is out of control.” And that was before he took a single question!

Plenty of presidents have had adversarial relationships with the media. In fact, almost all of them. (The press is far from blameless. We make mistakes. We get things wrong. We need to go out of our way, especially with Trump in the White House, to double- and triple-check our facts before we publish. And, if we do make mistakes, we need to fully acknowledge them in a totally transparent way.)

There is strategy here for Trump. In bashing the media so publicly and relentlessly, he hopes to divert attention from questions about his administration’s ties to Russia, legal problems surrounding his travel ban and the broader sense of chaos that seems to reign at the White House.

The press, for watching your mission get way tougher in the space of one news conference, you had the Worst Week in Washington.