Trump’s TV obsession
News shows fi ll president’s day, to dismay of some; others find access through flat screen
WASHINGTON — During a small working lunch last month at the White House, the question of job security in President Donald Trump’s tumultuous White House came up, and one of the attendees wondered whether press secretary Sean Spicer might be the first to go.
The president’s response was swift and unequivocal. “I’m not firing Sean Spicer,” he said, according to someone familiar with the encounter. “That guy gets great ratings.”
For Trump — a reality TV star who parlayed his blustery-yet-knowing on-air persona into a winning political brand — television is often the guiding force of his day, both weapon and scalpel, megaphone and news feed.
And the president’s obsession with the tube — as a governing tool, a metric for staff evaluation and a two-way conduit with lawmakers and aides — has upended the traditional rhythms of the White House, influencing many spheres, including policy, his burgeoning relationship with Congress and whether he taps out a late-night or early-morning tweet.
Those Trump tweetstorms, which contain some of his most controversial utterances, are usually prompted by something he has seen on television just moments before. The president, advisers said, also uses details gleaned from cable news as a starting point for policy discussions or a request for more information, and appears on TV himself when he wants to appeal directly to the public.
Some White House officials — who early on would appear on TV to emphasize points to their boss, who was likely to be watching just steps away
in his residence — have started tuning into Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” because they know the president habitually clicks it on after waking near dawn.
But Trump’s habits have consequences far beyond being the quirky, unchanging ways of a 70-year-old man who keeps an eye on cable as he goes about his day, as his confidants describe his behavior.
Foreign diplomats have urged their governments’ leaders to appear on television when they’re stateside as a means of making their case to Trump, and U.S. lawmakers regard a TV appearance as nearly on par with an Oval Office meeting in terms of showcasing their standing or viewpoints to the president.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Trump’s intense monitoring cuts both ways. “At times, it’ll lead to mistakes,” he said. “Other times, it lets him move with astounding speed.”
Explaining his decision to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base, Trump even cited, publicly and privately, the gruesome images of dead and dying Syrian children poisoned with the nerve agent sarin, images that dominated television for several days.
“President Trump is someone who comes to the White House
with a sophisticated understanding of how to communicate, the power of television, the power of imagery, the power of message, and how message, messenger and delivery all work together,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president.
The president’s fascination with television is born of personal experience. Trump, long a fixture in the New York tabloids, did not become a household presence until 2004, when he began hosting NBC’s hit reality-TV show “The Apprentice.” He relished the attention, boasting about and fretting over his ratings, much as he now handles political polls.
He also is a natural showman. During the campaign, he riveted viewers with his raucous rallies, where he often spoke for more than hour without any notes or teleprompters. And in TV interviews, he sometimes offers tips on matters including lighting and chair placement, with an intuitive sense of what makes for good TV.
“He is very attuned to the fact that cable networks have 24 hours a day that they need to fill — and if you’re interesting, you are gold,” Gingrich said.
On his campaign plane, Trump watched television on full volume — usually Fox News, sometimes CNN — almost constantly, said someone who flew with him, shushing his aides whenever he himself came on the screen and listening with rapt attention. When Hillary Clinton appeared, he’d similarly quiet his team, often before pointing a finger at the TV and scolding: “She’s lying! She’s lying!”
Now that he’s in the White House, friends and aides describe a president who still consumes a steady diet of cable news. During an intimate lunch recently with a key outside ally in a small West Wing dining room, for instance, Trump repeatedly paused the conversation to make the group watch a particularly combative Spicer briefing.
Trump turns on the television almost as soon as he wakes, and then checks in periodically throughout the day in the small dining room off the Oval Office, and continues late into the evening when he’s back in his private residence. “Once he goes upstairs, there’s no managing him,” said one adviser.
Sometimes, at night, he hate-watches cable shows critical of him, while chatting on the phone with friends, said someone familiar with the president’s routine.
In the morning, the president typically flips between “Fox & Friends,” Maria Bartiromo’s show on Fox Business and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” West Wing aides say that the president has stopped watching MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” after the show’s hosts grew increasingly critical of his presidency.
His feelings toward CNN and its president, Jeff Zucker, who greenlighted “The Apprentice” when he was running NBC Entertainment, are similarly fraught. Trump is furious with Zucker for what he thinks is the network’s unfair coverage but admires Zucker’s business bona fides and ratings growth, said a friend.
Most of the televisions in the West Wing display four channels at all times — CNN, Fox, Fox Business and MSNBC.
The president also likes One America News, a
conservative-leaning channel whose correspondent often gets questions in Spicer’s daily news briefing, and before the campaign told an aide that he occasionally enjoyed watching Al Jazeera.
He is still in touch with Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chairman who was ousted amid charges of sexual harassment and who unofficially advised Trump near the end of the presidential campaign.
But, Trump has told friends, he thinks Fox News is “nicer” to him in the post-Ailes era. Fox News host Sean Hannity, meanwhile, is especially close to Trump’s two older sons as well as to the president.
“For all the talk about how the media is so tough on Trump, which they are, the most interesting thing about Trump and the media is that in the end, Trump totally manipulated the media,” said Stephen Moore, an economist for the Heritage Foundation who served as a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
West Wing staffers have begun including local news clippings in his morning briefing, said one, noting that an issue such as rolling back environmental regulations might earn the president poor press nationally but a more positive headline — “Trump saves coal jobs,” for example — in a local paper.
But Trump — who has boasted to several advisers and friends about having “the world’s best TiVo” — remains most focused on what he sees on his flat screens, going so far as to compliment print reporters on their television appearances.
He can also be critical. When Spicer did his first briefing-room appearance in an illfitting gray pinstripe suit, the president made his displeasure known, and Spicer returned the next week more crisply attired.
Trump was especially incensed, said a senior adviser, by what he saw as cable news’ blanket coverage of his campaign and what was portrayed as his administration’s overly cozy ties to Russia.
Trump’s interest in TV has proved a welcome — and at times surprising — point of entry to the White House for lawmakers and even pundits.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., once appealed to Trump directly on “Morning Joe,” addressing the camera to implore the president to call him so the two could chat about prescription drugs. A day or so later, Cummings said, the president himself responded.
“I was a little surprised that he called,” Cummings said.
It is now a running joke in television green rooms that if a trade association or specialinterest group wants to reach the president, the smartest use of their money is to buy morning television ad time or book a representative on air.