Painful media lessons
Harry Truman’s dark quip—“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”—is a staple of AP Government classes across the country, not only because of its obvious truth but also because D.C. is also very much a dog town. They love their dogs in the District. Perhaps that is because people who are drawn to public service and policy, such as Truman, know real friends are hard to keep in a life devoted to politics. Dogs, meanwhile, are devoted for life.
Folks in the press fit this description well; Many are quick to slice and dice, and swarm any scoop, no matter the cost. The best example of this is the legendary double cross of President Donald Trump’s first West Wing gatekeeper, Madeleine Westerhout, who let her guard down and spoke too freely at a dinner fueled by too many drinks and perhaps not enough experience with the Sharpies of the White House press corps.
Westerhout has a new book out, “Off the Record: My Dream Job at the White House, How I Lost It, and What I Learned,” that details how she came to guard the door to Trump’s Oval Office. Before she was pushed out.
Her rise always amazed me. She’s from Orange County, Calif., where I lived until my return to Washington in 2016. She went to high school with one of my children.
Perhaps I should have warned her about the city. About how “off the record” and “deep background” are as malleable as any soft metal, its meaning about as certain as a paper moon. About how quiet on-the-road dinners with White House reporters are complicated minuets, best left to national security advisers and folks charged with handling reporters on a daily basis.
In any case, Westerhout got burned. She talked at the supposedly private dinner about the Trump family. She doesn’t say exactly who broke the supposed ground rules of the dinner, but when the offending story finally appeared, she quickly resigned, though it is apparent from the book that then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney fired her.
Who broke the rules? She doesn’t say. The press will never get to the bottom of that tale. Roadkill is something for someone else to clean up.
Whatever it thinks of Trump, a large portion of the electorate will be voting this fall to rebuke the media’s descent into a sort of collective hatred of the president, the latest iteration of which saw a historic peace deal in the Middle East pushed offstage by anti-Trump talking points about the—wait for it—Post Office.
In my 30 years of a radio and television career encompassing more than 25,000 interviews and twice as many callers, not one has concerned the Post Office.
Westerhout’s book, which isn’t getting much attention, is full of never-before-seen glimpses of a side of Trump that isn’t covered. One to remember: He is very solicitous of his siblings, one of whom passed away this past weekend. I would note that some of the tell-alls from the Trump Era that peddled dubious stories got huge play because they advanced a far more anti-Trump narrative.
Westerhout’s book strikes the opposite tone and focuses instead on the press. It is a reminder that blowback against the media is building. When the audience vanishes, or another vote surprises, editors, columnists and reporters will be stunned. Again.
Because they ignored the messages like those delivered by Westerhout: Trust once destroyed is difficult to rebuild.