Will Trump miss Times and Post?
On orders from President Donald Trump, the White House is ending its subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post and is instructing federal agencies to discontinue their subscriptions.
No newspaper likes to lose subscribers. But I think The Times and The Post — both of which have won prizes for their penetrating coverage of the Trump administration — will survive.
“Not renewing subscriptions across all federal agencies will be a significant cost saving for taxpayers — hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
Saving money did not seem to be Trump’s motive.
A few days earlier, he told Sean Hannity on Fox News: “The New York Times, which is a fake newspaper, we don’t even want it in the White House anymore. We’re going to probably terminate that and The Washington Post.”
Trump has long complained that the news media don’t give him the credit he deserves, calling them the “enemy of the people.”
He must be especially annoyed that The Times, The Post and other outlets factcheck his claims, often finding them to be false or misleading.
Even so, he was known to pore over The Times and The Post, focusing on news stories and opinion columns about — Guess who? — him.
Two news providers he likes are Fox News and the New York Post, both controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Trump’s peevish action raises some questions:
Will White House aides and federal employees elsewhere be forbidden from bringing their own copies of The Times or The Post to the office?
Will they be forbidden to subscribe to the digital editions of the newspapers at work? The digital editions are cheaper than the printed newspapers.
Will other news providers that don’t cheerlead for Trump also be banned?
Trump has often denounced CNN and MSNBC as “fake.” Will television receivers in the White House be tuned only to Fox?
When I was a newspaper editor, I took telephone calls from readers who threatened to cancel their subscriptions because they were mad at us for one reason or another.
After giving his name, one caller was especially abusive. He called the newspaper a blanketyblank “piece of garbage” and me a blanketyblank “Commie rat.”
I told him his language was so offensive I was going to cancel his subscription. He gasped, then yelled, “If you do, I’ll sue your blanketyblank off!” and hung up.
Of course, I knew I couldn’t cancel his subscription. I also knew he couldn’t live without our newspaper.
I wonder if Trump will feel the same about The New York Times and The Washington Post.