Trump's scattershot approach |
President Trump is coming under increasing pressure to explain his war in Iran to the American people.
Trump's communications approach has been scattershot so far — a Truth Social post here, a surprise phone call there. (This morning, he gave a nine-minute phone interview to CNN's Jake Tapper.) His comments have projected strength but have sent mixed messages about the objectives of the military strikes. The New York Times says he offered "several seemingly contradictory visions" in a call last night.
So far, Trump has not delivered a prime-time address or held a press conference. He ignored shouted questions from reporters as he flew from Florida to Washington on Sunday. But "pre-recorded social media clips won't cut it," Democratic Sen. Chris Coons remarked.
As I wrote this new CNN.com story about Trump's comms, it occurred to me that he's speaking in ways that didn't even exist for past presidents in wartime. He is doing an end run around the media by making his own web videos; he is posting updates to a social media platform he controls; he is sharing links to supportive op-eds; he is chatting with reporters who bypass the White House comms operation and call his cell phone directly.
Over the weekend, he even cracked a joke at the Iranian Navy's expense.
Right as I was about to hit send on this email, the White House said that Trump will make brief remarks about the war at the beginning of a previously scheduled Medal of Honor ceremony at 11 a.m. ET...
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Where's the Oval Office address? |
"He started this war without explaining to the American people and the world why he was doing so," the NYT editorial board said Saturday. That line of criticism is getting even louder now. Yesterday, as Kit Maher and I reported, the White House did not send out any administration officials on the Sunday shows.
"By eschewing an address to the nation, Trump clearly has no plan or intention to explain to the American people why we went to war with Iran, what happens next, and what victory looks like," Dan Pfeiffer, a former communications director for President Barack Obama, told me.
"By offering a different spin to every reporter whose call he answers, he comes across as making it up as he goes, which is probably the case," Pfeiffer added.
In a Sunday night tweet, Trump comms director Steven Cheung ridiculed talk of an Oval Office address by linking it to "failed policies of the past."
Trump's taped video format gives him an unusual amount of control — the opportunity to record more than once, for instance, and to edit out remarks.
And his phoners let him give running commentary about the military campaign. Tapper said on CNN just now that the president "sounded very pleased with how the operation is going. He sounded very resolute in terms of the Iranian threats to the region and the world. Very confident about how this was... ultimately was the right decision and the right approach."
>> Jose Antonio Vargas pointed out on X that Trump's calls are with legacy media anchors and reporters, "not podcasters and influencers."
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Journalists in major newsrooms are working overtime right now to vet videos from the Middle East, interview eyewitnesses, and assess military claims and counterclaims. Journalists in the region are doing all that while trying to stay safe themselves. Earlier today, Clarissa Ward witnessed an Iranian drone flying right overhead at the Iraqi-Iranian border.
>> The ultimate goal is to convey the enormity of what's unfolding. CNN's homepage banner headline right now is "War spirals in the Middle East." The AP's banner is "Strikes across Middle East intensify as war widens." WaPo's banner: "3 U.S. fighter jets mistakenly shot down by Kuwait as war widens."
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Pentagon takes questions from MAGA media |
The Pentagon has severely restricted access to information in the past year. You'll recall that Pete Hegseth credentialed a MAGA media "press corps" last fall after traditional news outlets rejected new press pass rules that media lawyers said criminalized routine reporting. The MAGA crew does relatively little reporting, so most coverage of the US military is now happening from outside the Pentagon's five walls.
Journalists from traditional outlets were allowed to attend this morning's press conference with Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine. But Hegseth only answered questions from his chosen outlets. I'm told he had a pre-selected list of questioners, and all the reporters were in assigned seats, so he knew who to call on.
>> When NBC's Courtney Kube tried to get a question in anyway and said, "President Trump put a four-week timeline on it — are you saying that is wrong?," Hegseth dismissed it as a "typical NBC sort of 'gotcha' type question."
>> VF's Aidan McLaughlin wrote afterward, "Hegseth repeatedly scolded the new Pentagon reporters (all from friendly outlets) who asked about the strategy in Iran. Which explains why he doesn't hold briefings: he doesn't believe Americans deserve to know what the US military is doing."
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Murdoch empire unites behind Trump |
Rupert Murdoch is with Trump on this one. The Fox News framing is as you'd expect. (Media critic Dan Kennedy opined that Fox's weekend coverage "was straighter than I had expected — but woefully incomplete.")
The NY Post editorial board praised Trump's "decisive action" and argued the "downside for America is minimal." The WSJ editorial board said "the biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon, before Iran's military and its domestic terror forces have been more thoroughly destroyed."
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>> Jon Karl's assessment after talking with Trump by phone last night: "He sounded, to me, like a president that feels invincible."
>> But the Google Trends data doesn't lie: Americans are asking questions like "why is Trump fighting Iran" and "did Trump get congressional approval to strike Iran?"
>> Poynter's Tom Jones says "CNN's coverage was mesmerizing" throughout the weekend.
>> Semafor's Max Tani says the weekend's coverage "was the strongest indication yet of what CBS News is likely to look like" under Bari Weiss.
>> CNBC's Dylan Butts has an update on internet outages in Iran here.
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"Good evening and happy World War III to all who celebrate," said James Austin Johnson's "SNL" Trump, who mocked the president's rationale for the strikes: "As we all know, Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon for, like, the last 15 years or something." The show even went a little meta, joking that the strikes were announced Saturday at 2 a.m. "to cause immeasurable fear, rage and chaos in the 'SNL' writers' room." Here's the cold open if you missed it.
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Ahead this week across the media world: |
Mobile World Congress got underway in Barcelona today...
Lloyd Blankfein and Joan Lunden are out with memoirs on Tuesday...
Apple is expected to announce new products on Wednesday after rolling out a faster iPad Air and cheaper iPhone 17 earlier today.
Jimmy Fallon is visiting Stephen Colbert's "Late Show" on Wednesday. It's the first time Fallon has appeared on his rival's show for a proper sit-down interview...
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Hollywood reckons with Paramount's win |
"Nobody in Hollywood wanted any of this to happen," Sharon Waxman says. "No matter who triumphed in the monthslong, high-stakes takeover battle between Paramount Skydance and Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery, many other people are going to lose."
That's the lead of Waxman's guest essay for the NYT. Noting that Paramount has a market cap of around $15 billion and it's buying WBD for $110 billion, Waxman says "it's the quintessential minnow swallowing the whale" and "it shouldn't make sense." But, she says, it's a "billionaire's kid's leap of faith."
And there were some faithful Hollywood producers on the red carpet at the PGA Awards Saturday night. Variety's Marc Malkin sensed "hope" as well as "skepticism" and "fear." Jerry Bruckheimer told him, "It's sad that a lot of people will lose their jobs, but David Ellison loves movies and will make a lot of movies, which is a good thing."
Ellison was slated to appear on CNBC today, but the sit-down has been rescheduled due to the events in the Middle East. He spoke at some length on an investor call this morning, saying "this is not about consolidation, this is about reinventing the business."
Per CNN's Liam Reilly, who listened in, Ellison emphasized "more opportunities for global distribution and local production" and "no intention to pull back on production" of feature films. He said "we have no divestitures planned at this time," meaning no plans to spin off CNN or other cable assets.
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'Trump allies claim victory...' |
That's the headline on this WaPo story from over the weekend: "Trump allies claim victory as the Ellisons expand their media empire." The reporters said Paramount's win is "widely viewed as a win for the right amid a broader push to rein in what many conservatives view as a liberal slant in the media and entertainment industries."
If you missed our special edition of Reliable over the weekend, I dug into the concerns about CNN and the pushback from Paramount. Here's the link.
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In his first interview after the Netflix deal fell through, co-CEO Ted Sarandos told Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw that Netflix "knew right away" that it would not top Paramount's offer last week. "We knew exactly what we were going to do," he told Shaw.
Sarandos also suggested that Trump's interest in Netflix's deal didn't fully match the political noise around it: "Once it was clear that we weren't in the CNN business, it was a lot less interesting. He didn't care that much more about our deal." Business Insider's Peter Kafka analyzed what that quote means in this piece...
>> "What are they going to do? Take us over and immediately cancel us? I'm genuinely asking," John Oliver quipped in his "Last Week Tonight" monologue last night. (TheWrap)
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A heartwarming tale from down under |
I adored this story by the NYT's Katie Robertson, who grew up watching Rick Ardon and Susannah Carr on 7News in Perth, Australia. Ardon and Carr have now been "delivering the news together" for 40 years, making them "the longest-serving news anchor team in the world."
"The feat has been designated a Guinness World Record — one that, in a rapidly changing media landscape, they could well hold forever," Robertson writes. Read the anchor pair's longevity advice here...
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>> "One month into Nancy Guthrie's disappearance, it's too early to declare this a cold case," CNN's Elizabeth Hartfield writes. |
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