Hats off to President Trump! At the conclusion of his speech to the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump donned a red cap with 2028 emblazoned upon it and declared that he had hit upon a scheme to “save” the ratings of the new media. “I am pleased to announce my intention to run for a fourth term as President of the United States,” he said.
Trump evoked a few titters from the assembled press corps at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, but that was about the extent of the hijinks. In one sense, it’s no laughing matter. What will the press do without Trump? He’s correct in viewing himself as its savior. Without the 24/7 entertainment provided by the Donald, views would dwindle.
The truth is that the media has battened off his presidency as much as he has profited from its coverage of him. It was no accident that journalists like the Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey obediently trooped up to the dais to shake his hand after they received an award. Trump remains a figure of star power.
But Trump has clearly lost a step or two. He slurs his words. His attempts at ad-libs fell flat, for the most part. Watching the speech was about as amusing as observing butter melt. His funniest line was when he took a swipe at Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., observing that “I hope that everyone finally got to enjoy their entire very delicious beef tenderloin, very special beef. And I want you all to know that Bobby Kennedy, who’s right here, personally ran over the cow in his car, and he cut it up and he brought it here for you to eat tonight.”
Trump himself referred to his prepared script as a “stupid fricking speech,” a line that he has also used at his MAGA rallies. The problem was that no one rallied to Trump’s side at the dinner. Instead, his audience remained mostly mute as he enumerated its journalistic sins. For all the complaints about Trump’s attacks last night on the media, it has been a standard target of conservative politicians for decades. It was Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, who kicked off the modern round of press-bashing with a historic speech in Des Moines Iowa in November 1969. Agnew set out to defend a recent speech by Nixon on the Vietnam War that he alleged the news media had distorted. He concluded by denouncing it tout court: “Now, my friends, we’d never trust such power, as I’ve described, over public opinion in the hands of an elected government. It’s time we questioned it in the hands of a small unelected elite. The great networks have dominated America’s airwaves for decades. The people are entitled to a full accounting of their stewardship.”
Is Trump Nixon and Agnew’s revenge? Maybe he hasn’t drawn up an enemies list, but he definitely views the press as his enemy. As he orders temporary signs to be posted outside the Smithsonian Museum warning about “inaccurate information” and as he disses the media, Trump is targeting the unelected elites that Agnew warned about, whenever and wherever he can.
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