The first 10 or 11 minutes I spent watching the White House’s newly launched news channel, I had to keep checking to make sure my computer hadn’t frozen. The screen contained only a blue background with the words “We will begin shortly.”
What, exactly, would we begin? No clue. This was the first full day of Trump TV: The Essentials Station, and approximately 1,300 viewers had logged on to YouTube to find out. The White House had promised the channel would have “the Trump Administration’s biggest moments all in one place … streaming 24/7 and updated in real time.” It was targeted at people, said the email from the Office of Communications, who are tired of “legacy media” and “want to go straight to the presidency.”
I was hoping for a full day of opening numbers. Razzle-dazzle. Put Marco Rubio into the Octagon with Stephen Miller and six tubes of eyeliner. A girl can dream.
Suddenly, the blue screen disappeared and we were at a “tri-lateral signing event” with President Donald Trump and dignitaries from Denmark and Greenland. Each party made brief remarks and then milled about until the screen abruptly cut away again.
Next, and without preamble, Vice President JD Vance was at a lectern next to Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, railing against medical fraud. He was particularly incensed about something called allografts. (Did you know that skin grafting procedures have gone rampant in recent years? Who is getting all these skin grafts? IT’S A GRAFT GRIFT.) Then it was time to watch a series of clips about undocumented immigrants who allegedly committed crimes. Then some astronauts were getting medals. Then a random citizen identified herself as a native Washingtonian and told a story about her tragically murdered grandson. Then we toured a Ford Motor plant.
Trump TV has no news anchors or reporters. It has no chyrons or voice-overs. There is no host to explain to you what you are seeing, or why you are seeing it. When I nodded off in the middle of the night, the channel was showing a military exercise involving Navy SEALs on dirt bikes; when I jolted awake a few hours later, the total viewership for this landmark project was now about 400 people, and we were all watching five-month-old footage of the White House Easter Egg Roll.
All of this was in response to the question: What happens when the most television-obsessed president finds himself without a direct line to network television?
The catalyst for Trump TV occurred earlier week after the administration abruptly announced it was banning Politico, CNN and MS NOW from the White House, accusing them of “a long record of false reporting.” To many news organizations, this appeared to be a flagrant flouting of the First Amendment. In a show of protest and solidarity, ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC said they would halt TV coverage of presidential events; other outlets, including The Washington Post, temporarily refrained earlier this week from publishing new photos of Trump.
The president was deprived of oxygen — and by oxygen, we mean airtime.
The networks that participated in the boycott are part of the White House press pool, established decades ago. Its purpose is to provide a rotating group of reporters and photo- and videojournalists, who take turns documenting the president’s public remarks and appearances each day. The system allows a few credentialed journalists to become the eyes and ears of many, especially in instances where hundreds would be logistically impossible, i.e., on Air Force One.
Philosophically, the press pool communicates that the executive branch of the United States belongs to the people. That the president’s words and actions should be visible to all of us. The government should be an open book. This is so important that competing news organizations agree to share with one another and with the public as part of a broader and loftier mission.
Trump may not love the press pool, but he does love television, immensely. He loves a rally. Loves a pageant. Loves to imagine a rapt crowd, sitting on their sofas at home. Television is the medium in which he clearly feels at his most competent and powerful.
This week, he unfortunately torpedoed his best chance of getting an audience at precisely the moment when he wanted it the most: to host Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington for a shiny three-day summit about relations between the two countries.
Trump planned to greet Xi upon his arrival Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews, a rare move for a foreign head of state. He’d arranged a military flyover. A red carpet and guns. Do you know how pretty Trump’s new helipad with the four-inch California granite looks on the South Lawn? Neither do I, and that’s because, despite the ribbon-cutting ceremony he held for it Monday, there was nobody in the pool there to film it.
Enter: Trump TV. Critics noted that the concept of jettisoning journalists in favor of state-run news sounded an awful lot like the move of an authoritarian regime, but in any case, enter: Trump TV.
On Trump TV, I could watch nine minutes of Xi’s arrival at Andrews. A camera was placed at the end of the red carpet as the two countries’ first couples exchanged greetings. They said some things to one another, but we could not hear what. There were no strategically positioned microphones. A girl and boy presented the Chinese president and first lady with bouquets of flowers.
These children were … who now? Representing what? State visits involve elaborate protocol. Every detail means something. We could have used an explanation from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who might have interviewed an old hand who had arranged a Chinese summit or three before.
Not for nothing, but one can’t help but note that Xi’s country knows a thing or two about state-run media designed to paint the government and country in its most attractive light. While Trump TV still had a clunky nine-minute version of the welcome ceremony with no audio or editing, the English social media page of China Central Television was already offering a one-minute cut, beginning with the sun setting over Xi’s airplane’s wings as the plane flew to America, and moving onto footage of the two countries’ flags fluttering in the breeze.
When I visited the English language website of China Central Television, I was immediately invited to click on a catchy music video featuring footage of fast-speed trains, marching soldiers, green energy projects, victorious athletes and multicultural tourists, all set to lyrics vowing optimistically to “connect the world under the same sun.”
Then I clicked back over to Trump TV, where Trump was seated between bored-looking world leaders from Jordan and Qatar (a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting) and telling them, again, that he won his presidential election two years ago in a landslide.
What became fascinating about Trump TV, in my 24 hours of nearly nonstop watching, was that it not only lacks the polish of news professionals — helpful scene-setting, introductions, historical context, time stamps — but that it is also missing the pageantry of an authoritarian state-run news network.
There are no victorious athletes; there’s no joy. There is no swelling music, no hagiographic storytelling, no narrative arc. No sense of why a particular event is meaningful, or when it occurred, or even what the event is.
Viewers are left to mine context clues and piece it together for ourselves. In a clip from a rally for congressional candidate Ed Gallrein, the repeated bashing of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) was our clue that this was recorded before that state’s primary in May. In another clip, I became intrigued by Trump’s announcement of a revamped health care system only to learn through Googling that this particular clip was from more than a year ago. As far as I can tell, health care never got that overhaul.
(Truly, whose job is it to compile this playlist? Natalie Harp? An intern? Did they just ask for Markwayne Mullin’s iPhone and then sync his video library to the nearest laptop?)
My initial reaction to the launch of Trump TV was one of fear.
If we have cut out impartial news outlets — if we only have access to what the government streams — then what might the White House refuse to show us? What might it keep hidden? .
A judge ordered the White House on Thursday to temporarily restore the credentials for Politico, MS NOW and CNN. But, at least based on 24 hours of viewing, the answer to my fearful question, “What might the White House keep hidden?” was “Not as much as it should.”
The press pool is, after all, made up of professionals with news judgment. They don’t always judge correctly — they’re humans, after all — but in general the journalists there are operating with a honed sense of newsworthiness, public service and audience attention spans.
Trump TV seems determined to show us everything, for reasons I’m not sure of and doubt its creators are, either. It’s not streaming, it’s stream-of-consciousness.
Every awkward photo op. Every middling initiative. Every random chicken dinner. Trump TV felt like C-SPAN without the intellectualism, like a 4-year-old who keeps insisting on performing the same incoherent puppet show. Like someone who is so used to being on television that they forget how much of their success is due to the keen editing eye of producers around them.
In the clip that seemed most representative of my entire viewing experience, the president walked out onto the concrete block that used to be the Rose Garden, accompanied by a recording of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” and prepared to give a speech.
Only, the timing was off. Instead of the Greenwood song ending or fading promptly, it kept going, and going. The president of the United States was left at loose ends, waiting through multiple verses until he finally started doing a dance move I can only describe as Sunshine Hands. Something you might have seen the Andrews Sisters do at a USO performance, or that might be incorporated into a beginner jazz dance routine.
When the song finally ended, the speech commenced. But it was so odd. It was the kind of filler I would imagine network television declining to run because it was two minutes that could be spent on something else of more relevance or import. The kind of moment that makes the president look not as though he is bypassing the wicked mainstream media in order to deliver deeply essential news to public, but like he is lost and silly.
After 24 hours of this, what become clear is that, my God, the White House needs CNN. It needs CNN and its brethren to add some structure to this shapeless and fakakta viewing and governing experience. The president’s enemy is not CNN. His real news network enemy has come from within.
It’s Sunshine Hands. It’s Sunshine Hands and Lee Greenwood until everyone wants to die of embarrassment.
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