President Donald Trump’s move to ban press outlets from the White House is already blowing up in his face due to press solidarity, former Trump administration Homeland Security aide Miles Taylor told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday.
Trump, said Taylor, is a “Cat 5 hurricane against the First Amendment of the United States,” and Trump has also managed to beat down the members of Congress who in earlier eras would have been outraged, like when he famously called reporters the “enemy of the people” on the 2016 campaign trail.
On the contrary, said Taylor, “We saw members of Congress the past 72 hours on the Republican side, cheering on the president’s decision to do this.” Likewise, when he briefly banned former CNN correspondent Jim Acosta in 2018, “I was there at the White House … They were gloating and celebrating. What did the staff do? They went out to dinner to celebrate at the Trump Hotel. I watched him eating and high-fiving like they just won a football game. Trump didn’t care when the pass was restored because he liked the optics of it.”
On the other hand, he said, the concerted effort by the press to black him out in retaliation is very much hurting him.
“He knows that it’s an embarrassment,” said Taylor. “He knows through socials and embarrassment, he has to look at the losses financially. He knows Trump TV is only going to be watched by 10,000 obsessed Trump fanatics, and it’s just going to become another social media account for Donald Trump. It’s going to go the way of the ties. It’s going to go the way the steaks. It’s going to go the way of Trump University. He knows that on the inside.”
For all his animosity, Taylor continued, Trump relies on the mainstream press far more than he gives them credit for. “He would be on Air Force One, serious conversation, Mr. President, on a national security issue, you know, unmutes the TV so he can hear himself talk. No, this is how much you all and CNN and Politico matter to him. He needs that coverage.”
Thus, he said, “the fact that he’s being denied even the pool coverage and had that embarrassment of announcing the helipad and the audio wasn’t picked up, he’s not going to paper over that with Trump TV. He is still embarrassed by that. And that’s the place where the media has leverage over him.”
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