Pete Hegseth. Photo: © Zhongxinyashi_Photo/Shutterstock
Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News weekend host, now Secretary of Defense, says reporters who want press credentials from the Pentagon need to sign a pledge agreeing that they won’t report on information that has not been approved for public release.
“The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon – the people do. The press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility. Wear a badge and follow the rules – or go home,” Hegseth said, by way of defending the new policy.
The obvious response from media organizations should be: OK, shove your credentials.
Therein lies the obvious problem for the Trump administration.
Donald Trump. Photo: © lev radin/Shutterstock
“Nothing stops reporters, you know,” the Trump in Trump administration – Donald Trump – said on Sunday, answering a question from a reporter – pre-approved? – asking him if he likes the new Hegseth policy.
One word from Trump on that: “no.”
The critics on the policy, from all sides, have focused on the limits to freedom of the press.
To wit, we have new anti-Trumper Don Bacon, a Republican congressman from Nebraska, writing on Twitter that “we don’t want a bunch of Pravda newspapers only touting the government’s official position. A free press makes our country better. This sounds like more amateur hour.”
The bigger issue here, to me, and I’ve been saying this for a while: what if the people with the TV cameras just told Trump, f*** it, we’re not giving you airtime anymore.
Think about it: Trump’s press avails where he just riffs off the top of his head about whatever is bothering him at the moment are not really newsworthy anyway.
Repurpose the money you’re paying to have a camera and support staff, and a reporter or group of reporters, hanging on his every word in the Oval Office, into actual hard reporting, and you’re bound to get tons more bang for the buck.
Trump, for whom attention is oxygen, has been aware of this hard fact since the early years of his career as a failed real-estate tycoon in Queens.
He himself answered the phone when reporters called, and when they didn’t call, he called them, using fake names, to plant salacious rumors about himself.
Hegseth’s new policy runs the risk of getting the reporters to stop calling – and nothing is worse to Trump than reporters not calling.
PT Barnum is the one who said, I don’t care what the newspapers say about me, as long as they spell my name right.
Donald Trump lives that.
“Nothing stops reporters, you know,” he said, emphasis mine.
He sure hopes not.