Donald Trump is a manipulator, as most bullies are. Like all bullies, he looks for weaknesses and exploits them relentlessly. He did this to the New York Times during the presidential campaign. He continues to do so today.
The Times prides itself on a reputation for decorum, respectability and fairness. Donald Trump has never had any interest in these three things. He is a shameless liar who when caught in a lie doubles down and attempts to bully the person questioning him. So he was the ideal candidate to conduct a social engineering campaign to manipulate the “respectable” media. And it worked. Coverage at the Times and many other outlets, moved in the direction he desired. This continues till today, and we should expect more of it as Republicans learn from and adopt Trump’s techniques, which are not new, they’re how Fox News anchors operate.
The first weakness exploited was the Times’ penchant for decorous discussion. Trump would say vulgar, crude things, the press would head for the fainting couch, and then he’d say they were obsessively focused on his words. This played well to the voters he needed in swing states, who were far more accustomed to vulgar, crude language in everyday interactions, than the largely professional readership of the Times. This is, in fact, an old fault line, of tabloid vs. broadsheet, of how different classes speak. There was never really any electoral risk to using vulgarities because white evangelical voters had already indicated they would tut-tut, but support Trump anyway.
The Times, and most of the mainstream press, also sees itself as respectable. This is why it was reluctant to pursue or publish the salacious details disclosed in the Steele dossier. Ditto for Trump’s extensive extra-marital affairs, which were well known, but not really reported on. To publish rumors of such affairs would have put the respectable media’s reputation for respectability at risk. So they were ignored. It was far easier to pretend this was a normal campaign/candidate and assign reporters to cover his rallies, hoping for a gaffe or vulgarity to lead the coverage. Less respectable outlets that might have explored these affairs, like the National Enquirer, were owned by Trump’s friends and suppressed the stories.
This need for respectability also meant the Times and other publications covered the “respectable” story of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server to the hilt. It had all the trappings of a traditional political scandal, including serious investigators who were all respectable. There was no risk that a reporter covering the emails might be accused of tabloid journalism.
The most profitable avenue of social engineering for Donald Trump was to attack the Times’ view of itself as fair. We may have thought the relentless whining by Trump about the “unfair” media was nonsense. But it’s clear that at the Times and several other mainstream publications it caused deep consternation and led to softer coverage of Trump and tougher coverage of his opponents. This continues till today. Which explains the Times’ coverage of the shutdown and the discrepancy between the alert it sent and the one sent by WaPo.
Trump didn’t invent this type of social-engineering. Conservatives have spent decades systematically criticizing the media as biased and lauding their captive network, Fox News, as “fair and balanced”. This led to most outlets adopting some measure of “both-sides” journalism. In the Times’ case, the desire to present “both sides” meant providing a platform to far-right white-nationalist extremists. This practice continues today, as the Times adds opinion columnists who support Trump to its regular roster. This is done not because these people have anything interesting to say, or because their views have merit. It’s purely because the Times is deathly afraid of being labelled “unfair”, by Trump and other whiny Republicans.
And that, ladies and gents, is how you get the NY Times to blame Democrats for the government shutdown, after Republicans have:
- held children’s healthcare hostage for 111 days by refusing to fund CHIP
- held Dreamers hostage for months by revoking their protected status and targeting them in their political rhetoric (a practice that continued today)
- holding Puerto Ricans hostage by refusing to send aid
They aren’t even hiding the fact that they’ve engaged in hostage-taking. They’re proud of it and shouting it from the rooftops:
Meanwhile, we still have tweets and clips of Donald Trump saying the exact opposite thing from what he’s claiming today: