Transcript
Enemies of the People: Trump and the Political Press
Watch the videoTEXT ON SCREEN: A Retro Report Film
VOICE: Oh, my god. What's going to happen?
NANCY GIBBS (TIME): We live in an attention economy...
TEXT ON SCREEN: Directed and Produced by Susie Banikarim
NANCY GIBBS:...and, attention equals power.
ARCHIVAL:
REPORTER: If I may ask one other question. Pardon me, ma'am.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS):
SEAN HANNITY: We have the liberal, destroy-Trump mainstream media is now in a free fall.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Directed and Edited by Bret Sigler
ARCHIVAL (NBC):
CHUCK TODD: What we have just heard from the president, if we were to air just the truthful parts, we probably could only air a sentence.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Produced by Victor Couto
NANCY GIBBS: And, we still, as a country...
["Trump 2020" Fireworks]
NANCY GIBBS:..have not fully been able to reckon with what that means.
TEXT ON SCREEN: AMERICA 2016
ARCHIVAL:
CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
KATY TUR (NBC): George Orwell said it best: To see what is in front of your nose demands a constant struggle.
DAVID REMNICK (THE NEW YORKER): What's journalism all about? It's not just sticking a camera and saying, oh my god, everybody's interested because he's funny, or because he's bizarre, or because you can't take your eyes off it. I watched it, too.
NANCY GIBBS: Les Moonves said it may not be good for America, but it's good for CBS.
MARVIN KALB (BROOKINGS INSTITUTION): We are in a world of entertainment. It is political entertainment.
JAY ROSEN (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY): The media during the campaign, everything they believed was wrong.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN (SOLEDAD O'BRIEN PRODUCTIONS): The 2016 election revealed so many flaws in how journalists had long been covering politics. The ground was shifting under their feet, and they just didn’t' know what to do.
DAVID REMNICK: We have to think really hard about how everybody behaved, and it needs to be a ruthless telling of the history if we're going to learn anything from it.
ARCHIVAL:
CROWD: Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!
TITLE: ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE: Trump and the Political Press
TEXT ON SCREEN: NEW YORK CITY JUNE 16, 2015
ARCHIVAL (AUDIO):
NEIL YOUNG (SINGING): I see a woman in the night, with a baby in her hand, near an old street light.
CHUCK TODD (NBC NEWS): I remember it was the day after Jeb Bush's announcement, and it just didn't feel serious because who in their right mind, in order to win over middle America, would announce a presidential campaign in a gold-plated building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan?
MAGGIE HABERMAN (THE NEW YORK TIMES): I think it was May of 2015, and I got a call from Sam Nunberg, who had worked for Trump, and he said Trump is going to announce on June 16th, and we want you to break it. And I said no.
ONSCREEN MAGGIE HABERMAN BYLINES:
2011 Politico Headline: The Donald Hits the Trail
2011 Politico Headline: Surprise! Trump Tees Up
2011 Politico Headline: Trump: Ready for Iowa Hand-Shaking
MAGGIE HABERMAN: So, I did this in 2011 and I'm not falling for this again. I'm not writing a word until he actually runs. Sam said, will you please just have lunch with him? And so, I did, and Trump, he loves to show things off.
ARCHIVAL (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9-14-15):
DONALD TRUMP: The White House is very special, so is Trump Tower. That's the view of New York City. That's the chair for "The Apprentice."
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Here's Shaquille O'Neal's signed shoe.
ARCHIVAL (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9-14-15):
DONALD TRUMP: This is some serious foot.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Here's a plaque from Governor Scott Walker.
ARCHIVAL (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9-14-15):
DONALD TRUMP: That's Tom Brady's Super Bowl helmet. This is Mike Tyson's belt. Vince McMahon from the World Wrestling Federation.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: There's some, like, rap videos that he asked his assistants to call upon the computers and show me.
ARCHIVAL (RAP VIDEO):
DR PERIOD: Yo, I'm rolling in the riches. Money by the ditches. I got Donald Trump calling me a money wizard.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: It was part of why he believed that he would do well with Black voters.
ARCHIVAL (RAP VIDEO):
DR PERIOD: Money, money, money, money, money, money, money. I'm rolling in the money, money.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Trump was trying to sell me. I mean, cause that's what he's always doing is, he's trying to sell you. And so he was trying to sell me on that he was serious, and he was getting frustrated that I wasn't taking it seriously. Nothing incents him more than proving people wrong and what they think about him.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 6-16-15):
DONALD TRUMP: Wow! Whoa! That is some group of people, thousands. This is beyond anybody's expectations. So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again!
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@realDonaldTrump: I am officially running for President of the United States. #MakeAmericanGreatAgain
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Mr. Trump…YOU are going to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain
ONSCREEN TWEET:
No more politicians who are all talk and no action! #MakeAmericaGreatAgain
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@realDonaldTrump gives us the truth…#MakeAmericaGreatAgain
JORGE RAMOS UNIVISION): Many people didn't take him seriously. I still remember some newspapers' cover stories saying that, that he was a clown. Huffington Post saying that they were going to cover as entertainment.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@HuffPost: "Trump's campaign is a sideshow. WE won't take the bait."
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@TIME: "There are about eight billion reasons Trump won't be president"
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@manureendowd: Introducing Donald Trump, Diplomat
LYDIA POLGREEN (GIMLET, 2016/ THE NEW YORK TIMES): There is no question that there was a certain amount of smugness among the national media throughout the campaign, but especially at the beginning. I remember there was a clip that was played over and over and over again in which Keith Ellison is talking to George Stephanopoulos and Maggie Haberman, and Keith Ellison, who comes from Minnesota – clearly, he was picking up something where he felt, oh, Donald Trump is really connecting with people.
ARCHIVAL (ABC, 7-26-15):
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You see these big crowds he is gathering. How do you explain his appeal? What is he tapping into? Congressman Keith Ellison over here, just smiling silently through this whole discussion.
KEITH ELLISON: All I want to say is that this man has got some momentum, and we better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican ticket.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I know you don't believe that, but I want to go on to Maggie.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Sorry to laugh.
LYDIA POLGREEN: The laughter from both George Stephanopoulos and Maggie Haberman that this was just a ludicrous idea, that sense of disconnect and the fact that the national media's response to that was to laugh in this person's face was, I think, a really telling moment for me.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: It was a spontaneous reaction, and I was not laughing at the idea that Trump could be the nominee. I was laughing at Keith Ellison, and that's not a great look either. It's really the moment that I will regret more than any during the campaign.
JORGE RAMOS: At the beginning, I was very frustrated with, with many journalists because they were not challenging Donald Trump enough. Donald Trump gave permission to people to say whatever was in their minds.
ARCHIVAL (6-16-15):
DONALD TRUMP: Our country is in serious trouble. The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime, they’re rapists, and it's got to stop, and it's got to stop fast.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Trump is proven right about these illegal Mexicans.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Stop bringing drugs into our country and raping us!
ARCHIVAL (5-26-15):
PROTESTER: I don't want to share with a bunch of thieves. I don't want to share with a bunch of murderers.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
It's okay to hate illegal Mexicans.
JORGE RAMOS: Mexican immigrants are criminals, drug traffickers and rapists. I am a Mexican immigrant. He was talking about me.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 2-26-16):
PROTESTER: Go back to Mexico!
JORGE RAMOS: The vast majority of immigrants in this country are not criminals, and Donald Trump was giving a completely different idea simply because he knew that was the way to the White House.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 6-16-15):
DONALD TRUMP: I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.
JORGE RAMOS: We challenged him immediately.
ARCHIVAL (UNIVISION, 7-26-15):
JORGE RAMOS (TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH): Trump, Donald Trump. I say that name and what do you think?
FABIAN NUNEZ: I think it was reprehensible. It promoted hate and gives the country a very negative image.
JORGE RAMOS: But, many other news organizations decided not to do that.
ARCHIVAL (MSNBC, 2-26-15):
RON REAGAN, JR: This guy's got absolutely no policy credentials whatsoever.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, 7-19-15):
MICHAEL NEEDHAM: Donald Trump's a clown.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, 6-17-15):
MEGYN KELLY: Come on. That was fantastic.
JORGE RAMOS: And, as reporters, I think we, we didn't report correctly. We didn't see reality as, as it was, but as we wanted it to be.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 6-16-15):
DONALD TRUMP: We will make American great again! Thank you. Thank you very much.
KATY TUR: I had no idea that Donald Trump announced he was running for president. At the time, I was not a political reporter.
ARCHIVAL (NBC, 6-1-15):
ANCHOR: To NBC's Katy Tur is in Paris.
KATY TUR: The L'Archeveche, L'Archeve, gah, I can't say the name.
ANCHOR: We're going to take this down as well.
KATY TUR: I am terrible at French, guys.
KATY TUR: Politics was not something that I had a deep interest in. It was not something that I had covered very much in the past. All I knew was that, on June 23rd, I was coming back to New York, and I was in the newsroom standing around, and, that's how I got put on my very first Donald Trump story.
ARCHIVAL (CNN,7-1-15):
BRIAN STELTER: NBC and Univision both say they will not broadcast the Miss U.S.A. pageant.
ONSCREEN HEADLINE:
NPR: Univision cancels Miss USA
ONSCREEN HEADLINE:
NYT: NBC to Donald Trump: You're Fired
ARCHIVAL (CNN):
CHRIS CUOMO: Donald Trump is hot on the campaign trail amid swirling controversy over his derogatory remarks about Mexican immigrants.
ONSCREEN HEADLINE:
New York Post: Trump says he'll sue Univision
KATY TUR: Donald Trump was getting dropped by Macy's and Univision.
ARCHIVAL (DONALD TRUMP AND MISS U.S.A. CONTESTANTS, 7-27-11):
PHOTOGRAPHER: Beautiful! Beautiful!
KATY TUR: Somebody said we should do this story, and my name came up.
ARCHIVAL (NBC, TODAY, 6-26-15):
MATT LAUER: Katy, this sounds like a real problem.
KATY TUR: Yeah. It's definitely not a good one.
KATY TUR: And then, I got a phone call from the president of NBC News saying, hey. We're going to put you on the Donald Trump campaign, full-time.
JENNA JOHNSON (THE WASHINGTON POST): I was covering Scott Walker, and, as he was flaming out, our editors realized that we really needed someone on Donald Trump full time. He was getting thousands and thousands of people at his events.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY,7-25-15):
WOMAN: Apprentice! Apprentice!
DONALD TRUMP: Oh, good! Good, good, good!
SOPAN DEB (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 2016/ CBS NEWS): When I started to realize that there is more to the Trump campaign, early on, I remember being at the Oklahoma State Fair, maybe a month or two into the campaign., and the place was packed.
ARCHIVAL (OKLAHOMA STATE FAIR, 9-25-15):
DONALD TRUMP: Unbelievable!
JENNA JOHNSON: There was a live bald eagle on stage. A guy from “Duck Dynasty” was there.
ARCHIVAL (OKLAHOMA STATE FAIR, 9-25-15):
WILLIE ROBERTSON: Here's the deal. We're both successful businessmen. We both have pretty big shows on television. We both have wives that are a thousand times better looking than us.
JENNA JOHNSON: I mean, it was this really entertaining, fun atmosphere.
DANA BASH (CNN): People came. They wanted to see the spectacle. They wanted to see what this was all about cause he was, and is, a celebrity.
SOPAN DEB: He's being greeted as if he is like a Beatle in the 1960s.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 8-16-15):
TRUMP SUPPORTER: Go get 'em! Tell the truth!
DONALD TRUMP: Beautiful women here!
SOPAN DEB: There was a certain level of passion there that was not existent in any other candidate.
JENNA JOHNSON: And if you weren't there in the rallies, you missed that.
ARCHIVAL (OKLAHOMA STATE FAIR, 9-25-15):
DONALD TRUMP: Take the cameras off me and pan the crowd. Okay? Go ahead. Pan the crowd. And be honest.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: He's exceptionally good at marketing himself as full-blown news story.
DAVID REMNICK: I grew up on Donald Trump. He's just been in our consciousness for 35 years.
ARCHIVAL (CBS, 2-20-90):
BYSTANDER: Congratulations, Trump!
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Trump found his way into the gossip pages. He found that he could pique interest from other publications that way.
BROOKE GLADSTONE ("ON THE MEDIA" WNYC): The press never took him seriously, and he was able to take advantage of that.
MEGYN KELLY (DEVIL MAY CARE MEDIA, 2016/ FOX NEWS): Trump, then and now, has, has a belief that he can control the media depending on how forcefully he behaves or how badly he behaves.
ARCHIVAL (CBS, THE DAVID LETTERMAN SHOW, 2010):
DONALD TRUMP: Miss America made the bathing suits one-piece, very large, and you weren't allowed to wear shoes. What I did is I made the heels higher and the bathing suits smaller, and it was amazing.
ARCHIVAL (THE HOWARD STERN SHOW):
DONALD TRUMP: What do you think of Lindsay Lohan?
HOWARD STERN: I think she's hot.
DONALD TRUMP: Probably deeply troubled and therefore great in bed.
ARCHIVAL (2006):
DONALD TRUMP: Rosie is a loser. She's a slob. She's disgusting. I'd like to take some money out of her fat-ass pockets.
DAVID REMNICK: And, Trump thrived on this. How many times was Trump under investigation for his businesses? How many times did he escape accusations of housing discrimination, abuse of casino laws? How many bankruptcies? How many sleazy business partners did he have at home and abroad? And he thrived.
ARCHIVAL (1991):
DONALD TRUMP: Things are working out very well for me. The press doesn't want to write that, but that's okay because, if you really read between the lines, you'll see that things are working out very well for Donald Trump.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: His followers don't get how much of this is a game for him, and that's where I think the danger is.
KATY TUR: I got my first sit-down with Donald Trump on July 8th, and, for me, it was a chance to ask what I just felt like I wanted to know the answer to.
ARCHIVAL (NBC, 7-8-15):
KATY TUR: Where do you get your money from? You're for the Second Amendment. Do you have a gun? How high would the wall be? How can anybody expect that you're going to be able to get into the White House and watch your mouth, hold your tongue, and not piss off other countries?
KATY TUR: And he tried to steamroll me.
ARCHIVAL (NBC, 7-8-15):
DONALD TRUMP: You're not bringing up anything new. You know, you're acting like you're the greater reporter, buh buh buh.
KATY TUR: Let's talk immigration. The murder rate in, in El Paso, Texas...
DONALD TRUMP: Oh, O.K., look.
KATY TUR:…one of the big cities in the country.
DONALD TRUMP: Don't try and convince me that there's no crime, that it's wonderful.
KATY TUR: Why should people believe your numbers when you come out here and say that they're committing crimes? The Pew research, which is independent, says—
DONALD TRUMP: Don't be naïve. You're a very naïve person.
KATY TUR: The Pew research says that there are, for, immigrants on the whole create—
DONALD TRUMP: Come on. Try getting it out. Try getting it out.
KATY TUR: I'll, I'll get it out.
DONALD TRUMP: I mean, I don't know if you're going to put this on television, but you don't even know what you're talking about. Try getting it out. Go ahead.
KATY TUR: And, it got very contentious. He was furious. He was furious, and that began a rollercoaster of a relationship.
JENNA JOHNSON: Trump going after the press has always been a dynamic, and early on, it was almost, kind of, a playful thing. A lot of people hate the media. It's an easy way to get people all riled up. But as time went on, the tone of it got darker and darker.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Part of what he does is he wants to make it personal because everything for him is personal. He doesn't want to allow the substance to be debated.
TEXT ON SCREEN: CLEVELAND, AUGUST 6, 2015
MEGYN KELLY: Trump and I had always gotten along prior to that August debate, the very first presidential debate of the 2016 election season. You know, he certainly had a relationship with Fox News and with my then boss, Roger Ailes, that made him feel some sort of kinship, I gather, with my then place of employment.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, THE KELLY FILE, 7-28-15):
MEGYN KELLY: Breaking tonight, new fallout from a controversial article about G.O.P. frontrunner Donald Trump.
MEGYN KELLY: Prior to the debate, Trump became very focused on me, very focused on me, as a result of a segment we had done on The Kelly File involving his divorce from Ivana Trump, in which she accused Donald Trump of raping her.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, THE KELLY FILE, 7-28-15):
MEGYN KELLY: The story broke at The Daily Beast website a little before 9 p.m. last night.
MEGYN KELLY: Needless to say, Trump did not appreciate the revival of that, that divorce allegation, which Ivana had since rejected as not the truth.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, THE KELLY FILE, 7-28-15):
MEGYN KELLY: Tim, thank you for being here. Why did you think this was relevant?
TIM MAK: Well, I think it's relevant because Donald Trump introduced his presidential campaign by making these accusations against Mexican immigrants, saying that many of the people who crossed the border were rapists.
MEGYN KELLY: It, it is a statement of fact that some of the people who cross the southern border are rapists and murderers. So why does that suddenly make relevant any allegation that's been made against a presidential candidate?
MEGYN KELLY: That story was everywhere. We were the only ones doing the story with some fair and balanced coverage, where the guy got challenged as to whether this was really appropriate or not.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, THE KELLY FILE, 7-28-15):
MEGYN KELLY: Now, not taking a position on whether the report was fair or not, Tim, you spoke with a representative for the, for the Trump Organization, a guy named Michael Cohen, an attorney for Mr. Trump, and he directly threatened you. He said, quote, I will make sure that you and I meet one day, and I will come after your Daily Beast and everyone else that you possibly know. So, I'm warning you, tread very effing lightly because what I'm going to do to you is going to be effing disgusting. You understand me? I'm going to mess your life up for as long as you're on this effing planet. Your reaction to that kind of language and threat from a man directly representing a presidential contender?
MEGYN KELLY: Donald Trump was not happy with this segment and then demanded that I call him prior to that presidential debate, and he lost it. I mean, he told me I was a disgrace, that I ought to be ashamed of myself. He was screaming at me, and then, he hung up on me. The next four days he spent calling my bosses, trying to figure out what I was going to do at the debate. His behavior escalated so much in those four days that I started to get slightly alarmed.
Presidential debates are always the hardest things that we do. There's nothing like the preparation that goes into a presidential debate. There was so much anticipation behind that first debate. I mean, it was Trump's first debate. He was already the Republican frontrunner. The other Republicans wanted him gone. So, I went to Cleveland excited.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATE, 8-6-15):
MEGYN KELLY: In the center of the stage tonight, businessman Donald Trump.
MEGYN KELLY: This is it. It's game day.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATE, 8-6-15):
BRET BAIER: We welcome you to the Republican primary debate night on Fox.
MEGYN KELLY: Trust me when I tell you neither Brett Baier nor Chris Wallace wanted to read my debate question to Trump.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATE, 8-6-15):
MEGYN KELLY: Our first round of questions is on the subject of electability. Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women. You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account—
DONALD TRUMP: Only Rosie O'Donnel. [Audience Laughter]
MEGYN KELLY: No, it wasn't.
DONALD TRUMP: I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I've been—[Audience Applause] What I say is what I say, and, honestly, Megyn, if you don't like it, I'm sorry.
MEGYN KELLY: Well, my first hint that something was wrong – I mean, that something really unusual was happening – was when I anchored my show right after the debate live from the stadium.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, THE KELLY FILE, 8-6-15):
MEGYN KELLY: This is The Kelly File, everyone, live from Cleveland on what has been truly an electric and historic night.
MEGYN KELLY: During the middle of the broadcast, Trump walked by with a huge entourage, and he pointed at me and said, Megyn Kelly is not nice. She's no good. And, everybody — and then, all the cameras turned to me, and it was click, click, click, click, click, and I went home. And then, you know, all hell broke loose.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-7-15):
DONALD TRUMP: Hello, Don.
DON LEMON: Mr. Trump, how do you think it went?
MEGYN KELLY: So, I actually saw Don Lemon live.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-7-15):
DONALD TRUMP: Well I think it went very well, from my standpoint.
MEGYN KELLY: Trump had offered to give a phoner to CNN, a half an hour phoner, commercial free they gave it to him. By the way, we killed them in the ratings that night, and I couldn't believe it. He was very angry.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-7-15):
DONALD TRUMP: Certainly, I don't have a lot of respect for Megyn Kelly. She's a lightweight, and, you know, she came out there reading her little script. When you meet her, you realize she's not very tough and she's not very sharp. She's zippo. There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. In my opinion, she was off base.
MEGYN KELLY: I mean, I will never forget seeing my phone just light up with the reaction to that comment.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@megynkelly Wherever ur bleeding from, U were HORRIBLE
MEGYN KELLY: And honestly, realizing that things had changed...
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Debate should be done by a REAL journalist with talent, not a trashy s***k like you.
MEGYN KELLY:...that truly my own life would never be the same again.
ONSCREEN FACEBOOK POST:
NOBODY wants to see your bitchy bias mug on the television.
BRIAN STELTER (CNN): Trump was always the programmer and the producer of his own show. Trump wanted to turn the reporters into participants, as characters in a story he was telling.
JORGE RAMOS: When he announced his candidacy, he said that Mexican immigrants were criminals and, and rapists. I knew that he was wrong, so I decided to write him a letter, a handwritten letter. Nobody does that anymore. And I, I told him, Mr. Trump, I want to have an interview with, with you. I have many questions. Here's my cell phone number. And then, instead of responding to me, he published my cell phone number online, and then, I started getting hundreds, at the end, thousands of texts and phone calls. So we, we checked his schedule, and he was going to give a press conference in Dubuque, Iowa.
ARCHIVAL (DUBUQUE IOWA PRESS CONFERENCE):
DONALD TRUMP: Hello, everybody. How are you?
JORGE RAMOS: So, we brought two or three cameras, a microphone, and we had a plan.
ARCHIVAL (DUBUQUE IOWA PRESS CONFERENCE):
DONALD TRUMP: O.K., who’s next? Yeah, please.
JORGE RAMOS: I raised my hand and said, I have a question on immigration.
ARCHIVAL (DUBUQUE IOWA PRESS CONFERENCE):
DONALD TRUMP: Excuse me, sit down. You weren't called. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down! Go ahead.
JORGE RAMOS: I have the right to ask a question.
DONALD TRUMP: No, you don't. You haven't been called.
JORGE RAMOS: I have the right to ask a question.
DONALD TRUMP: Go back to Univision.
JORGE RAMOS: Go back to Univision. What he really was saying is go back to Mexico, go back to your country of origin because we don't want you here.
ARCHIVAL (DUBUQUE IOWA PRESS CONFERENCE):
JORGE RAMOS: You cannot deport 11 million people, Mr. Trump.
DONALD TRUMP: Go ahead.
JORGE RAMOS: You cannot deport 11 million people.
JORGE RAMOS: When he realized that I was challenging him, he tried to stop me.
ARCHIVAL (DUBUQUE IOWA PRESS CONFERENCE):
JORGE RAMOS (BEING ESCORTED OUT BY SECURITY MEMBER): Don't touch me, sir. Don't touch me.
DONALD TRUMP: Yes, go ahead. Hi, Chip. Yes.
REPORTER: Roger Ailes says you need to apologize to Megyn Kelly. Will you do that?
DONALD TRUMP: No, I wouldn't do that. She actually should be apologizing to me, but I would not do that. No.
ARCHIVAL (IN THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE THE DUBUQUE IOWA PRESS CONFERENCE):
SECURITY MEMBER: You were very rude. It's not about you. Get out of my country. Get out. This is not about you.
JORGE RAMOS: I'm a, I'm a U.S. citizen too.
SECURITY MEMBER: Well, whatever. No. Univision. No. It's not about you.
JORGE RAMOS: It's not about you. It's about, it's about the United States.
JORGE RAMOS: I've been living in this country for 34 years, and I have never experienced anything like that. Two reporters protested, and they made sure that I was able to go back. But, the offensive remarks that I received, me and my family, are something that I really never expected.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Just like an illegal, @jorgeramosnews does as he pleases, regardless of rules
JORGE RAMOS: I, I thought that I was part of this country.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Build that wall and put @jorgeramosnews on the other side of it! 😊
JORGE RAMOS: I thought that this country had embraced me. I thought this country was going to protect me.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
#DonaldTrump deports his 1st #Mexican #JorgeRamos…11 million 999 thousand 999 to go.
JORGE RAMOS: Some of the things that I, that I've heard and things that I still get on social media are, are incredible, completely un-American, I think.
ARCHIVAL (PRESIDENT NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, 10-26-73):
REPORTERS: Mr. President, Mr. President.
RICHARD NIXON: I have never heard or seen such outrageous, vicious, distorted reporting in 27 years of public life.
NANCY GIBBS: The animosity between White Houses and political reporters is nothing new.
ARCHIVAL (PRESIDENT NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, 10-26-73):
REPORTERS: Mr. President, Mr. President.
MARVIN KALB: Nixon hated the press.
ARCHIVAL (PRESIDENT NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, 6-26-73):
JOHN DEAN: There was maintained what was called an enemies list..
RICHARD NIXON (AUDIO RECORDING):The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy.
MARVIN KALB: I was on Nixon's enemies list. He broke into my office. He went through my income tax every year. He did all kinds of outrageous things.
BRIAN STELTER: The 1970s up until now, there's been a concerted effort to delegitimize, to attack, to tear down, and to replace what we would call the mainstream media.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, 1-30-96):
RUPERT MURDOCH: We've now reached this moment where we can firmly announce the starting of a Fox News channel.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 10-12-94):
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Most of the press I call willing accomplices to the liberal power base in Washington.
JAY ROSEN: But political journalism took a wrong turn a long time ago. The most sophisticated political journalists began to look at the political world through the eyes of professionals in politics and identify with the political class. They began to look at the voters out there as objects to be manipulated, like the pollster looks at them, like the handlers look at them, like the campaign manager looks at them.
LYDIA POLGREEN: A quarter million journalism jobs have been lost since 1990. The vast majority of those jobs were in local journalism. As journalism has become more and more disconnected from the local experience and seen as an elite and distant profession, I think people have lost trust and confidence.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 5-2-16):
REPORTER: Megyn! Megyn!
ARCHIVAL (CBS, 5-23-17):
STEVE COLBERT: Please welcome Rachel Maddow.
BRIAN STELTER: But, the No. 2 reason for distrust of the media is self-inflicted wounds.
ARCHIVAL (CBS, EVENING NEWS, 9-8-04):
DAN RATHER: Good evening, there are new questions tonight about President Bush's service. CBS News has exclusive documents.
ARCHIVAL (NBC, NIGHTLY NEWS, 9-15-04):
TOM BROKAW: Several experts saying they're fake.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS):
ANCHOR: A scandal dubbed Rathergate rocks CBS News.
BRIAN STELTER: Our own mistakes, missteps, shortcomings, outright errors and falsehoods, just sloppiness.
ARCHIVAL (ABC, 7-4-98):
NEWS REPORT: The New Republic fired Stephen Glass after learning he had made up facts. Patricia Smith, making up quotes and characters. The Cincinnati Enquirer, for a series of articles, the paper says, were untrue.
MARVIN KALB: I tell you deep down in my gut, I think you're on a slide now. The incentives are ratings. The incentives are money. The incentives are fame. And if people don't trust the press, we are all in bad trouble.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 6-25-18):
JIM ACOSTA: I can't hear you anymore.
CROWD: Go home, Jim. Go home, Jim.
JAY ROSEN: There's just mass confusion. There's paranoia. Who's actually trying to inform me about what's going on?
ARCHIVAL (7-31-18):
TRUMP SUPPORTER: You suck!
NANCY GIBBS: The decline of trust in the press isn't the product of the last four years. It's the product of the last 40.
ARCHIVAL (PRESIDENT NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, 10-26-73):
RICHARD NIXON: When people are pounded night after night with that kind of frantic, hysterical reporting, it naturally shakes their confidence.
MARVIN KALB: But, the difference between Nixon and Trump is that Trump is so against the essential value of a free press that he feels he doesn't have to pay it any respect at all.
ARCHIVAL:
REPORTER: Hey Don.
BRIAN STELTER: We've never been here before.
ARCHIVAL:
DONALD TRUMP: You want to take some of the guys with you?
BRIAN STELTER: The stakes of this, the enormity of this – we're not just covering a campaign, we're not just covering an election, and we're not just covering the aftermath of an election.
ARCHIVAL:
DONALD TRUMP: Is this the door?
BRIAN STELTER: We are covering a huge identity crisis. American trying to figure out what the heck it is.
ARCHIVAL:
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Donald Trump.
JAKE TAPPER (CNN): Donald Trump was tapping into something, and that phenomenon was something to behold.
BRIAN STELTER: He was mesmerizing, and the Trump ratings bump was real and it was a big deal.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Reporters and anchors found him very entertaining, and entertaining also meant higher ratings, and entertaining also meant more money.
CHUCK TODD: He got the car crash coverage. You're like – wait until you see what he's going to say next.
ARCHIVAL (NBC, MEET THE PRESS):
CHUCK TODD: Mr. Trump, welcome back to Meet the Press, sir.
ARCHIVAL (7-18-15):
DONALD TRUMP: John McCain, he's not a war hero.
HOST: He's a war hero.
DONALD TRUMP: He is a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, O.K.? I hate to tell you.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 9-16-15):
DONALD TRUMP: First of all, Rand Paul shouldn't even be on this stage. I never attacked him on his look, and, believe me, there's plenty of subject matter right there. That I can tell you.
ARCHIVAL (2-8-16):
DONALD TRUMP: They asked Ted Cruz, serious question, well, what do you think of waterboarding? Is it O.K.? And honestly, I thought he'd say absolutely, and he didn't. [SHOUTING FROM THE AUDIENCE] She just said a terrible thing. You know what she said? Shout it out because I don't want to. O.K. You're not allowed to say, and I never expect to hear that from you again, she said — I never expect to hear that from you again! She said he's a pussy. That's terrible, terrible.
DAVID REMNICK: He was on television all the time, and the other candidates were in miseries.
ARCHIVAL (NBC, MEET THE PRESS):
JEB BUSH: Just one other thing. I got to get this off my chest. Donald Trump is a jerk.
CHUCK TODD: Well, this has escalated between you and Mr. Bush.
DONALD TRUMP: Jeb is a weak and ineffective person.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 12-15-15):
JEB BUSH: This is a tough business to run for president.
DONALD TRUMP: Oh, yeah. Oh, I know you're a tough guy, Jeb. I know.
JEB BUSH: It is, and we need to have a leader that is—
DONALD TRUMP: Real tough.
JEB BUSH: You're never going to be president of the United States by insulting your way to the presidency.
DONALD TRUMP: You're real tough, Jeb. Yeah? Well, let's see. I'm at 42 and you're at 3. So, so far..
JEB BUSH: Doesn't matter.
DONALD TRUMP: ...I'm doing better.
JEB BUSH: Doesn't matter.
ARCHIVAL (NBC, 8-27-15):
LESTER HOLT: Donald Trump today attempted to settle one of the more controversial issues of his campaign, his hair.
DONALD TRUMP: I don't wear a toupee. It's my hair. I swear.
LYDIA POLGREEN: I think that history will not look kindly at the way particularly television news, covered the Trump candidacy.
TEXT ONSCREEN: 6:01 PM
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: Break news, Donald Trump's grand entrance. Trump arriving for a rally in Alabama in what can only be called true Trump fashion. In just a few minutes, Donald Trump will be speaking here.
LYDIA POLGREEN: The just completely unmediated access to the homes of millions and millions and millions of Americans really was a huge mistake.
TEXT ONSCREEN: 6:27 PM
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: We are standing by for Donald Trump. He’ll be appearing at that rally in Mobile just moments away.
JEFF ZUCKER (CNN): Donald Trump was the leading Republican almost from the start. So the leading contender is always going to get a disproportionate amount of attention.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: Breaking news. Donald Trump about to address his largest crowd to date.
TEXT ONSCREEN: 6:32 PM
TEXT ONSCREEN: 6:41 PM
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: I do want you to stay with us.
TEXT ONSCREEN: 6:45 PM
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: Breaking news.
TEXT ONSCREEN: 6:53 PM
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: We are live.
TEXT ONSCREEN: 6:58 PM
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: Any minute now. While we wait for Trump, here is Jeannie Moos on how to put on a good Trump face.
JENNIE MOOS: Everybody's doing Donald.
DONALD DUCK: Aw, shut up!
JENNIE MOOS: Not that Donald! The Donald.
JIMMY FALLON: I was fantastic. The ratings were huge!
DAVID REMNICK: You know, pointing a camera at something and keeping it there is technology. It's, you know, making sure the, the light is on.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: A lot happening tonight.
ONSCREEN TEXT: 7:00 PM
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: Right now, though? There is this.
DAVID REMNICK: That is just the start of things. You then have to report and dig and, and, and think and analyze. And, I think that Jeff Zucker, among others, recognizes that it was way, way too much unadulterated, unmediated, I wouldn't even call it coverage. I would just, sort of, sticking a camera and pointing it for, for, for the sake of ratings.
JEFF ZUCKER: We asked all of the other candidates to come on, and almost all of them declined. Donald Trump said yes all the time. They said no almost all of the time.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
JAKE TAPPER: Hillary Clinton said it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into war because someone got under his very thin skin.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, I don't have thin skin. I have very strong, very thick skin.
JAKE TAPPER: We begged Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio. Let us do an hour interview with you. We'll talk about everything. We'll tell your life story. All three of them turned us down.
JEFF ZUCKER: And yet, they want to believe that we still shouldn't have put Donald Trump on, just because they were saying no. That's not the way it works. They had every opportunity to come on. They had every opportunity to do, to do interviews. They had every opportunity to phone in, and they declined. That's not Donald Trump's fault. That's not CNN's fault. That's their fault.
LYDIA POLGREEN: There was an abdication of responsibility, by the, particularly the cable news operators, to provide context.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-21-15):
ANCHOR: Donald Trump is about to speak before a sold-out crowd.
COMMENTATOR: It's endlessly entertaining, but as we wear on in this election cycle, people are going to look for answers and I'm not sure he's got them.
ANCHOR: In your experience, Josh—Oh, pause, everyone. Take it in. Donald Trump is taking the stage.
AUDIO OF SONG: You're the best around. Nothing's ever gonna take you down!
DONALD TRUMP: I love the people of Mexico. I love the Hispanics. Kanye West, I love him!
LYDIA POLGREEN: This notion that spectacle alone is acceptable political coverage is just bananas to me.
JEFF ZUCKER: You can't be on 24/7 and, you know, have everything be perfect and have everybody like everything you do. But if you take a step back and you look at our campaign coverage through the year, I don't think anybody could hold a candle to our coverage, including our good friends in the print media who liked to throw darts because that's what they do.
TEXT ONSCREEN: DECEMBER 7, 2015
ARCHIVAL:
CROWD: Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!
ARCHIVAL (NPR):
NEWS REPORT: We are still getting details about a mass shooting in San Bernardino.
ARCHIVAL (ABC):
NEWS REPORT: We are in pursuit of the suspect. We've got shots fired out the back window.
ARCHIVAL (NPR):
NEWS REPORT: Who were they?
ARCHIVAL (NPR):
REPORTER: Syed Rizwan Farouk. He was born in the U.S. And Tashfeen Malik.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS):
NEWS REPORT: We have 14 people that are confirmed dead. The two suspects are deceased.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15):
CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
DONALD TRUMP: A few days ago, in California, we didn't have guns. The bad guys had the guns. Paris was like target practice. Come over here. Boom! Come over here. Boom! And how about the woman? She radicalized the guy. Probably a guy couldn't get women. I don't know what the hell his problem.
KATY TUR: At the rallies, there was also an undercurrent of being against the other, but the Muslim ban day, it felt electric. It felt like the room was, you know, just light a match and it was going to, to catch on fire. It felt to me like a good night to lay low.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15):
CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
DONALD TRUMP (SPEAKING ABOUT A PROTESTER): Why don't you get her out? See? Our country has this kind of security. That's the problem we have.
KATY TUR: And then, he goes on an attack against the media.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15):
DONALD TRUMP: These people back here, they're the worst, so dishonest. They don't want to show this crowd. And yet, I guarantee you that young woman that just got taken out after interrupting us three times, I guarantee the cameras will be on her. I guarantee. It's disgusting.
KATY TUR: And not just against the media, but attack against me personally.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15):
DONALD TRUMP: The media, most of it, is absolute scum. Remember that. Scum. Scum. We had a reporter from NBC. She's back there, little Katy. She's back there.
KATY TUR: Little Katy, she's back there. And, the entire room turned at me and pointed and booed.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15)
CROWD: Boo!
DONALD TRUMP: No. What a lie. Katy Tur.
KATY TUR: It was extraordinarily unnerving.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15)
DONALD TRUMP: Third-rate reporter. Remember that. Third-rate. Third-rate.
KATY TUR: And then Donald Trump announces that he is going to ban all Muslims from coming into the country.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15)
DONALD TRUMP: Now listen, Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
KATY TUR: His supporters had been with him up until that point. The question was, would they remain with him?
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15)
DONALD TRUMP: We have no choice.
KATY TUR: And they would.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 12-7-15)
DONALD TRUMP: We have no choice.
KATY TUR: And then, standing up a few minutes later to do a live shot with Chris Matthews and, you know, having my back to the crowd, which is unnerving. Only thing between me and a few thousand people was a couple shoddy bicycle racks.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Our country and way of life is threatened. Along with our nations' dignity.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3-11-16):
PROTEST: Racists go home! Racists go home! Racists go home!
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@realDonaldTrump I hope a foreigner kills you
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 2-26-16):
DONALD TRUMP: Was that a protester? Oh, good.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
…media anchors have been assholes…
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 2-26-16):
DONALD TRUMP: Turn the cameras!
ONSCREEN TWEET:
…journalism is dead.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 2-26-16):
DONALD TRUMP: I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I've ever met.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Where do we go from here?
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 2-26-16):
DONALD TRUMP: They're terrible.
DANA BASH: When Donald Trump turned on the press, it started to change at the rallies.
JEFF ZUCKER: Security became a much bigger issue for our reporters than ever before.
ARCHIVAL (NPR):
NEWS REPORT: In Chicago, the Donald Trump campaign called off a rally out of what they called safety concern.
ARCHIVAL (NPR):
NEWS REPORT: A reporter says Trump's campaign manager grabbed her, nearly threw her to the ground.
DANA BASH: I cannot even describe to you what it is like to be on the press riser when he says – everybody turn around and look at those horrible people back there, those dishonest people back there.
ARCHIVAL:
CROWD: CNN sucks! CNN sucks!
DANA BASH: And then, to have all of these people turn around and start to jeer you.
ARCHIVAL:
CROWD: CNN sucks! CNN sucks!
KATY TUR: By March or April, we had security full-time everywhere we went, even standing outside of Trump Tower in New York City.
MEGYN KELLY: By that point in the campaign, Trump had been coming after me for nine months. Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, had tweeted out, among other things, we can gut her. There would be a crescendo in my life of threats...
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@gene70: … @megynkelly @realDonaldTrump And this is the bimbo that's asking presidential questions?"
5,202 Retweets 10,579 likes
MEGYN KELLY:...and vitriol, and difficulty every time Trump sent out a tweet. It had become very clear to me that he was not going to stop.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
S***k
ONSCREEN TWEET:
H***er
ONSCREEN TWEET:
Liberal w***e
ONSCREEN TWEET:
C***
ONSCREEN TWEET:
S***
MEGYN KELLY: It just, it was never going away.
ARCHIVAL:
CROWD: U.SA.! U.S.A.!
MEGYN KELLY: So, I decided to try to make it stop myself, and I went to Trump Tower.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, 4-13-16):
SEAN HANNITY: You met with Megyn Kelly today, how did that go?CROWD: Boo!
MEGYN KELLY: For me, it felt like, like a hostage asking her captor to let her go, but he and I got to a place where we could coexist in a reasonable fashion. And I asked him for an interview for this special I was doing.
COKIE ROBERTS (JOURNALIST, 1943-2019): We need the interviews. So, you do have conversations, and sometimes you make deals. I've railed against that for a very long time, but you do need them to show up.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: There is a value in being the person who is engaging with Trump. Having people, you know, email you and tweet at you that you're a whore is terrible, but, you know, I think Trump has made a lot of people's careers.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, 5-17-16):
MEGYN KELLY: It's been a long nine months.
DONALD TRUMP: It has been a long time. I agree. I have great respect for you that you were able to call me and say, let's get together and let's talk. To me, I would not have done that.
MEGYN KELLY: When you look back, any regrets?
DONALD TRUMP: I could have done certain things differently. But, overall, you know, I have to be very happy with the outcome.
CHUCK TODD: I have had conversations with the president privately to say to stop singling out people because, when you single out individuals, they get threats.
TEXT ONSCREEN: NEW YORK CITY
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD (THE WASHINGTON POST): I started out on the campaign writing about the loser candidates. So they sent me to Iowa to write about Trump. Wasn't it incredible that this guy, who'd been married three times, who'd been on the cover of Playboy, that he was, seemed like he was about to win this famously conservative state?
TEXT ONSCREEN: IOWA
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: Trump had skipped the Fox News debate, held this fundraiser on television, and he said he'd raised $6 million for veterans. And among that $6 million, $1 million, he said, was coming out of his own pocket.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 1-28-16):
CROWD: Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: He got so much good publicity for that. So, where's the money? Months later, I still couldn't account for about half of the money, and that included the $1 million that Trump said was going to come out of his own pocket. Finally, Corey Lewandowski, who is Trump's campaign manager, called me, and he says, O.K., I can you now that Mr. Trump has given away his million dollars. Trust me, Donald Trump gave this money away.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 5-2-16):
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you!
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: So, I said, O.K., I'll try to find somebody out in the world who got even a dollar.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@Fahrenthold:…How much exactly, was raised?
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: I decided I'd try and do that on Twitter. And so...
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@Fahrenthold: I'm still looking for this $1M that @realDonaldTrump says he gave vets out of his own pocket. If you got any, DM me.
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD:…that a wider group of veterans would see that I was looking for this money and also because I wanted Donald Trump to see it.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@Fahrenthold: @realdonald trump says his $ has been given, but not to whom.
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: And so, I put @realDonaldTrump on every one of those queries.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@Fahrenthold:…there are still questions about the total $$ raised – and what @realDonaldTrump gave from his own pocket.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@Fahrenthold:…to whom did @realDonaldTrump give the $1M he pledged?
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: Trump was watching, and, that night he actually gave the money away. Trump called me to tell me that, and I said, well, did you just give money away now because I was looking for it? That's when he called me a, a nasty guy, said I should be ashamed of myself, but he didn't say no.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 5-31-16):
REPORTER: You, yourself, say you pledged a million dollars.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 5-31-16):
REPORTER: Your critics say you have a problem with the truth. Is this a prime example?
DONALD TRUMP: No. I raised almost $6 million. Some of it didn't come through, but it was very unfair that the press treated us so badly. And then, we have to read probably libelous stories. The people know the stories are false.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 5-31-16):
REPORTER: You keep calling us the dishonest press, the disgusting press. It, it seems as though you're resistant to scrutiny, the kind of scrutiny that comes with running for president of the United States.
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: Trump had spent years living in the world where the media was publicity, and the entertainment media reported in ways that he found generally pleasing. I mean, even when they reported on his affairs, it, sort of, made him seem like this real playboy. Entertainment Tonight's not going to come back six months alter and figure out whether you actually gave the money to charity. This is a new relationship Trump is having with the media right then at this moment. He's realizing that this is not just publicity.
DANA BASH: And, he felt like he was turned on, even though it was just the same scrutiny that every other candidate gets when they are on the precipice of being the Republican nominee or any party's nominee.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 5-31-16):
REPORTER: Is a question an attack? Is a question an attack?
DONALD TRUMP: I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I've ever met. I'm going to continue to attack the press. Thank you very much.
DANA BASH: When the media started demanding answers and looking into his background, I think that that changed the tenor for him.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10-18-16):
DONALD TRUMP: I believe actually they are more crooked than crooked Hillary. I really do.
CROWD: Boo!
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7-27-16):
DONALD TRUMP: She's been probably hacked. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.
KATY TUR: Does that not you pause?
DONALD TRUMP: No, no. It gives me no pause. If they have them, they have them. We might as well find out. Hey. Here's what gives me more. Be quiet. I know you want to, you know, save her.
NANCY GIBBS: All of the norms he violated, all of the rules that he broke, all of the ways in which he challenged the press, the message from that was, I am the disrupter that you've been waiting for.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 10-30-15):
DONALD TRUMP: The media is very, very dishonest.
NANCY GIBBS: He did not cause people's disenchantment with how government works and the feeling of whether it's working for them or not. He just activated those resentments and insecurities, and I think, if we don't look at what those underlying factors were and we just looked at the skill with which he, he exploited them, then we're missing the story.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 10-30-15):
DONALD TRUMP: There's never been a movement like this. I want the entire corrupt Washington establishment to hear that we are going to drain the swamp.
CROWD: Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!
DONALD TRUMP: I love that expression. That's a great expression.
MARVIN KALB: Everybody was watching, but they were watching a professional television performer.
Today, television appears to be an instrument of entertainment, but when a CBS reporter named Edward R. Murrow hired me in 1957, it was also considered to be an instrument for education.
Murrow was worried about a person who emerged in 1950 from the Midwest, who suddenly decided that he didn't have to worry about the constraints of democracy. The only thing he had to do was to sell his point of view.
ARCHIVAL (1954):
NEWS REEL: Senator Joseph McCarthy was the year's most controversial figure in American politics.
ARCHIVAL (CBS, 1954):
EDWARD R. MURROW: Senator McCarthy spoke of one party's treason. He has accused civilian and military leaders of the past administration of a great conspiracy to turn over the country to communism.
MARVIN KALB: So, Murrow did a broadcast about Joe McCarthy, and that had a powerful impact. McCarthy was frightening people and creating a Red Scare, and he had somebody with him, a New York lawyer named Roy Cohn, who was very smart and thoroughly unprincipled. And what he said to McCarthy is pretty much the same thing that he said to another client a couple of decades later, named Donald Trump, and that was that if somebody attacks you, never yield. Attack him right back. Double down. Never acknowledge that you made a mistake. You attack. You continue to attack.
DAVID REMNICK: It's a system that is completely absent of any moral parameter. The only goal is win, baby, win.
ARCHIVAL (NPR):
NEWS REPORT: One new poll out today shows Donald Trump leading the Republican presidential field about 10 points.
ARCHIVAL (9-9-15):
DONALD TRUMP: We are led by very, very stupid people. Very, very stupid people.
ARCHIVAL (NPR):
NEWS REPORT: Right now, Donald Trump is winning about a third of the self-identified evangelical vote.
ARCHIVAL (NPR):
NEWS REPORT: The Trump train is almost impossible to stop at this point.
ARCHIVAL (MSNBC):
CHRIS MATTHEWS: This is so astounding what's happening.
KATY TUR: This is what we are going to see now on from this campaign, going from somebody who has a very presidential tone to somebody who is unpredictable.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: That pretty much encapsulates the argument. To Chuck Todd in Washington, Chuck, just start talking.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 7-21-16):
DONALD TRUMP: Friends, delegates and fellow Americans, we cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore. There will be no lies. We will honor the American people with the truth and nothing else.
CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Trump created his own reality in this campaign, and he bent other people's reality towards his. That's his genius.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, THE KELLY FILE, 8-1-16):
MEGYN KELLY: Welcome to The Kelly File, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Hard to believe, but we are roughly 100 days now from election day.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 7-29-16):
JAKE TAPPER: Start your engine, the real race begins.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, 8-1-16):
MEGYN KELLY: Look at that. Look at that. Clinton and Trump, tied.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9-9-16):
DONALD TRUMP: Her policies have produced only death, destruction.
JEFF ZUCKER: Donald Trump would say outrageous things or say things that weren't true, and it just became accepted. Oh, well, that's what he does.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9-9-16):
DONALD TRUMP: She could shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn't be prosecuted.
CROWD: Lock her up! Lock her up!
JEFF ZUCKER: Not calling that out more for what it was and then holding the other side more accountable – that was probably a mistake.
NANCY GIBBS: It's like he's a human algorithm of being able to calculate exactly what people are going to not be able to resist watching and hearing and sharing.
MARVIN KALB: The cable news networks today have learned one lesson: you have to entertain us.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It's very easy to gin up a conflict by having people over here on one side and the people over her on another side. It creates great fodder for great drama, which we would all call great TV. People like great TV, and, if you're impacting ratings, you're also impacting ad dollars. And so it was a very worthwhile business proposition. It really was a win win win for everybody. I mean, except for Americans.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 9-10-16):
ANCHOR: The F.B.I. Director has released a report that's shedding light on, on the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Hillary Clinton's email was a story that was reported way out of context.
BRIAN STELTER: Reporters and producers try so hard to seem balanced that they end up sometimes not being accurate. Oftentimes, especially in broadcast media, we see this false equivalence. Donald Trump was making more misstatements, coming up with more falsehoods, more often.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-11-16):
RUDY GIULIANI: Her violation was incredible. Thousands and thousands and thousands, 35,000 emails that she destroyed.
JEFF ZUCKER: The Hillary Clinton email story was an important story. There's no question. Do I think it got a disproportionate amount of attention? I do.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: False equivalency is just laziness. You should just do good reporting because then you can say, this is what's true.
DAVID REMNICK: If you add up the legitimately concerning aspects of Hillary Clinton, and there are many, and you put them next to Donald Trump's, the, the difference is just preposterously outsized. Every race is not a tie score.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 10-7-16):
JAKE TAPPER: There is some breaking news right now. David Fahrenthold of the The Washington Post got his hands on a tape from 2005 of Donald Trump.
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: It arrived about 11:00 in the morning. You know, right away, you knew it was something big.
ARCHIVAL (ACCESS HOLLYWOOD, 2005):
DONALD TRUMP: I'll admit it.
BILLY BUSH: Whoa.
DONALD TRUMP: I did try and f*** her. She was married.
BILLY BUSH: That's huge news there.
DONALD TRUMP:I moved on her like a bitch.
ARCHIVAL (MSNBC, 10-7-16):
STEVE KORNACKI: We're just finding out about this. What do you know, Katy?
KATY TUR: NBC News has reached out to the campaign for comment, but has not heard back.
ARCHIVAL (ACCESS HOLLYWOOD, 2005):
DONALD TRUMP: You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. When you're a star, you can do anything.
BILLY BUSH: Whatever you want.
DONALD TRUMP: Grab them by the pussy.
ARCHIVAL (MSNBC, 10-7-16):
WOLF BLITZER: Dana, what are you learning?
DANA BASH: I was talking to somebody who is a humongous fan of Donald Trump, somebody who, who is a big supporter and has been an advisor, who said, I just can't imagine any woman in this country voting for Donald Trump.
ARCHIVAL (ACCESS HOLLYWOOD, 2005):
BILLY BUSH: Geez, your girl is hot as shit in the purple.
DONALD TRUMP: Whoa! Whoa!
BILLY BUSH: Yes! The Donald has scored. Oh, my man.
DONALD TRUMP: Hello. How are you? Hi. Nice seeing you. Terrific.
ARIANE ZUCKER: Hi, Mr. Trump. Nice to meet you.
BILLY BUSH: How about a little hug for the Donald? He just off the bus.
ARIANE ZUCKER: Would you like a little hug, darling?
DONALD TRUMP: O.K. Absolutely. Melania said this was O.K.
BILLY BUSH: How about a little hug for the Bushy? I just got off the bus.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: I got phone calls from three Democratic strategists who were literally cackling. Two of them said the exact same thing – aren't you just loving this? And, I was staked out in the lobby of Trump Tower at that point, and I was like, no. I'm not loving this. This is horrible. Like, what is good about this?
ARCHIVAL (NBC, MEET THE PRESS, 10-8-16):
CHUCK TODD: This one does feel different. There have been so many times we've said Trump can't survive this or can't survive that, but the 2005 hot mic recording may well prove to be the type of October surprise that even Donald Trump can't survive.
ARCHIVAL (ACCESS HOLLYWOOD, 2005):
BILLY BUSH: Yeah. You get in the middle. There we go.
DONALD TRUMP: Good. That's better.
ARIANE ZUCKER: This is much better.
DONALD TRUMP: That's better.
BILLY BUSH: Now, if you had to choose, honestly, between one of us, me or the Donald.
DONALD TRUMP: I don't know. That's tough competition.
BRIAN STELTER: A lot of us overreacted to the tape, out of shock and out of an assumption that we knew what would happen next.
ARCHIVAL (10-7-16):
DONALD TRUMP: I've never said I'm a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I'm not.
BRIAN STELTER: There were a lot of assumptions made, right when that tape came out, about how voters would react, how Trump would react, how his family would react.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: It's the only time that I know of that he actually experienced humiliation.
ARCHIVAL (10-7-16):
DONALD TRUMP: I said it. I was wrong, and I apologize.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: And that humiliation was something that he propelled into a fist pounding of Hillary Clinton, psychologically, by bringing her husband's accusers to the next debate.
ARCHIVAL (10-9-16):
JUANITA BROADDRICK: Mr. Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me and Hillary Clinton threatened me. I don't think there's any comparison.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: And in what he said to her onstage, he just came right back at her.
ARCHIVAL (NBC NEWS, 10-9-16):
ANDERSON COOPER: We received a lot of questions online, Mr. Trump. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?
DONALD TRUMP: No, I didn't say that at all. I don't think you understood what was said. This was locker room talk. I think the one that you should really be apologizing for are the 33,000 emails that you deleted. And honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
MARTHA RADDATZ: Secretary Clinton, I want to follow up on that.
HILLARY CLINTON: …because everything he just said is absolutely false. It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
DONALD TRUMP: Because, you'd be in jail.
CROWD: [Cheering]
ARCHIVAL (1968):
ANNOUNCER: I think before the morning is out, Hubert Humphrey will be the next president of the United States!
ARCHIVAL (11-7-84):
CROWD: Four more years! Four more years!
ARCHIVAL (1938):
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: We need internal unity, national unity.
ARCHIVAL (11-4-08):
BARACK OBAMA: Change has come to America.
LYDIA POLGREEN: There's no question that every single national political reporter thought on election night that Hillary Clinton was going to win.
JAKE TAPPER: I think the biggest mistake I personally made was relying too much on what experts said in terms of polling. I mean, all that was wrong. All of it was wrong.
NANCY GIBBS: Why is the press predicting outcomes in the first place? That is the original sin of political reporting.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2016):
HILLARY CLINTON: I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision!
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD: Media didn't really have a sense of how big a deal Trump was in places like Ohio, West Virginia, Iowa. I think that was a failure of political journalism and a really huge one.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It's insane that the person who is in the leadership position of The New York Times admits they didn't get out of New York enough.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2016):
CROWD: Lock her up! Lock her up!
NANCY GIBBS: And, I think what's made this so hard for political reporters is that we can't see messages that are being very deliberately targeted to very specific demographics...
ARCHIVAL (ADVERTISEMENT):
Protect your right to security.
NANCY GIBBS:...So, it makes it really hard to know what is it that people are hearing and seeing.
ARCHIVAL (2016):
TWITTER VOTER: Today is election day.
ARCHIVAL (2016):
TWITTER VOTER: Big day today. Exercise your right.
ARCHIVAL (2016):
TWITTER VOTER: Let's make America great again, guys!
ARCHIVAL (CBS, 11-7-16):
BARACK OBAMA: Are you fired up? Ready to go? God bless the United States of America.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, 11-9-16):
MEGYN KELLY: Hold on. There's a big old call to make right now, and that is Fox News is projecting that Donald Trump has won the state of Wisconsin. He has officially pierced the blue wall.
JORGE RAMOS: Here in the newsroom for months, they were getting comments from Latinos saying, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. I was hearing what they were saying, but I wasn't listening. And then after the election we realized that he got almost 30 percent of the Hispanic vote.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 11-9-16):
DANA BASH: Hillary Clinton has called Donald Trump to concede the race.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 11-9-16):
NEWS REPORT: Fifty-three percent of white women voted for Donald Trump.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We've always covered politics like a horse race. It's very hard to stand outside and say, wait a minute, are we jumping to a conclusion here that really hasn't been proven out?
LYDIA POLGREEN: Facts and truth are the base material of journalism, but they are not its entire content. I worry about a world in which we dismiss people's perceptions and feelings about their own lives. If you perceive yourself as having lost status, or lost power, or lost opportunity, your perceptions and your feeling about that perception is a powerful fact, and that fact was just absent in our coverage.
JORGE RAMOS: We made a lot of mistakes. We did.
JAKE TAPPER: In retrospect, more rallies by other candidates should have been covered, and there should have been more fact-checking and editorial context. But, that's not why Trump is the president of the United States. It is simplistic to say that decision by three cable networks is why President Trump is President Trump.
ARCHIVAL (1-20-17):
JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: Please raise your right hand and repeat after me.
ARCHIVAL (WHITEHOUSE.GOV, 2-17-17):
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much.
TEXT ONSCREEN: FEBRUARY 16, 2017
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S FIRST PRESS CONFERENCE
ARCHIVAL (WHITEHOUSE.GOV, 2-17-17):
DONALD TRUMP: I'm making this presentation directly to the American people because many of our nation's reporters will not tell you the truth. It's all fake news. It's all fake news. It is fake. The news is fake.
MARVIN KALB: Fake news.
DANA BASH: Fake news.
CHUCK TODD: Fake news.
JORGE RAMOS: Fake news media.
MARVIN KALB: You know, when Trump began to use that expression, I thought it was so childish. It couldn't possibly work. He now believes that the use of the term fake news was the smartest thing he did in a P.R. sense since he began to run for president in 2015.
ARCHIVAL (WHITEHOUSE.GOV, 2-17-17):
DONALD TRUMP: It is fake.
ONSCREEN TWEET:
@realDonaldTrump: The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Trump suggests with every word that the free press have their own agenda and that their agenda, America, is not yours.
MARVIN KALB: Enemy of the American people. That was a bright flashing red light. You can't say that and be president of the United States. You could be president of Russia, of China, of Egypt. You could be president of a lot of places, but not of the United States.
NANCY GIBBS: I think part of the arrogance of reporters might have been that we just assumed people understood how we saw our jobs and that we went about our work to serve a greater good.
ARCHIVAL (WHITEHOUSE.GOV, 2-17-17):
REPORTER: Aren't you concerned, sir, that you are undermining the people's faith in the First Amendment, freedom of the press, the press in this country, when you call stories you don't like fake news?
NANCY GIBBS: To think that that was widely believed, understood, embraced – it was naïve.
MARVIN KALB: As long as I have been in this business, I try to explain. I'm just a guy who is telling you what he thinks is a fair presentation of reality. For many, many years, most people believed me. Then, with the emergency of Fox and MSNBC and with the corporatization of the media, people who are interested in making as much money as they possibly could, not in public policy, everything became politicized. And people, they didn't believe me anymore.
ARCHIVAL (WHITEHOUSE.GOV, 2-17-17):
DONALD TRUMP: Now, maybe I had something to do with that, I don't know, but the public doesn't believe you people anymore.
JAY ROSEN: I don't think our political press knows how to cope. When mainstream journalists get to work in the morning, one-third of their potential public is gone before they log on. What happens when that becomes 40 percent? What happens when it becomes 50 percent? That's a crisis. And at a certain point, what's going to happen is that you're going to do your job successfully by investigating and exposing, and it won't matter.
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 8-13-16):
MAN: You are a traitor!
NANCY GIBBS: What worries me is how distorted each side's view is of the other.
ARCHIVAL (GETTY, 8-27-20):
PROTESTERS: Nazis, go home! Nazis, go home!
ARCHIVAL (CNN, 5-22-20):
DOCTOR: I'm intubating somebody, 53.
NANCY GIBBS: And how much that distortion corresponds with how much media people consume.
ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS):
LAURA INGRAHAM: Do these masks really slow the spread of Covid?
ARCHIVAL:
MAN: Stop me. Do you want to stop me?
NANCY GIBBS: We can have a fight over what would constitute progress on education or on the environment or on healthcare...
ARCHIVAL:
WOMAN: Democratic pigs! All of you!
NANCY GIBBS:...but only if we have something like a shared foundation of facts, and we don't even have that now. This is damage that is going to have to be undone.
ARCHIVAL (WHITEHOUSE.GOV, 2-17-17):
DONALD TRUMP: I mean, it's story after story after story is bad. I won. I won.
(END)