A Saturday Morning Read on Trump’s Pettiness

As you may or may not have noticed, Donald Trump has a pretty shit attitude towards “the media“.

That attitude has manifested itself into a bunch of petty comments and actions on Donald Trump’s part which then leads to weird ass articles coming out of media companies… about themselves.

And while I normally find it incredibly annoying when media companies try to “view from nowhere” on themselves and other media companies… I think NPR counts as different enough that their point rings more true…

The Story

So now we know: This is how it’s going to be after Inauguration Day, too.

When coverage falls afoul of Donald Trump, the soon-to-be-president will feed the media itself into the news grinder. As Matthew Continetti wrote in the Washington Free Beacon, the new administration is going on permanent offense; Trump will invert the usual equation to subject individual journalists and their employers to scrutiny and slashing attacks of the kind usually reserved for public officials.

Trump started Wednesday’s cyclone of a press conference with a warning sheathed in seeming compliments: Thanks for the restraint in holding off on all those salacious and unproven allegations about my personal behavior, and the claims of collusion between my associates and the Russians! And don’t tick me off if you want any more of these press conferences.

It had, after all, been a half-year since Trump last held one — a hiatus which he ascribed to his displeasure with reporting about him.

Continue Reading @ NPR

The most telling part for me during the press conference mentioned in the NPR article above… was when Trump’s team started piling folders on a table next to the lectern… journalists went nuts. A furious stream of tweets lit up twitter. It was actually a little shocking just how excited journalists were to finally have something real to write about. A sign of our times I suppose…

Some of Trump’s aides ginned up some hollow stagecraft for the event: Trump stood near a table loaded with unmarked manila folders filled with sheets of paper as his lawyer explained why he would give control of his companies to his sons rather than sell his enterprises. Reporters never saw what the folders contained or learned what information they purportedly held.

The folders were unmarked.

The paper inside looks like plain unused printer paper. You’ll notice how there’s no separation between the sheets and they’re just in big blocks stuffed inside the folder.

They were props.

A screenshot Amy Berg’s tweet about the props used at Donald Trump’s press conference. Text of tweet reads as follows: Not only are they blank, but if this were my set I would fire the propmaster for lack of realism. They are that fake.