On Tuesday, new emails surfaced about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian official last summer. They show that Trump Jr. had been promised compromising information about Hillary Clinton — information from a "Russian government" source. Some in the mainstream media have called this the “smoking gun,” evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. For the pro-Trump media, however, it’s just another story to spin to strengthen the president’s grip on power. Bob speaks with Charlie Warzel, a senior writer for Buzzfeed News, about the logic governing the pro-Trump media's response.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I’m Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I’m Bob Garfield. On Tuesday, a new set of emails surfaced revealing that Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer on the promise of dirt from the Russian government on Hillary Clinton, in which Don, Jr. wrote, quote, “if it’s what you say I love it.”
Now, prior to these disclosures made by the young Don to get ahead of a New York Times scoop, we heard constantly from the White House that there was no collusion, no shred of evidence and, therefore, nothing to talk about. Here’s Don, Jr. with CNN's Jake Tapper a year ago, just after that meeting with the Russian lawyer.
[CLIP]:
DONALD TRUMP, JR.: Well, it just goes to show you their exact moral compass. I mean, they’ll say anything to be able to win this. I mean, this is time and time again, lie after lie. You notice he won't say, “Well, I say this.” We hear “experts.” You know, “His house cat at home once said that this is what's happening with the Russians.” It's disgusting. It's so phony.
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: Now that there is proof of at least willingness to collude with Russia to damage Clinton's campaign, evidently there's still nothing to talk about. To the right-wing media, it was just the latest –
[CLIPS]:
MALE CORRESPONDENT: Nothing burger.
MALE CORRESPONDENT: It’s a nothing burger.
FEMALE CORRESPONDENT: Total nothing burger.
BOB GARFIELD: Here’s Fox’s Sean Hannity.
SEAN HANNITY: A friend of the Trumps offered to coordinate a meeting to share opposition research on Hillary Clinton, which Donald Trump, Jr. agreed to. Nothing came of it because there was no information exchanged, and it ended there. Democrats, the mainstream media are right now hysterical over the story.
BOB GARFIELD: Alex Jones of Infowars faults the Democrats.
ALEX JONES: This is a failed attempt of the Democrats to set up Donald, Jr. that’s fallen flat on its face, just like all the other hoaxes.
BOB GARFIELD: Right-wing self-declared troll Mike Cernovich doubts the law.
MIKE CERNOVICH: I don’t care. Nothing illegal happened. People are going, oh, this is the smoking gun. Smoking gun of what?
BOB GARFIELD: And Tucker Carlson blames - our suspicion of foreigners. No, [LAUGHS] really, he does.
TUCKER CARLSON: So gossiping with foreigners now qualifies as treason in America, even if no meaningful information is exchanged. You ought to consider that before you allow an exchange student to live in your house!
[END CLIP]
CHARLIE WARZEL: The pro-Trump media is so obsessed with the idea that the media is out to get Donald Trump that they are willing to defend that and overlook basically anything. Protect “Dear Leader” at all costs.
BOB GARFIELD: Charlie Warzel, who covers this stuff for BuzzFeed, says the pro-Trump media exploit the public's misunderstanding of how reporting actually works.
CHARLIE WARZEL: There is a lot of confusion around, say, anonymous sourcing. A lot of people who are just normal consumers of the media, they don't know what anonymous sources are. And the pro-Trump media seized on this, saying that, no, these anonymous people are anonymous because they're not real. They’ve just completely been made up and the mainstream media is recklessly pushing anything they can to discredit the President.
BOB GARFIELD: But the people who are passing that notion forward understand that it simply isn't true. They know how The New York Times works. They know that there have to be multiple sources to corroborate a story and that the editors actually know the names of the people who aren’t named in the newspaper [LAUGHS] or in the broadcast report. They know that there is a rigorous system before an anonymous source is cited in a news article, and yet, they continue to cultivate this meme. What's that all about?
CHARLIE WARZEL: I think what this is it's a disingenuous play to win. Trumpism is about, first and foremost, winning. It's why Trump touts his electoral victory every possible way. The pro-Trump media have the same ideology, which is to win at all costs. So the idea that you would make something up or say something that isn't true just to further your point, they don’t have any real ethical or moral dilemma. They look for all of the criticisms that are leveled against them and they parrot it back and use it to win.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, let's look at the Russian meeting story. The administration's line has evolved from, there was no Russian meddling to, we never met with any Russians to, we met with Russians but it was benign to, we met with Russians but there was no collusion to, now, well, what’s the matter with collusion? Can this story develop to a point where not only is there nothing left for the right-wing media to say, but they have lost any credibility, even with the audience most predisposed to believing it?
CHARLIE WARZEL: It’s unclear to me. I do feel that some of the larger personalities in this world, say, Fox News’ Sean Hannity, I don't know if he's willing to go down with the Trump administration if there were to be some definitive proof of collusion between Trump and Russia, but I do think that there are a group that are willing to go almost that far, a lot of the online personalities. There could be a point where they could turn on Trump and the administration, but I don't think it has to do so much with Russia. I think it has more to do with him not living up to some of the campaign promises or if Russia distracts him from building a wall. That is really where I can see them turning their backs. If there is a long game for the pro-Trump media beyond Trump, I think it's keeping those campaign promises alive.
BOB GARFIELD: Let's just say there are indictments of Trump’s circle or impeachment proceedings against the President or a presidential resignation under the burden of all of these allegations, do these very same organizations circle the wagons around an ex-President Trump and incite who knows what against the institutions that unseated him?
CHARLIE WARZEL: Oh, 100%. I think that sort of a nightmare scenario for people who are concerned about this universe is that the institutions, be they the so-called “deep state” or just the “establishment” cause change in this presidency, whether that be an impeachment proceeding or what have you. Trump becomes the absolute martyr. He becomes the figure of someone who tried to take down the establishment and because he got so close, that's why they took him down.
One of the only ways that the pro-Trump media sort of loses its steam is if the Trump presidency comes and goes and is semi-uneventful, other than beset by a lot of scandal.
BOB GARFIELD: Am I making a mistake criticizing this all as media, when it's a different animal altogether?
CHARLIE WARZEL: I sort of coined this world as “Upside Down,” which is a reference to an alternative universe in the Netflix show, Stranger Things, that looks a lot like the universe that we’re used to but is sort of darker and a little bit warped. And that's how I see - this. It looks and feels so much like traditional media, and yet, it lives in the world of alternative facts and “Upside Down.” So it is media but the message is so completely pro-Donald Trump and the White House in the face of any criticism, no matter how concrete, that it's hard to call it journalism.
BOB GARFIELD: But do they really care about Donald Trump or in Upside Down world is something else really at play?
CHARLIE WARZEL: What they care about more than anything else is tearing down the mainstream institutions. If you look at any of these scandals and controversies that the Trump administration has had since January 20th, you're going to see that every single one of them gets absorbed and then whipped up and spun by the pro-Trump media in a way that is intended to discredit the mainstream, to say that CNN is fake news, that The New York Times is peddling lies. Every single thing, including this Donald Trump, Jr. email release, the first thing they did was attack The New York Times, saying, look, you didn't characterize your story properly, you didn't have the emails, that's why Donald Trump, Jr. had to release them, when the reality was that The New York Times is the only reason that Donald Trump, Jr. released the emails, because of their dogged reporting.
I think that what they really believe in more than Donald Trump is this idea that they have an opportunity to actually hit the mainstream media and discredit them to a point where they can sort of take over.
BOB GARFIELD: [SIGHS] Charlie, thank you.
CHARLIE WARZEL: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Charlie Warzel is a senior writer for BuzzFeed News.
[CLIP]:
SEAN HANNITY: Now, I’ll send it on this note to the mainstream media. You have zero credibility left. You have been caught time and time again spreading fake news stories and you carry out your personal attacks against the President, against his family and anybody that dares to be associated with the President.