Media Outlets Sue Over President Trump's White House Press Ban

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1:19Carol Massar:Podcasts, radio, news. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. CNN, MSNOW and Politico filed lawsuits seeking to allow their journalists to enter the White House grounds days after President Trump revoked their access, turning to the courts in their fight over constitutional protections for the press. We wanted to talk to Tim O 'Brien about this because he understands the media. He does. And he understands the president. Yeah. He's senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. He's the author of Trump Nation, The Art of Being the Donald.

1:52He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Welcome, welcome. It's always good to be here, Tim. So a few things have happened in recent days. One is the Friday decree from the president. Then we learned about this app. Yes, the White House app. This White House app. I'm just wondering about, not necessarily precedent here, but your view on access, the way that Americans are supposed to get this information, and what the president is doing at this very moment? Like, why now? Well, you know, I think he is trying to stop things he can't control. And it's not just the media. You know, he's mired in, you know, in a conflict in Iran that he started that he can't extricate himself from.

2:39He is trying to manage fiscal policy in an unforgiving interest rate environment. And then he's got a flow of information around him that's not flattering. And I think he's sending people like Scott Besant out to sort of say, this is what we're doing to jawbone around interest rates in this, I think, ill-fated effort to bring down the 30-year bond as if any mere mortal could do that. And that every day we hear that the Iran war is about to end and it doesn't end. And that the economy is doing wonderfully and everyone is happy with his presidency, even though the media is reporting otherwise. And it's not because the media is dreaming it up.

3:15It's not because the media has an agenda. I think it's because the media is reporting reality and he doesn't like it. And so this is just the latest effort by the president to try to claw back reality.

3:26Carol Massar:What do you make, Tim? Because you've been around this table or talked with us and how Donald Trump is a master of media, that he's all of a sudden kind of losing control, it feels like. Why? Well, I think he's a master at securing attention and he's a master at diverting attention. I actually don't think he has a particularly sophisticated long term strategy about courting the media. He just courts the media like an ardent lover who gets angry when he's spurned and is very happy when the love comes back his way. But other than that, he's not particularly sophisticated about it. He's been doing it a long time because, you know, he's sort of the center of the carnival.

4:05and he enjoys putting on a Carnie Act for people. And the media, I think sometimes shamefully, will just give air and time to someone who's a carnival barker. And that's gone on with him since he was a developer and then a reality TV star. That's all of a fit.

4:23Carol Massar:So there's the president. And I think it's safe to say that even while the second administration is very different from the first administration, we kind of know who this individual is on some level. But I think one of the things that we've talked a lot about is everyone around him who seems to kind of jump on board and willing to, I think it's safe to say, take advantage of a situation. We've done reporting about stocks and so on and so forth and investments, not just by the president, but members of his administration. What does that say about kind of people more largely? Like, I know we knew the guardrails weren't going to be there, but what does that say?

5:00Well, I think, you know, in the first administration, there were people around him who felt that they could carry out acts of public service or policymaking that were in the interest of the American people and that it was important for them to be there in order to further those goals. I think that all, no one came back for round two with the idea that they could do that. But I do think what they thought is either they could ride Trump's coattails to pad their own resumes or to pad their own wallets. I don't think there was any. And then I think there were sort of hard right movement MAGA people who also believed in defenestrating most of the pillars of the federal government and and and and other acts that they would consider to be policy acts.

5:46Um, in this, this time though, it does seem like there are fewer people who the president is running up against, like Carol was saying. I mean, you have fewer people who are fired, fewer cabinet officials who in the first almost two years of this, this second term, um, have left the administration. Uh, it seems like it's even though public approval, some public approval polls right now are not agreeing with what he's doing. He's been pretty effective. I mean, he has been effective in carrying out some of the more marquee level stances he said he wanted to, you know, trying to sweep the country with deportations, for example, cutting taxes, cutting regulation, certainly.

6:36He campaigned against getting involved in foreign wars and we're now mired in an epically bad foreign war. He said he was going to undertake policies that strengthened the national economy, but I think tariffs and his tariff regime have been bad for the national economy. I think a lot of the things that he's achieved have been in the furtherance of sort of the culture war, but around really sophisticated, well thought through policies that are good for national security, good for the economy, good for democracy, and sadly wanting. All right.

7:15Carol Massar:So with that as the backdrop going into midterms, just around the corner, you know, we've watched the primaries. You look at prediction markets. There are folks that think about or say that the Democrats get back the House. There's some stay. It's still going to be very close. I mean, how important is what we see in the midterms about how Americans feel about this country and how they want to see it led? Well, very important. And I think the fact that you're seeing in the Senate competition in firmly read states where there wasn't expected to be competition before. I think of Iowa. I think of Kansas.

7:52I think of Texas, of all places. It's a signal that people are fed up. Now, I don't think that necessarily means that they're now deeply enamored of the Democrats either. But I think people are really struggling with affordability. That's not a novel insight, but it's very real. They see it at the gas station every day. They're seeing with food and electricity prices. I think they don't, most average Americans don't necessarily feel like they're in control of their own future. And I think they hold that against both parties. But Trump's the president in power, and it's also been embroidered with a lot of problems.

8:28Carol Massar:I love, though, what you said about that a lot of voters not enamored of either party. And we mentioned that we're going to be talking with Anthony Scaramucci. who lasted 11 days in the first Trump White House. He's got a new book out. He's on tomorrow with us. He is on tomorrow. But one of the things that stands out, and I think he's not the only one, is that both parties kind of abandoning the blue-collar worker or abandoning a lot of people in the United States, that both parties got lost. And that's where maybe Donald Trump initially kind of caught fire because he was talking about helping kind of the average American, if you will.

9:02Carol Massar:So I just wonder, though, is there something to that when you look at politics in America, that they are forgetting a lot of citizens here? Well, you know, I think we blame the political process for a lot of things the political process can't solve. The reality is since the mid-1980s, we've been in this epic economic shift from an industrial economy to a service economy. The service piece of that now has been put on steroids by the tech sector. And now you have the advent of AI. It would be hard pressed for most political systems to figure out how to deal with what's, I think, coming with AI and what's already come with some of these big economic transitions because people lost jobs and there were not new jobs waiting for them.

9:48And the policy menu that's available to politicians isn't sometimes expansive enough to address those things. Nonetheless, I think that voters want someone on their side and they don't feel like they've had that from either party for quite a while. Tim, I want to go back to something that you mentioned earlier. And we have a couple minutes left. And it's something that we haven't gotten a big chance to talk to you about. And that's the war in Iran and the way that this president, he ran on not being involved in more foreign wars. From the beginning, he said this would be a skirmish that lasted a few weeks.

10:21It obviously hasn't gone that way. The politics of this aside and just from a strategy perspective, like how do you think the U.S. gets out of this war? It has to leave. But it's going to leave behind instability and a loss of control over an area it used to exercise a meaningful amount of control over. You know, look, the president went in saying he was going to get rid of nukes in Iran, that he would secure the Strait of Hormuz and that he would ensure long term safety for Israel and stability around the region. None of that's been accomplished. And in fact, I think some people would argue the Strait of Hormuz is now a lot worse off than it was before February.

11:06Look at the price of Brent crude oil. Like, just look at the metrics. Now, there's, you know, it appears that there might be some negotiations leading towards this getting resolved. But we're months and months and months beyond what this was originally supposed to be. And again, I think the president himself up until Israel successfully bombed Iran and made their airspace vulnerable was opposed to deepening the war in Iran. And then he saw Israel acting unilaterally and successfully in his mind. And he wanted a piece of that because he's attracted to this idea that you can just wave a wand unilaterally and solve complex problems overnight.

11:48And that's what pulled him into this mess, I think.

11:50Carol Massar:You know, Anthony Scaramucci thinks we should take over Canada so Mark Carney can run for president. That's one way. That's one way. Political cycles. How many political cycles do you think we need to go through in terms of the White House before we find our kind of next leg when it comes to democracy here? Do you have any thoughts on that? Just got about 40 seconds. to solve the world. I think some of the efforts to undermine voters' faith in the midterm should give people pause about that piece of Trump's approach to democracy and voting outlasting him. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you.

12:25Carol Massar:You covered a lot of stuff. Always good to be here. Always good. Always good. Tim O 'Brien, he, of course, is the senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. Highly recommend you check out so many of the columns that are on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg.com. Tim, also author of Trump Nation, The Art of Being the Donald.

13:09Carol Massar:Learn more at business.optum.com.

13:39Carol Massar:in.