Has Trump's war on the press just spectacularly backfired?

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0:44Could be a bug bite or something way worse. Protect your dog from injury and illness with Progressive Pet Insurance. Wait, there's another bump right by the first bump. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. coverage subject to policy terms. This is a global production. It is not difficult to find cases of Trump suing journalists. And I don't mean this time round. I mean, literally, you go back to the 80s, he was doing it. Donald Trump has posted this morning on Truth Social, and this is what he said. The White House is not instituting an assault on the free press, something which I cherish.

1:25It's instituting an assault on the fake news. As ever with Trump, it's what he's done in a sort of continuum of just sowing distrust. You know, it's always been about enemies of the people. It's always been, which is obviously taken from, you know, Nazi Germany and before even. Has the American media, to some extent, brought this on itself by the way that it has behaved in the second term? All right, the breaking news. Diesel prices are at a record. Republicans are trailing in midterm polling and the president is banning reporters from the White House. And now this morning, CNN, MS Now and Politico are suing the Trump administration.

2:06That is CNN this morning. And their third story is they're suing the president over a ban on their reporters being allowed into the White House. Trump has been bullying the media for decades, since before he even got into politics. But is he doing it now out of desperation? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:35It's John. It's Maitlis. And it's not just CNN that Trump has banned from the White House. It's MS Now, which is kind of a similar sort of TV station to CNN and Politico. And he said he's banning them because they're fake news. Now, last week, it's worth remembering that Trump wanted the Supreme Court to approve his changes to mail-in ballots. And the Supreme Court had the temerity to say, bugger off. And then he wanted the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and they raised them. And he wanted a federal judge to say he could have his name on the Kennedy Center. And the federal judge said, no, you can't.

3:17And so Donald Trump, out of desperation, having lost three times, does what a desperate man does. He lashes out and he's lashed out and tried to ban these three news organisations from the White House. Yeah. So I guess the first thing you have to understand about America is that this will not get past the Constitution. The First Amendment prevents Trump from doing this. And that's why within the space of 24, 48 hours, all three, CNN, MSNOW and Politico, have filed their First Amendment lawsuit to restore their access. In other words, they just say, shut up, out the way, we're going straight to the courts.

3:59And as of this moment, the courts are still managing just about to hold it together to deliver some readings and some hearings that are going against Trump. But I guess there is something that you kind of need to understand about the way this works. And it is not difficult to find cases of Trump suing journalists. And I don't mean this time round. I mean, literally, you go back to the 80s, he was doing it. You go back to the 90s, he was doing it. When he was a businessman in New York, he took against somebody, quite often women, and just decided to pursue them in the courts to try and shut them down, throw legal weight against them and say, you're not allowed to do this.

4:44He did it in the early days of his second term when he tried to ban Associated Press. What was their crime? I think they failed to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And we have seen it, I think, consistently in the way that Trump has taken on ABC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and tried to essentially shut them down. Right. He has decided whether it was an ABC interview that he tried to get money from, whether it was reporting from the Wall Street Journal over the Epstein birthday book, whether it was the New York Times reporting. I think that still stands, doesn't it?

5:25I mean, there are still cases going on. There are a lot of cases going on. And of course, the case against the BBC. and when I was out in Washington in the first term there was a time when the BBC was sort of banned from he tried to ban because he said that we're not on an approved list of groups that could go in to a briefing with the press secretary and was saying hang on what do you mean and and that was challenged and overturned he then tried to ban other reporters from the White House that was overturned the First Amendment the right to free speech means that you can't ban news organizations from the People's House, the White House.

6:04And he has done this before and he has been rejected over it. He's posted about it this morning on Truth Social and this is what he said. The White House is not instituting an assault on the free press, something which I cherish. It's instituting an assault on the fake news, something that has grown like cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated and totally out of control. And you think, where is the evidence for any of that? And what do you mean fake news? Is fake news just news you don't like because it holds you to account? And the fact of the matter is that Donald Trump, after a week of losses and growing frustration, he wants the news organisations to be like Russia, to be subservient, to be obsequious, and to be full of laudatory praise about everything that Donald Trump does.

7:00And when it's not like that, he doesn't say it's false. He says it's fake news. And if he had, he couldn't give any examples last week of what the incidents were where journalists had reported and got things factually wrong or made stuff up. I do think what is interesting is that the right of the country has actually started treating liberal media bias as a thing that kind of exists. And, I mean, you know, 20 years ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial was arguing that there is a liberal tilt in the media that shapes news coverage and dictates, you know, what can and can't be said on air or in print.

7:43And clearly, if you look at what is uniting CNN and NBC now and Politico, it's that they broadly lean towards, I would say, I think it's fair to say, They lean away from the MAGA right. They lean towards something that is centrist left or liberal left or whatever. I think the interesting thing here is not that Trump really wants to stop their voices. I mean, we know that one of the people closest to him of all is Maggie Haberman from The New York Times. He understands how liberal journalists works. He understands how liberal editions or broadcasters work. And actually, he uses that very well. But I think what is happening essentially is that he turns the party once again into this sort of personality cult of you do not need evidence.

8:42You do not need justification. You do not need to sort of contest whether what I'm saying is right or wrong. You've just got to know that if they said it, it's automatically wrong. If they said it, it cannot stand up. If they said it, there will be a bias. And I guess the way he's working and the way he has worked successfully with his own party is once he decrees something to be right, it becomes right for his supporters. So this idea of being of the liberal media bias or the liberal or, you know, it's fake news or they're out to get me or it's unfair just becomes parroted and repeated. And what I think is fascinating about the age we're in is that if there's one thing that's going really, really badly wrong with Trump right now, it's that no one around him is standing up to him.

9:31Nobody is saying, oh, actually, you've really got to sort out this Iran thing because it's terrible and it's going to lose you the midterms. you've really got to get the price of oil down and whatever it takes just back off if you need to because that's really going badly wrong there's no one left you know we've we've said it a million times there are no guardrails around him so as as soon as you get rid of everyone around you who's prepared to tell you the truth whether that's your supporters or whether it's you know the media actually doing their job and pointing things out that you won't want to hear it actually makes his own position even more impossible because he's shutting off you know the the escape routes essentially as to how he can improve the position look you said something in the introduction is he acting out of desperation and i think there is a really strong element of that in you know kind of we've gone with this line that trump is invincible and maybe what we're seeing right now is that trump is invincible he hasn't got that invincibility around him there are areas where you think actually you're looking quite vulnerable now and whether it be his poll ratings and whether it be the supreme court ruling against him or the federal reserve going their own way or republican congressmen men and women not wanting to put his name on their campaign literature there is a sense that trump is kind of just the power that he wielded is slipping away from him and he's trying to grasp what he can and so he's sort of lashing out and saying right ms now cnn politico you're banned from the white house and that's going to lead to another humiliating defeat that you know the reporters turned up on friday and kind of the secret service took away their credentials because the hard pass that you need to get into the white house which only certain you know i had one it's the secret service issues it it's not like the press office of the white house gives it out it's the secret service and the secret service under trump's instruction took it away i'm absolutely confident the courts will rule again the verdict they gave in the first time you cannot do this and so trump will kind of have to accept that caitlin collins from cnn and the others from ms now and politico will be back in the white house very shortly and it will have been performative and have got him absolutely nowhere.

11:47Yeah, I mean, if you cast your mind back to the White House Correspondents' Dinner in July, which was a wonderful piece of theatre because Trump made a speech for the first time, I think, at that dinner, the years, and he had to hand out prizes to all the people who were winning prizes for their coverage of him, whether it was over the Epstein files, and that was the Wall Street Journal, whether it's you know the the sort of breaking the news of the birthday book whether it was caitlin collins reporting on um that massive explosion with zelensky and and trump in the uh white house um you know back in the sort of the february of last year and each time he was stuck in this position i mean maybe we can play you a clip here but he was stuck in the position of having to sort of shake the hand of the person who had essentially just done the expose on him.

12:43This year's award goes to the Wall Street Journal.

12:51The Journal's courageous reporting on President Trump's past relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein triggered the release of the so-called Epstein Files, thousands of documents that might otherwise have remained hidden from the public. And despite the president's threat of a lawsuit, the Journal published a story about a provocative letter to Epstein bearing President Trump's signature. Trump quickly filed a$20 billion lawsuit against the Journal, revealing reporter Khadija Safdar's home address. Her family had to be relocated. The Journal was kicked off of Air Force One. But the reporters continue to file revelatory stories.

13:37Please welcome the winners of the Catherine Graham Award from The Wall Street Journal. Khadijah Safdar, Sadie Gurman, Annie Linsky, Josh Dawsey again, Alex Leary, Rebecca Ballhouse and Ryan Barber. And so you can see that this has sort of been building in his mind. You know, it was the night that he called Caitlin Collins, you know, the woman who won't smile. And it was this repulsive, I mean, just genuinely kind of lizard like sort of repulsive act of a man with too much power trying to humiliate a woman who was just, you know, her sin was being very good at her job. and I think that where the networks themselves are is relatively easy.

14:24You know, they just carry on saying we will carry on doing fair and balanced coverage and this is what we'll do and even if we haven't got the pass, we'll carry on and we won't even put the story top because we think it's more important for American voters to hear about the price of oil at the top, which is what CNN do on their breakfast news. The big question is what happens to all their colleagues? Yeah, well, you asked that, Maitlis, and astonishingly, I'm sitting here And I've just seen a flash that the presidential TV pool has been suspended as networks react to the White House's ongoing ban of CNN.

14:56And that means that for now, no major TV network will provide coverage of Trump's events, including today's appearance at the White House and his trip to the United Nations. so I mean just to explain how that works the pool and I used to be in the radio pool seat on Air Force One from time to time you know there is always one network TV network that will cover Trump and so that when you see the pictures of him going on Air Force One getting off Air Force One getting into the motorcade going to meet someone that won't be 15 cameras because they They don't allow 15 cameras into kind of Andrews Air Force Base.

15:38It's one camera. And that means that effectively, if this is all borne out, that there'll be no TV coverage of Trump going up to New York. Sure, when he's in public events, there'll be a ton of TV cameras there and you'll get the coverage. But it means that, you know, on the micro level, that the TV networks are not going to cover him on a macro level. I think this is a display of solidarity and kind of unity of purpose that we've never seen before. You think of all the occasions when Trump has been rude to people and no one has done anything and no one has said that's unacceptable. Well, it seems like the TV networks, not just the ones affected, the two networks affected, CNN and MS now.

16:24But it seems that NBC, ABC, CBS are all saying, no, well, if this is what you're going to do, Mr. Trump, we're not going to cover you until our colleagues are let back in. And I think that does mark a significant moment in the fight back, if you like, about what press freedom means in America. And so I think it is significant. Do you remember when Jim Acosta stood up to him in the first term? He was another CNN reporter who actually just stood there in a White House press briefing and shouted back and held his tone and held his, you know, line. and I was just thinking back on that. I mean, it's not funny at all, but he was announced or he was described the other day as the former CNN reporter.

17:16And I was like, oh yeah, of course, that's what happens. Right, that's what happens. So if you do break ranks, if you do come out, you know, normally means somewhere along the lines your bosses don't find you very helpful and don't really want you to be sort of pushing yourself forward. And I suppose the other question you need to ask is, has the American media to some extent brought this on itself by the way that it has behaved in the second term you talk about the lawsuit that he brought against ABC and an interview that George Stephanopoulos did about E.G. and Carroll and ABC settled even though it was seemed to be on the flimsiest of grounds that they'd settled so they looked weak CBS also very keen to settle Washington Post keen to settle you know LA Times keen to settle and so you've seen the American media in this second term much more pusillanimous I would say in their treatment of Donald Trump because they think oh my god he's much more powerful now we need to get along with him because otherwise in regulatory terms he could remove our licenses and we're fearful now and you you know you saw Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air at one stage.

18:28Well I was going to say The one place where the fight back did work was with the comedians, actually. Colbert's gone. I suppose I was thinking we are just a year on from the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel was the one hauled over the coals for a joke, which was not about the death at all. It was about how little time Trump spent grieving and immediately turned and got back to his ballroom. and yet Trump tried to read into that something that he could make out was an undignified response to Charlie Kirk and that was the reason why, do you remember, Jimmy Kimmel was taken off air and it was only when I guess people voted with their satellite boxes, voted with their viewing, it's easier to get the American nation to stand up for a comic, I think, than it is to get them to stand up for a journalist.

19:26And that's why, I mean, even though, and I said at the beginning, it's a sign of desperation, but I think along the line somewhere, he has sown the seeds along much of the right that this is true, that what he says is true. Oh, yeah. That, you know, yeah, they'll get their cards back and they'll get their access back and they'll be able to get in and out the White House again. But actually, as ever with Trump, It's what he's done in a sort of continuum of just sowing distrust. You know, it's always been about enemies of the people. It's always been, which is obviously taken from, you know, Nazi Germany and before even.

20:05But it's been this sense that you cannot trust the people that are telling you the story. Because at the end of the day, that's what he wants to stop. He wants to stop the story getting to the people. That's how populists act, right? As long as I can make you, the journalists, look like the traitors, then I can tell the American people exactly what I want them to know. Look, there is a veteran correspondent for 60 Minutes, Leslie Stoll. And 60 Minutes is the most storied kind of TV. It's panorama. It's Newsnight. It's a mixture. I mean, you know, it's some of those elements. And Leslie Stoll did an interview with Trump.

20:43And before the interview, she said to him, look, why do you keep on with this whole fake news thing? Why do you keep on with enemies of the people? What's that all about? You know, it's nonsense. And he said, apparently he said to Leslie Steele, listen, the reason I do it is that when they turn on the television, if I keep saying it often enough, they will believe me and they will think the only words of truth are coming from my mouth and not yours. And that is what Trump is about right now. And it's certainly true that on the MAGA right of American politics, I'm sure they'll be cheering him on that he's taking on a CNN, MS now, all the rest of it.

21:19But please spare us Europeans the lectures on free speech. If this is what you are doing to your own media and shutting them out of reporting on what you are doing. That sounds like the measure of a dictator and a totalitarian who doesn't want a free press. and for all this business oh it's just i'm trying to get get rid of the cancer of fake news if you produce the evidence where there is falsehood which you haven't done fair enough maybe but you haven't done that all you've said is i don't like the way they report about me we'll be back in a moment

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22:47Your German doesn't have to be that fluent to understand the word disaster. And that's Friedrich Mertz, the chancellor, who essentially declared his own results in two key states last night, an absolute disaster. The hard right, the AFD, came in first in Mecklenburg. This is part of West Pomerania. And in Berlin, a totally different story where I guess the De Linca, the sort of harder left, if you like, could now be in charge there. And why this is so damaging is essentially that his own party, the Christian Democrat Union, the CDU, came below 5 % share of the vote. In other words, they have lost their deposit.

23:38That's the territory we're in. The party of government, the equivalent of the Conservative, essentially. But if the Conservatives were in power, not even able to hold on to a 5 % share of the vote in places where they should be dominated. Yeah, because below 5%, you don't, under the proportional representation system of the lander, you don't get any representation. So you've got to get over a 5 % threshold before you can get seats. So in the state house in Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania, what a fabulous name for an area. You know, I'm just thinking of the dog with the ribbon in its hair. I thought you might be.

24:16You're just thinking Pomeranians. You know, the CDU, the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Helmut Kohl, the party of Angela Merkel is going to have absolutely no representation in that state whatsoever as a result of not even managing 5 % of the vote. And we're not talking about a parliamentary constituency here where there might be. This is a huge chunk of Germany. It's not a by-election. No, it really isn't. And I guess why we are looking at this so intently right now is because it is forming part of a pattern which is starting to look potentially fatal to the German Chancellor. You'll remember a couple of weeks ago there were the results in Saxony.

25:04And again, in Saxony, it was the far right, the AFD, this part of Germany, which is sort of old communist east, were inviting back the far right and essentially saying, yes, this is the party that's going to get us out of our troubles. They didn't get enough of the vote to actually put them into power, but they got enough of the vote to be the dominant party there. And Mertz cancelled his trip to New York this week. It's a big trip for world leaders, the United Nations General Assembly. He should have been there on the world stage. But he realizes that there are enough people around him now who are saying this has got to change.

25:47This has got to stop. And maybe you've got to change and maybe you've got to go. You can't help look at what is happening to Friedrich Mertz. Make a comparison to something that happened to a bloke called Keir Starmer, where you kind of come to power. You're promising stability. You're promising a reform agenda. And the people are turning away from you in their droves. And you're wondering, is Friedrich Mertz going to be the next one to have a Keir Starmer moment? Now, it may be that there is no Andy Burnham waiting in the wings in German politics in the way that there was a few months ago with Andy Burnham standing in Makerfield and becoming obvious that he was the heir apparent.

26:38But I think the pressures on Mertz, and this is a new thing for German politics. I mean, you look at the longevity of Angela Merkel and how long she was there. You know, they're not used to kind of firing. They like stability. Yeah. And even bad, you know, like Gerhard Schroeder was there a long time, even though he was not a great chancellor. It was seen as a position of power from which you would not be removed. And suddenly Mertz is looking vulnerable. Yeah. One of the things I find really interesting is that there is, you know, a particular sort of strand of slightly lazy journalism, I think, that emerges from all this, which is like, oh, Angela Merkel was an idiot.

27:18She didn't understand immigration in the 2013, 2014. And she didn't understand how to keep Russia at bay. I'm not saying she didn't make mistakes. Of course, she made mistakes. But if you look at where the AFD is now, what is so fascinating about this is, yes, they're incredibly hard right on migration. They talk about re-migration, quite frankly, and it's making a lot of people feel distinctly uncomfortable because it's all happening in Germany just 70 years after the Second World War. But if you look at what Alice Weedle has said, she is the joint leader of the AFD. She's talking about cross-party negotiations, a plan to revive Germany and is preparing for trilateral talks with the Putin regime and with Trump to actually get the Nord Stream gas pipeline operating again.

28:18So in other words, she is actually moving towards Putin. She's moving towards Russia. So all those people who kind of are trying to make out that Merkel was somehow, you know, too close to Russia and that's why she got on the wrong side. I mean, yes, everyone needed more independence of energy much earlier on. But I don't think you can sort of pinpoint the success of the AFD by saying they're standing up to Russia. They're doing exactly the opposite. They couldn't be more pro-Putin. Yes. I mean, you know, so much for a German nationalist party. It's pro-Russian. And that is the thing that I think makes the AFD say very different from what is happening in France or even reform in this country, which has sought to put distance between itself and Russia and the things that the Russians are doing.

29:04So I think the AFD is something in particular. I would make another point about the German elections. And it's the point of what happened in Berlin, where De Linke, the left wing party, kind of is the main attraction. And then, you know, the one that we've just been talking about in Mecklenburg, where it's the far right AFD that's the main attraction. It feels that in German politics, the centre will not hold. The centrist of German politics are in retreat at the moment. And it seems that no one has got an answer. And you've got, you know, the left going further left and the right going further right.

29:37She's quite interesting. So the head of De Linke, the lead candidate in Berlin, Elif Erap, has actually modelled her campaign style on, this will come as no big surprise, Zoran Mamdani. So in other words, she is trying to work out if there is a strong, I guess it's what we'd call the Democratic Socialists Alliance in America. But she is basically trying to be at the helm of a grand coalition with the Green Party, which is heading for about 14 percent and the sort of centre left, the SDP, which is dropping. So you have got this. I think you're absolutely right. And we saw it in the elections, the actual elections for chancellor a couple of years ago, where many of the young men are going for the right.

30:20You know, they're going for the hard right in the form of the AfD. And many of the young women were going for De Linke. And certainly the way the country is dividing now, Berlin, not surprising. It is more metropolitan, more urban. It's not going to naturally lean hard right. But instead, it's leaning pretty much hard left. And so where does Mertz come into this? Where does he where does he find a message? Where does he find something to excite German voters? Because, as you say, stability, I mean, sounds quite reassuring and quite, you know, quite a good thing. But if people are unhappy with what they've got, they don't want stability.