Media Madness

by Howard Kurtz

  When Trump reorganized the National Security Council, he made Bannon a permanent member, but excluded the head of the CIA and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Inevitably, the Washington establishment freaked out. While Bannon had been a naval officer and had a graduate degree from Georgetown in national security studies, his presence was deemed an affront. He was a practitioner of the black arts of politics; he jokingly called himself Darth Vader. Now he had a media bulls-eye on his back.

  After hundreds of interviews in which her words came pouring out in great rivulets, Kellyanne Conway made a mistake—a big one.

  And the media, relishing the chance for a little payback, beat her up so badly that she plunged into some serious soul-searching.

  The blunder took place on MSNBC, a network that most Trump officials avoided. Conway was defending the president’s travel ban in an interview with Chris Matthews, the former Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neill aide who had become the nonstop talker defending Beltway liberalism.

  During the Obama years, Conway said, “two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre”—which, she said, “didn’t get covered.”

  But there had been no massacre in Kentucky. She had screwed up. Her larger point was right: two Iraqis living in Bowling Green had been convicted of helping al-Qaeda in Iraq kill American soldiers. But invoking the non-existent “massacre,” which she had done a couple of times before, caused an explosion.

  MSNBC didn’t catch her error; a Kentucky reporter tweeted it hours later.

  The mockery online was brutal as Kellyanne was accused of inventing “alternative facts.” She said she had “misspoken one word” while newspapers regularly ran three-paragraph corrections, but that didn’t matter. Some people in Bowling Green created a phony memorial. The Washington Post gave Conway its “Worst Week in Washington” award. CNN, Trump’s least favorite network, said it declined to book her on Jake Tapper’s show because of her “credibility” issues. (Actually, Conway was spending the weekend with her family in New York—her oldest daughter was in a school production of Annie—and had made plans to go to church with her family.)

  The backstory was that CNN was miffed that Mike Pence was appearing on every Sunday show except Tapper’s State of the Union. Still, the liberal Huffington Post ran a screaming headline: “KELLYANNE CRISIS: TOO DISHONEST FOR TV!” Conway had actually argued against what was becoming a White House boycott of CNN, but she now believed that the network’s president, Jeff Zucker, was attacking her as a way of embarrassing President Trump.

  On Saturday Night Live Kate McKinnon portrayed Conway as a slut who is so desperate to get on television that she tries to seduce Jake Tapper and then threatens him with a knife.

  The media battering pushed Kellyanne into a deep period of reflection. She felt she had to stop being so naïve. She was no longer a single woman living with her dog. The media hits she took affected not just her but her family. In the past, she had regarded herself as a pollster who happened to go on TV. She could walk through an airport or into a Cinnabon unmolested. Now she was mobbed everywhere she went, and she and her family needed Secret Service protection.

  During the campaign, Kellyanne felt like a happy warrior, delivering a fresh dose of honesty and fighting the good fight against Hillary.

  But now the media were turning themselves into her enemy, and her head spun at how media people could be so nice to her off camera, and so mean to her in their reports.

  Kellyanne knew she didn’t come off as very feminine, but she didn’t like how the press portrayed her as harsh and shrill. She resented being treated as a talking head and nothing more, and she desperately wanted to get off television. She turned down more and more invitations. The vice president sympathized with her, saying that she should save her media appearances for really big issues. “I think we’re using Peyton Manning in the preseason,” Mike Pence told her. “I think you should spread it out.”

  But Trump wanted her out there defending him, and for now, that was her fate.

  Conway ended a tumultuous week with another unforced error. After Nordstrom abruptly dropped Ivanka’s clothing line, Trump retaliated on Twitter, saying his daughter “has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person—always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”

  As criticism mounted that the president was using his office to help his daughter’s business, Conway put in a plug on Fox & Friends. “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff,” she said from the pressroom. “I hate shopping and I’m gonna go get some myself today.…I’m gonna give a free commercial here, go buy it today everybody, you can find it online.”

  The condemnation was fierce. Conway had violated a federal regulation against promoting one’s own business or that of a colleague.

  The Washington Post and New York Times splashed the story on the front page. A Republican congressman demanded an investigation. Spicer summoned Kellyanne to a meeting and told her that he would inform the press that she had been “counseled” on the matter and it wouldn’t happen again.

  Conway had detractors both inside and outside the White House, and gave them ammunition when she appeared on Jake Tapper’s weekday show and acknowledged that CNN was not “fake news.” Her administration critics said she was out for herself, not the president, and circulated a Washington Post Magazine cover story in which Conway said she had passed up millions of dollars by not selling her polling company. Kellyanne went to the president and apologized for her mistake involving his daughter. Trump was sympathetic. He knew she was trying to defend Ivanka, and that taking flak was part of the job.

  “It’s fine. I’ll take the hit,” Conway said.

  “Why should you take the hit?” Trump asked. He hated the official line that she had been “counseled.” “It makes it seem like you’re a child,” he said.

  On the morning of February 16, Trump abruptly told Reince Priebus in the Oval Office, “We’re having a press conference in two hours.” There had been no warning. He was ready.

  Trump was feeling boxed in, convinced that he wasn’t being adequately defended by Conway and Spicer, and decided to do it himself. He savaged the media at a rambling, stream-of-consciousness, seventy-seven-minute news conference, denouncing the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN for “fake news” and “disgraceful” reporting. He accurately predicted that the headlines would say he was “ranting and raving.” Minutes later, Jake Tapper called the president “unhinged” and said he should “stop whining” and do his job. The Morning Joe team said he had lost touch with reality.

  The president had stirred things up as he intended, but the next day he crossed the line. He tweeted that “fake news” outlets—CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and the New York Times—were “the enemy of the American people.”

  Even sympathetic commentators were taken aback by the president calling the press unpatriotic and intimating that its practitioners were guilty of treason.

  The language was too rabid even for “Mad Dog” Mattis, the retired Marine Corps general and secretary of defense. He told reporters that while he’d had “some rather contentious times with the press,” he had no serious issues with the media.

  The president’s words were thrown back at Kellyanne Conway, who would never have used such language. She argued—again trying to explain Trump rather than defend him—that what the president meant was that the media weren’t his personal enemy, but were hurting the public by misleading them.

  Corey Lewandowski understood what had happened: Trump’s staff had over-managed him and tried to keep him under wraps. That, he knew from long experience, never worked. The approach only made Trump feel like a caged animal, and it was only a matter of time before he broke free and started roaring.

  What people failed to understand, in Lewandowski’s view, was that Trump always needed an enemy. That was true when New York’s highsociety crowd treated him like an outsider. It was true when Augusta National wouldn�
�t accept him as a golf member. It was true with Trump’s Republican primary opponents and then with Hillary Clinton. Now Trump was casting the media in the role of the enemy. That showed his supporters he was fighting for them, and it fired him up as well.

  Lewandowski visited the White House only days after he had criticized Bannon, Kushner, Conway, and Priebus as inexperienced. He got an earful. “Some people here were unhappy with your comments,” a top official told him.

  “Well, I’m not happy with the way things are going,” Lewandowski shot back.

  He was there at Trump’s request—Lewandowski knew Reince didn’t want him in the building—and he was stunned to learn that his friends in the administration were dejected and miserable.

  Lewandowski told Trump in the Oval Office that he should do more press conferences. The president countered that Corey should go on television more often, that Lewandowski’s unsmiling demeanor was very effective.

  “I’m 100 percent loyal, sir.”

  “I know that,” Trump said. “I just wish everyone in this building was.”

  Reince Priebus was chairing a 7:30 a.m. intelligence meeting when one of the participants, Andrew McCabe, asked to speak to him privately.

  McCabe, the deputy FBI director, closed the door and told Priebus: “We want you to know that everything in this New York Times story is bullshit.”

  The Times had quoted unnamed sources in reporting that Trump campaign aides and associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. CNN had carried a similar report.

  Priebus pointed to the three televisions on his office wall: “Here’s my problem, they’re going 24/7. Can the FBI say what you just told me?” McCabe said he would have to check. Priebus thought he might come out of this a freaking hero.

  A few hours later, McCabe told him the bureau couldn’t start the practice of commenting on newspaper stories or it would never end.

  “Give me a break,” Priebus said. “I’m getting crushed all over the place, and you won’t say publicly what you told me privately?”

  James Comey called later. “We really can’t do anything about it,” the FBI director told him. But Comey said he’d be willing to tell the Senate Intelligence Committee that the charges were bogus; he was sure its members would repeat that for the cameras.

  Now, a week later, CNN was airing a breaking news story naming Priebus. According to “multiple U.S. officials,” the network said, “the FBI rejected a White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump’s associates and Russians known to U.S. intelligence.”

  Priebus was stunned by the implication that he was pressuring law enforcement. Had he been set up? Why was the FBI leaking this information when one of its top officials had initiated the conversation?

  Comey assured Priebus that afternoon that he hadn’t done anything wrong, but the story reverberated for days. “Is Reince Priebus Lying About the FBI?” Slate asked. “Reince Priebus Should Resign,” a Boston Globe columnist demanded. The damage was done.

  CHAPTER 9

  KELLYANNE UNDER SIEGE

  From the moment he was named national security adviser, Michael Flynn was a target for the media. The retired general, who had been fired by the Obama administration, was a Trump loyalist with a taste for conspiracy theories. Trump had yet to be inaugurated when the press began reporting that Flynn had questionable communications with the Russian government.

  The story took off when the Washington Post reported that according to nine unnamed officials, Flynn had potentially broken the law by discussing U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office—and had lied about it to Vice President Mike Pence. Trump said it was fake news, but he was wrong; the story was right on target.

  Each day brought new revelations, and the White House went into damage control mode. The New York Times reported that Flynn had gotten on Trump’s nerves “because of his sometimes overbearing demeanor.” Kellyanne Conway went on MSNBC and assured viewers that the general “does enjoy the full confidence of the president.” But late that night, Trump fired Mike Flynn, which made Conway look disconnected from the decision-makers.

  At six the next morning, Kellyanne was groggy when her phone rang.

  It was the president. He wanted his chief cable combatant to go on the morning shows.

  “Sir, we decided not to send anyone because we were all at the office until midnight,” she said.

  “No, I want you out there,” Trump said.

  Conway didn’t want to be accused of seizing the spotlight. “If I go,” she said, “I have to say you want me to do this.”

  The boss gave her some guidance. She would say that Flynn had a fine thirty-year career but that the situation had become unsustainable. She would try not to say that he lied to Mike Pence and the White House about his Russian contacts; she would say he provided inaccurate or incomplete information.

  Conway made the case on Today, Good Morning America, and Fox & Friends. She particularly got into it with Matt Lauer when she said that Trump was a loyal person and that “Mike Flynn had decided it was best to resign.” When Lauer countered on Today that the Justice Department had told the White House weeks earlier that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail, all she could say was “well, that’s one characterization.”

  Kellyanne felt she was being protective of Trump. She had known for weeks that Flynn was in trouble. But with Democrats calling for his scalp, she didn’t want press accounts to say they had capitulated right away. Of course the president had fired Flynn, but she insisted on saying he resigned because that’s what you do when you’re about to be fired. She believed the media were nitpicking over semantics.

  Trump singled her out in a private meeting with education advocates. “Did everybody see Kellyanne on the Today show?” he asked. “They tried to beat her up. She’s tough.”

  Kellyanne had to be tough, because she had become a target of many news shows, especially Morning Joe, which paired Joe Scarborough, the ex-Florida congressman, with Mika Brzezinski, a former CBS reporter and daughter of Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

  When Conway joined the campaign, Scarborough was in a Twitter war with Trump. But after the election Jared Kushner helped arrange a kiss-and-make-up session at Trump Tower. “Of all the people I thought would walk through that door,” Spicer told Conway, “Joe and Mika were not on the list.”

  They had courted Kellyanne for months. Their executive producer often sent text messages trying to book her for Morning Joe. Was she in New York? Was she free this week? And after one appearance on set, “You nailed it.”

  Brzezinski had invited her to a Florida bar where Joe’s band was playing, and said she’d even like to invite Trump; she stayed in touch with Conway by text. “It’s Mika, call me when you have 30 seconds.” There was an appeal to the sisterhood: “Let’s talk as girls this week.”

  Mika sent Kellyanne a handwritten note: “You’re the best person ever in this job.” But Brzezinski also warned Conway that not everyone in the White House was on her side. She encouraged Kellyanne to stay out of the administration and pursue a private career for the sake of her kids—and offered help her find a media perch.

  But now, Scarborough and Brzezinski turned on Conway, banning her from their program.

  “Every time I’ve ever seen her on television, something’s askew, off, or incorrect,” Brzezinski announced on air one morning. “Kellyanne Conway does not need to text our show, just as long as I’m on it, because it’s not happening here.…She’s not credible anymore.”

  Scarborough chimed in: “She’s out of the loop, she’s in none of the key meetings, she goes out and books herself often.…She’s just saying things just to get in front of the TV set and prove her relevance.”

  Kellyanne shrugged it off. Trump had stopped watching the show two weeks earlier, and so had Ivanka. She knew Scarborough and Brzezinski were catching flak for not being tough eno
ugh on the president, and now that they no longer had any access to him, they turned hostile toward Trump and her. She thought Scarborough might even be planning a future presidential run himself and felt he need to establish himself as an anti-Trump force.

  Despite Scarborough’s claim, Conway was deluged with media requests. Chuck Todd had recently invited her on three days in a row. She had received seven media invitations, including one from The View, the day before Scarborough and Brzezinski’s assault.

  She felt the business about her being on the periphery was also hogwash. She was in a daily meeting every morning with the president, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Jared Kushner, and Hope Hicks. She was the point person on veterans’ issues and heroin addiction.

  Although Conway was under siege, she had an uncanny ability to maintain diplomatic relations with her critics. She called Jake Tapper, after Saturday Night Live ran the skit of her stalking him, and apologized that he’d been dragged into a debate about her credibility. Tapper said he didn’t know who at CNN had said his show wouldn’t have her on.

  “Normally we’d be honored to have you on State of the Union,” Tapper said. The issue wasn’t her credibility, it was that the White House had stiffed CNN by putting Pence on every other Sunday show.

  Conway thought much of the media’s grilling of her was merely a way for anchors to get high marks from their colleagues: You didn’t let the president’s counselor lie!

  Kellyanne knew her detractors said she looked haggard and drained; she knew that her nails were uneven, there was no time for such niceties as a manicure. But, she asked me on the air, what was she supposed to do—get a face lift like so many female anchors did?

  Conway was convinced that the media were trying to marginalize her because she was effective at her job. She was a proxy for Donald Trump.