After a series of especially contentious White House press briefings and repeated personal attacks on reporters, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl said President Donald Trump’s relationship with the media “has taken a dark turn” during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think we’ve entered a particular phase here, where it really does need to be called out,” said Karl, who is also the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
The veteran reporter — who writes about the president’s relationship with the press in his new book “Front Row at the Trump Show” — has said his fellow reporters shouldn’t “take the bait” and give in to his provocations. But there is a limit to what he will let go.
During an April press briefing, Karl interjected to say, “that’s not true,” when the president asserted that no level of coronavirus testing would satisfy what he called “the fake news media.”
“It wasn’t so much that it was an attack on reporters, it was an attack on the notion of objective reporting,” Karl told Jim Braude on WGBH News’ Greater Boston Tuesday. “[The pandemic] is serious business. This is the biggest story of our lifetimes and it was absolutely, completely, ridiculously untrue and that’s why I just — I blurted it out.”
In his book, Karl argues that the president’s ire for the press is all part of an overarching political strategy — “one of the few things he’s actually strategic about.”
“He wants to portray the press, not just as the enemy of the people, but as the opposition party,” he said. “So, no matter what is reported on his administration, if it’s negative, he can make it sound as if it’s just the same as if the Democratic National Committee put out a press release. ‘What do you expect, that’s my opposition.’”
This forces the media to strike “a tough balance,” Karl said.
“I don’t want us to play into that and to appear like the opposition, but what I also say is when he brands real news ‘fake,’ when he calls a free press the enemy of the people, the record does need to be corrected,” he added.
Karl compared the Donald Trump he met 26 years ago, as a cub reporter working on a story about Trump Tower, and the President Trump he covers today.
“The biggest difference are the stakes. Back then, he was just a developer, he was just trying to put on his own show,” he said. "It didn’t matter if he was lying or exaggerating or doing, you know, what a salesman does. And now, he’s sitting at the Resolute Desk.”
In his book, Karl tells the story of the time when the president called him into the Oval Office to complain about a detail he included about something Trump said about Hurricane Dorian in 2019.
“It was a really trivial thing and I spent 45 minutes with him in the Oval Office. This is not long after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, the night before North Korea had just launched some test missiles and there was a hurricane bearing in on Florida,” he remembered. “I’m sitting there going back and forth on this … and I’m thinking, ‘This is the same guy that I was in Trump Tower with 26 years ago.’”
Karl fears the president’s rhetoric has already done “lasting damage” to American society.
“I think he’s sent the message that you can go out and say things that are completely untrue and you can vilify anybody who criticizes you and just basically say that it’s all fake and made up, and get away with it,” he said.
