everybody else needs to change. and as long as they believe that the media will cover everything that they do. as long as they believe that as soon as donald trump treats something it becomes breaking news, saturating every television and every on-line news site they were going to keep doing what they were doing, and the press, the traditional way, you need to have a relationship with reporters and needed to rely on them to help get your message out and communicate with the morning people. they now believe as we saw during the election, they can do whatever they want. and whether you like them or hate you, they call you names and assault you you re going to cover them more than anything else going on in the world. if that is the case they feel like they have the freedom to say and do whatever they want. i think timothy said it best, he said we re not at war with the press, but with information. the one thing that those who love the first amendment have to remember is they need not
trump circle or who toggle back and forth across the membrane of the trump world, they re stunned by what they re seeing. they re seeing an administration that s not very prepared. they re seeing a president who doesn t seem to know what he s talking about. look at the claim of the pro golfer and the story of all that we ve just gone through. also we re seeing something we really need to look at carefully and not stop talking about, which is this attempt to control information, to distort information, to suppress information. there was the order that went out telling people in various agencies, you know, say nothing until it goes through the white house. the washington post has just reported that donald trump summoned the acting direction, of the national park service and said i want photos that are better than the ones i ve seen, i don t want you tweeting things that make it look like my crowd was small. and you know, steve bannon s telling us that we have no credibility and we shou
humiliated and keep its mouth shut and listen for a while, mr. bannon said for a while. i want you to quote this, mr. bannon added, the media here is the opposition party they don t understand this country they still don t understand why donald trump is the president of the united states. what do you think? well, i think there s one good point in there which is there are things about america we all missed during this last campaign and there were voices in america we didn t hear. but i think that statement is the height of arrogance and the summit of defensiveness. let s remember here what we got so wrong and what we don t understand. how well do steve bannon and donald trump understand america when they lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes? yeah, i know, voter fraud. prove it, right? how well do they understand america when donald trump right now is sitting on a 36% favorable or approval rating or however that one s classified? you know, he is this is the end of a week t
personally. and i think when we look at the grand scheme of things right now in how he governs, if he continues to be sidetracked by these, if he s so concerned about his image all the time, that s going to be problematic as he s going ahead to try to get things done. whether it s going to be working with congress or whether it s going to be trying to negotiate trade deals with other countries, not everyone s going to be his friend and not everyone s going to say that he s the greatest or that he is the best and he s got to get over it. yeah. david gergen, i would like to turn to something different now. president trump s chief strategist steve bannon, who spoke to the new york times about the media and he says the media here is the opposition party. they don t understand this country. they still do not understand why donald trump is the president of the united states. so david, have you ever heard something like that come out of the white house before? i ve heard it inside the w
phone on saturday. wouldn t you like to eavesdrop on that phone call? sure. look, we have two things going on at once here. we have a kind of pathology of lying, which is what we re here to discuss i believe, and we also have an enormous amount of presidential activity in the area of policy, some of it perhaps wise, some of it perhaps very unwise. and we need to parse through both. and of course we all want to know what that conversation is going to be about and wheths er putin has a lot to do with his election or doesn t have a lot to do with his election. we re still trying to find out what the exacts of that are. whether it starts with thank you and you re welcome. we need to do a lot more reporting. and i agree with mr. bannon about that. a lot more reporting. do you think we need to shut up and do a lot more listening? listen, blaming the media and this whole adversarial