A fraud conviction he says is politically motivated hes now calling for his supporters to boycott the vote those were the headlines here on their next its up front to stay with us. Aljazeera where ever you. His has been a year of couldnt travel see him crises of breaking rules and telling lies so how do you cover how do you hold to account a president as unique as donald trump and from special. Promoting us neo nazis retreating british new fascists peddling conspiracy theories and brazen lies defending alleged child sex abuse and threatening a nuclear war with north korea there has never been a president of the United States quite like donald trump so how do you cover President Trump and how is he survived his first year in office against all odds in this up from special im joined from chicago by gwenda blair a longtime trump biographer from milwaukee by Charles Sykes a former conservative radio talk show host and author of how the right lost its mind and here in the studio by jane coast and senior politics reporter at vox and Daniel Dale Washington Bureau chief for the toronto star who famously keeps a running tally of all trumps lives done neal that is a task i do not envy i thank you all for joining me on outfront daniel as a political journalist in your view what makes this moment to this era were living through so unique what makes trump and covering trump so different to any president or National Leader thats come before him in your view well lets start with the dishonesty hes averaging three fast claims per day thats a pace we havent seen we havent seen a president attack the media like this we havent seen the president this unpredictable i think from a journalist perspective whats so strange whats so unique an amazing is that the news cycle has already started off and by six am it doesnt stop until midnight and there is no rhyme or reason to it there is no schedule to it the news cycle is driven by this president s erratic. Impulsive behavior its just its just so different and you say you know the three lies a day and obviously when you say to a trump supporter of some of those you look hes a serial fabricator he tells lies on this record level their argument is all politicians lie why focus on trump well my counterargument is that not all politicians lie like this you talk to any historian of the american presidency and they will tell you you know our president s have been dishonest on occasion some more frequently than others but we have not seen the pace and triviality of many of these lies pointlessly loaded everything so we see bill clinton lie under pressure trying to fend off scandal we saw barack obama be at least somewhat dishonest in selling his Big Health Care policy we see trump lie about the size of crowds you know the stuff it was raining during the normally you know that was the first one on my list so from the very first day of his presidency he was saying nonsensically needlessly wrong stuff as a biographer of donald trump someone whos covered him and his family for decades you have perhaps a unique insight into what might make him tick has he always been like this should we should the media have been as surprised as shocked as weve been his outbursts his behavior or was this always going to be the case. Well in a word no nobody should have been surprised in the one nine hundred ninety s. When he began to have a series of corporate bankruptcy he had made himself too big to foreclose on and i think whats happened during the campaign and now in the white house is through the miracle of twitter he has made himself too big to fact check so those three lies a day which you would think would sink anybody. He made himself too big a fact check and heres a crazy question for you as a biographer and someone whos been what she would a distance the big picture over many years when you see the u. S. Media the White House Press corps on a day to day basis what are they getting wrong in their approach to covering this unique president i think there needs to be kind of simon its a tough thing to do but simultaneously. The press corps has to respond to those tweets has to respond because thats whats driving attention you cant ignore them but at the same time keeping everybodys eye on the ball of what else is happening while the distraction of the tweets are going on what is happening across all the governmental agencies what are the great shifts that are going on in various departments all the things that are going on on capitol hill both things at once thats a tough act jane youre a politics reporter done youre based in washington d. C. A lot of american ordinary American Voters who dont like donald trump which is a majority of the country if you believe the polls they would say look the media has played a massive role in letting trump get to where he is and survive in office because as hostile as they may sound as as many exposes the New York Times of the Washington Post may do ultimately theyre still playing the old game were trying to play a completely different game i would say so i mean keep in mind that this is we have a president who is in a home alone too if theres anything he knows he knows the media and he knows kind of the fact that you know if you give the media something to talk about the media will talk about it theres a whole litany of things that donald trump has said hed do or promise to do or said he would definitely do on his first day of office it just havent happened and because there is always just this constant push of tweet after tweet after tweet it kind of gets lost in there and so i think that something thats really important for the media to do is like ok you know we need to be anchored in something that is not Donald Trumps twitter feed you need to talk about kind of the deeper story has lots of things are getting done right out of his twitter feed its not as great getting things done exactly like and so a lot of things are happening some things are getting but its really important to focus on something besides his twitter feed or because besides what hes telling you charlie saw exit i want to ask you about your youre a well known conservative former radio host a lot of the republican which is before i get to the your or sort of a book called how the right. Lost its mind but when you listen to what jane was saying and when you hear what psychologists have written about this idea of talk about cognitive load that we dont have the mental capacity to keep up with so much controversy and crisis because were digesting the last big story were processing it and theres another big story were just too much news too much controversy how do you cope with that in your everyday life. Well thats exactly right in a lot of ways donald trump has broken the model of journalism because he does lie so so so often and look donald trump is donald trump and we should have known very clearly that this man is a serial liar hes a con man hes been engaged in in multiple fraud so he is who we is the shocking thing thats going on in american politics right now is what he is doing to americans that the effect on the culture which has become more and more accepting of the untruth of the lies and by the way its worse than just lying and theres a real disconnect from reality this is this is a president United States who spends a lot of time deep into the fever swamps of conspiracy theories but if you if you shift the focus back to his fellow republicans my fellow conservatives americans thats whats really shocking there indifference to this theyre willing to this wasnt its not just their indifferent its not just indifference they put up i think you called yourself the reddest of meat for his base is it not a problem its not just the media as i put that seems to be enabling trump he has a very loyal base under republican Body Movement even Senior Republicans who maybe not privately fountains of his but publicly are enabling him how do you push back against the well you try to push back against that except i think that that this this last year you know has seen the degree to which the willingness of republicans to capitulate to all of this and so when donald trump lies hes not just lying about one thing or another you know this is really an attack on truth itself on credibility it itself and there is a method to his madness when he attacks the media one of the things hes doing is to deal with jenna mice any independence words of information that might criticize him immunized himself against any of the bad stories that are coming this is a fundamental challenge to american journalism im not sure they figured out how to cope with that and what do you think about this idea that its a. Deliberate strategy on his part to distract the media to the media that hes a monster manipulator the media because thats one school of thought another school of thought is just hes a hes a guy whos demented unstable cant control himself egomaniac just tweets without thinking which is is it both or is it one or the other what do you think having studied him for so many years is a salesman hes been selling himself his whole career hes an opportunist hes a remarkable opportunist possibly the best in history certainly one of the top ten you know if he has to perform he has to keep everybodys eyes on him and you do that by doing the unexpected hes been doing that his whole career certainly been doing that ever since he started campaigning for the white house in the white house the whole idea is to keep you constant so in your view and that means hes in charge so you know very hard sort of sounds like youre describing a strategic genius to demented egomaniac who cant control his tongue. Genius i leave that to the ages but somebody whos very shrewd about how interested inthe works ok well let me bring in done your your canadian journalist in washington d. C. Covering american dollars for foreign publication as an outsider what do you think american journalists could be doing should be doing to meet the challenge that go under and charlie about well first and foremost i think theres still insufficient Fact Checking being done think about what happens during a president ial debate almost every outlet from regional papers to the New York Times deploys a team of Fact Checkers to call out all the false statements of both candidates and then the next day and the day after and then when one of them gets elected all that all that goes away and Fact Checking what about the argument we have so many studies these days that actually Fact Checking doesnt work it doesnt get through to people thats not going to people just ignore it i push back you know as a sort of amateur selfappointed fact checker i get asked a lot you know do facts still matter does truth still matter and i argue that it does you know look at the polling for example weve seen this year on Trumps Health care plan and his tax cut plan in both of those cases the Approval Rating for those policies has been under twenty percent and so despite trump calling things the best ever fantastic wonderful is going to put money in your pockets going to Save Health Care people arent buying it and so i think we have many sort of glimmers of hope that show us that that truth is not lost that people still do care and its not pointless to bring them facts so ill not know the truth stillness is doing to a lot of quote unquote journalists in the United States today especially in the trump supporting part of the blogosphere and online journalism the bright vaults the info was not about truth its about Conspiracy Theory its about politics and ship its about pushing any nonsense as long as it supports your guy well i fix something that happened with the conservatism that begins this idea that you were going to create a parallel media structure that was parallel to the New York TimesWashington Post but it was a conservative media structure and it would be. One where you know you have your weekly Standards International reviews but then you also have your breitbart syrian for wars but then i think you also get to a sense that you know paul ryan you know in my opinion hes not a supporter of the speaker of the house of representatives hes not supporting trump because he wants to like hang out with him hes supporting trump because he really wants tax cuts it wasnt ever really about you know this private thing of truth justice and the american way it was getting a republican in the white house it was you know we just have to do that and then you know kind of using the trump as a thoroughfare ok everything that they want done let me ask you this you know were seeing the rehabilitation of george w. Bush on some parts of the center left and people are going to even bush was better than and they said well bush invaded iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of people which trump hasnt done yet what do you say to the up criticism of kind of mainstream journalism making trump out to be somehow different to previous president s well i think you can fairly make the argument that george w. Bush or any number of other president s have done worse things than donald trump has done in this first year in office there are been you know wars theres japanese internment you know the american president s of both parties have done terrible things but i think i still think in fundamental ways in terms of his respect for political norms his regard for for truth and accuracy his knowledge of policy and lack of knowledge really this man is different so i dont think in all ways he is objectively worse than every other president but i dont think weve seen anyone like him charlie let me get this how does the quote unquote Mainstream Media of such a thing exists anymore how does it get through to the trump how do you get through to people who just say oh thats great news thats an incredibly important question and nobodys really figured it out right now because one of the things that they think that you know has happened in american politics in American Media has been the creation of the alternative. Reality silos and you know i think some of the investigative work of the Washington Post the New York Times is as good as anything that weve seen in a generation and yet for a lot of voters it does not penetrate because donald trump and in trump world has successfully discredited you know much of their journalism but also they get their information from these web sites from the Breitbart Network from fox news you know from from the from the drudge report at some point i have to say this its going to have to be conservative media trusted conservative media thats going to have to stand up and say to other conservative voters look this is not true we dont want to go this way you know these are the facts so far unfortunately were not seeing that happen big but i dont know that theres anything that the New York Times can do thats going to convince some voter in alabama who gets their news from breitbart dot com that something is is false let me let me let me put this to you theres another aspect to what makes him unique compared to even george w. Bush and previous president s which is his position on race his position on minorities we have seen him do everything from retreat british new fascists to defend us neo nazis a very fine people. Nationalists. When you have a president of United States who is doing these things on a near daily basis again how do you respond to that is there a danger that even unwittingly we will just normalize that kind of rhetoric and behavior well i think that the g. O. P. Very much had two separate messages and has for decades the Republican Party you know they had one talking about policy and tax cuts and talking about you know what we should do about health care having these very good conversations went to each other which with their base right which isnt popular to their base and then they had you know there is a republican strategist named lee atwater who basically said that you can run essentially on demonizing africanamericans and you can do it effectively and you can do it for years. And you know he talked about you know there was something called the southern strategy which nixon used which is basically going to southern voters and saying you know if you vote for this person hell basically let black people into your house essentially and so what i think youre seeing is this resuscitation of this southern strategy but its being used that on steroids its being used in this brand new way because for a lot of these voters they believed we were told you know africanamericans are victims and then donald trump is telling them no no youre the victim and thats all you know this is all someone else like you know i get the relation between trump and the voters and what i selling them what im also interested in what does what does everyone else do what all of us do who are watching this spectacle and say oh we are we in danger of unwittingly even normalizing if we just kind of get but down by the repetition of awful stuff and i think that you know i think there is an idea that i think some people had that trump would change or that could be influenced and i think trump in some ways its a lost cause like i you know me writing about africanamericans and their interview their dealings with this kind of trump government is not going to change trumps mind trump is seventy one years old thats just not going to so we dont know what its going to change when it was in trouble and theres a big debate i mentioned charlie about how do you change trump voters months from a conservative but to done youll your representative of a liberal mainstream publication but youve been around the United States of america during the campaign and during this president yo