Trump’s friendly audience in media briefings
President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Modi met last week and addressed the press. The questions they received say a lot about the state of democracy.
India and the United States are the world’s largest and longest standing democracies, respectively. They are places where, historically, a free press and even a challenging press has thrived.
Yet, last week when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump took questions during two separate availabilities — a photo opp in the Oval Office and a formal press conference in the East Room — they largely weren’t challenged. A press corps that is increasingly being hand selected by leaders lobbed softball questions.
The substance of what Modi and Trump had to say was not particularly problematic: Largely laudatory congratulations to each other for accomplishments, memories they had together, and some announcements.
The United States will increase military sales to India, Trump claimed in the “many” billions of dollars, with an eventual goal, he stated, of providing the country with F-35 fighters.
The two leaders rededicated themselves to the Quad: an alliance of the United States, India, Japan and Australia, a group designed to secure peace in the Indo-Pacific.
President Trump attacked India’s high tariffs, reiterated the US reciprocal tariffs and announced India’s Prime Minister pledged to lower tariffs on US goods. He promised to invest in India’s energy security. He emphasized the need to export oil, gas and LNG to the country and invest in nuclear energy, something multiple administrations have sought to do.
Both leaders pledged to work together on defense, trade routes, artificial intelligence and advanced technology. Modi shared that India is opening consulates in Los Angeles and Boston.
While one can debate the investments or how they are executed, none of this was really troubling or surprising. Instead it was in the questions they received from those who said they were press in the engagements — questions like the first question from an American reporter to Prime Minister Modi: “How much more confident are you with President Trump leading this country … versus with Biden’s incompetence and weakness over the last four years?”
Trouble is forecast for a democracy when the press corps that surrounds the leaders ask only the most effusive of questions.
A Bipartisan Annoyance
I’ve staged hundreds of press conferences and media availabilities. As an early campaign aide to then Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, and later as White House Director of Press Advance, I worked with the media organizations covering the leaders around the world.
Candidates and Presidents hold press conferences when they have something new to announce, agreements to outline, or sometimes when they simply want to drive the news.
At President Obama’s first joint press conference with the Prime Minister of India, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Obama emphasized the importance of the US-India relationship moving forward, outlined a broad agreement of shared economic investments, emphasizing the need to connect small and medium sized businesses, reiterated a shared commitment to clean technology, and a commitment to the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement.
Before any joint press conference — meaning one the President is going to host with another world leader — the delegations have already agreed on a timeline for questions, and sometimes even how many questions they will take, and the balance from each nation’s press corps. It often fell to people like me to negotiate based on each leader’s preference. The debate was long with countries like China that refused questions from the U.S. press unless the most senior leaders got involved.
After the press conference, I remember how frustrated our officials were with some of the press questions from our US press contingent. Which is natural. You could have a press conference about US-India relations, but the question asked by an American journalist might have nothing to do with the matter at hand. Sometimes we’d be overseas talking about NATO, and the U.S. press would ask the President a question about abortion.
Honestly, it was frustrating. But I was always proud that we didn’t tell the U.S. press what to ask. Freedom of the press is an American value.
At President Obama’s first press conference with India’s Prime Minister Singh, President Obama outlined the two men would take two questions, the first going to the U.S. Press, specifically to CBS Radio’s Mark Knoller.
Knoller asked the President when he was going to make a decision on U.S. action in Afghanistan, how many troops he would be sending, how he would pay for it, and what was his timeline for the engagement. The question was not about US-India relations.
President Obama answered the question saying he would soon announce what he could, and then tried to pivot back to the topic at hand: “Now, I think it's worth mentioning since I'm with the Prime Minister of India that this important not just to the United States, but it's important to the world, and that the whole world I think has a core security interest in making sure that the kind of extremism and violence that you've seen emanating from this region is tackled, confronted in a serious way.”
It was routine for my colleagues to grow frustrated about the questions going off topic, or failing to understand the significance of the moment. All parties I’ve worked with have complained about the media. Often, there’s bipartisan agreement on who they find most obnoxious.
When I got to know Sean Spicer, President Trump’s first Press Secretary, I found it interesting that one member of the media seemed to particularly get under his skin: Jonathan Karl of ABC News. That was a coincidence because I’m not sure I worked with a Press Secretary working for President Obama, and I worked with three — Robert Gibbs, Jay Carney and Josh Earnest — who enjoyed all interactions with Jon Karl.
In my experience, Jon Karl was just doing his job.
A shifting landscape
President Trump and Prime Minister Modi had two opportunities with the media — relatively long engagements by normal standards.
The first engagement was in the nation’s Oval Office — a location that Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has called a “privilege” to cover. And though there’s been a long set pool of reporters — determined not by the President’s handlers but by the press itself — the AP was recently shut out, because the organization, which has a large, global audience has not changed the Gulf of Mexico to match President Trump’s rebranding of the “Gulf of America.”
President Trump and Prime Minister Modi were beginning their discussions. The two in native languages told their press corps what they expected. “Any questions?” the President asked.
The first question was: “You are both very popular leaders in your respective countries. You have spoken about a commonsense diplomatic doctrine. So what's a Trump-Modi doctrine that we should expect from the USA?”
Laughter follows before the answer: “I agree with you,” President Trump said. “We’re going to have a fantastic relationship. And it has been like the whole world has been set back over the last four years by the weakness of the United States, the weak leadership of the United States, but I think we’ve taken care of it in just three weeks.”
Later President Trump calls out a member of the press corps after her question begins: “President Trump, first of all, congratulations for the fantastic 24 days of your presidency, historic and unprecedented decisions that you made, transformational reforms.”
“I like her, I like her,” he responds, gesturing to Prime Minister Modi about the member of his press corps.
India, for all its promise and vibrancy, has in recent years experienced a troubling trend in its media freedoms. Journalists who have written critically about Modi or poked around too much have landed in jail, and the country’s press freedom rating has declined rapidly.
The United States, traditionally with a forceful media that pushes back on any leader suppressing media freedom, is experiencing a seismic shift of its own. As I’ve written about, both parties seem more interested in what influencers have to say, and are sitting for interviews with them rather than traditional media outlets, gaining interviews and opportunities that go far and wide. I wrote of my frustration with the Democrats leaning into said influencers at the DNC, and received some push back from those even within my own circles.
This is a new media ecosystem, in a lot of ways. And I understand it: There’s a frustration so many in elected office have, having interacted with constituents to land in that position, that the media is often out of touch with the public. And contentious.
Sometimes ratings echo their frustrations: some of our nation’s prestigious outlets have seen a rapid decline in trust. Sometimes I get frustrated with how much more I learn out of an interview of an elected leader with an “influencer” than I do with our traditional media.
But there’s a bigger worry I have for excluding the traditional media, or just even going around it. Vibrant democracies can so easily go the way of Venezuela.
State TV
My first experience with Hugo Chavez from Venezuela was jarring.
He showed up at a multilateral side meeting with President Obama at the Summit of Americas, with his press corps forcing their way into a meeting, throwing jabs and elbows to enter. He treated his media — following his every move, celebrating the leader — as an out of control paparazzi, all the while controlling what would end up in print.
To that end, it was always surprising to me that even the most heinous leaders of countries with no human rights would have a “press corps” with them. They would document everything they did, in many cases with a filter before it could reach the public. Leaders who could no longer walk would be protected by their “press,” showing only photos that would make the leader look strong.
From Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, to President Xi of China, all these leaders have “press” access. But there are no tough questions. Rather, some of the questions were seemingly designed to boost the image of the leader.
Why have a press corps if not to ask tough questions? We need to be vigilant and call out when we see it. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, if the questions posed to world leaders in your own country are on par with repressive and nations with limited notions of freedom — that is a real warning sign for our democracy.
There are some real questions about the fairness and freedom of the media in the United States, and whether there’s a right or left tilt. I would argue Barack Obama couldn’t have been elected without the Daily Show and Donald Trump couldn’t have been elected without far right influencers and the power of Fox News, where hosts of shows literally appear onstage with the President, in a tragic breach of journalistic ethics.
So I obviously think we need to debate what a fair and free media looks like. And I believe the traditional media would be better to include more American voices, not just those we’ve come to know, but pass the mic around for new ideas.
The White House, though, should never have the power to dictate who can and who cannot be part of the protective pool around the President. And whether we voted for President Trump or opposed him, we should be aghast that the questions he’s getting are sycophantic and seem to be hand-picked.
Because that is where a slippery slope to propaganda begins — first by denying access, then by only accepting questions that flatter you. It’s a slippery slope that both parties have enabled but one that Trump is tumbling down these days.