The media’s hypocrisy and hyperventilating in the age of Trump

Mika was not able to attend Saturday, so Trump asked that she come by the next night for a few minutes before his annual New Year’s Eve party. We walked through the metal detectors and straight into the start of a black-tie function where we were dramatically underdressed. At 7:30 p.m., Mika and I were guided by security through a sea of tuxedos and evening gowns, were introduced to a 10-year-old boy by PEOTUS, and quickly made our way upstairs. The topic for Sunday night’s discussion was intended to involve an interview we wanted to conduct before the inauguration, but personal topics came up, as they do in many such meetings we have with public officials. Mika and I have known Trump for more than a decade, so we caught up on each other’s families and we asked how his son was adapting to the big changes happening all around him. Without getting into personal details, the entire family is nonplussed by the transition process and is taking most things in stride, other than the relentless media glare that exasperates every presidential family.

I do not know whether we will end up with an interview with the incoming president next month, but I do know that the reaction from some media reporters has been an equal dose of hyperventilation and hypocrisy that such a meeting ever took place. Never mind the inconvenient fact that a passel of reporters and media types has had more meetings with the current president than Mika and I have ever had with Trump. Also don’t bother yourself with boring details of history that show how Washington Post legend Ben Bradlee was extraordinarily close with JFK, or how New York Times legend Joseph Alsop practically kicked down John Kennedy’s door at the 1960 Democratic convention to demand that Lyndon Johnson be his vice-presidential pick. And forget the fact that Walter Lippmann constantly offered LBJ advice, or that Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham was close friends with Nancy Reagan and a regular dinner companion with Nancy and her powerful husband. Oh, and please don’t bother yourself with the fact that Edward R. Murrow quit CBS News to go work for the Kennedy administration just as Time’s Jay Carney jumped from the campaign trail to be communications director for Vice President Biden.