President Trump has a frequent, if slightly out-of-date, complaint in the era of the online press: The stories he prefers always seem to get buried in the print edition.
After signing a deal to reduce drug prices, the president complained that the New York Times had only written “a little story,” and worse yet, the positive coverage was tucked “way in the back of the paper.” Never mind that the publication sells more digital than print subscriptions, or that the story now lives forever online. Trump remains obsessed instead with the real estate of the front page.
He reads hard copies of all the big papers and then he consumes most everything else.
The president famous for his attacks on “fake news” may be the most voracious consumer of journalism in the modern era. “You can't win battles unless you know your enemy,” Hogan Gidley, who served as principal deputy press secretary during his first term, told RealClearPolitics. “He knows the enemy because he reads them.”
More than half a dozen current and former White House officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the oversized presidential news diet, agree. The consensus: “He is a news junkie.”
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