It sounds like the culmination of Donald Trump’s lifelong dream, and a nightmare for all but the most ardent MAGA enthusiasts: Trump TV.
It’s neither.
Instead, it’s a slapdash accumulation of various clips and events that show Trump only in a good light, a great light, some are saying the best light ever. Mostly it’s old speeches and ceremonies and such. It will also carry live events, as it did the president’s address to the United Nations on Tuesday.
It’s equal parts funny and pathetic. But Trump has to get coverage from somewhere.
The White House announced the venture, streaming on YouTube and the White House website and called “Trump TV: The Essentials Station,” on Monday, Sept. 21, “streaming 24/7, updated in real time, with top past moments,
announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration all in one place. Not every big moment had made it on your tv, now it can.”
Every big moment that makes Trump look good, that is.
Trump needs TV more than most presidents
If he wants the coverage he’s used to, he’ll need it.
No president has used TV more, depended on TV more, sought the attention of TV more than Trump. He needs it like a shark needs water. Which makes it ironic that major TV news organizations are now more or less ignoring him.
It’s the age-old question. If Trump hosts a ribbon-cutting ceremony for his much-ballyhooed (by him) White House helipad and the TV pool doesn’t cover it, did it really even happen? (Excuse the clunky “if a tree falls in a forest” comparison.)
It did. Video of the event that took place on Monday started showing up online (and on Trump TV), notable only for the lack of major news coverage and for the horrible audio quality that made everything Trump said impossible to hear.
He has only himself to blame.
Trump's media ban is backfiring
On Friday, out of the blue, Trump announced that he was immediately banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. Why? Who knows? “I won in a landslide,” Trump told reporters later. “And I don’t get fair press. I get it from Breitbart. I get it a little from Fox (News).” He threatened to ban more outlets whose coverage he didn’t like.
On Saturday, the White House followed through, refusing entry to reporters from the banned outlets. Trump has pulled this unconstitutional move before, banning Associated Press reporters when the AP refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, renamed on Trump’s whim. The AP sued for access, and it’s still working its way through the courts.
During Trump's first term, the White House tried to revoke the credentials of Jim Acosta, then with CNN. Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump-appointed judge, found that Acosta's First Amendment rights had been violated, and the White House restored his credentials.
On Monday, CNN, MS NOW and Politico also filed a First Amendment lawsuit to restore access. (The case was assigned to Kelly.) This was expected. What was unexpected was what happened next. Major TV networks announced that they were suspending the White House press pool, in the wake of Trump’s bans ― including Fox News. When a network that has been so supportive of Trump joins the boycott, you begin to understand how serious the threats to the First Amendment really are.
ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News rotate the responsibility, and the cost, of covering the president when he travels, when he hosts events or otherwise appears in public. If you want those tasty sound bites of Trump bashing political opponents and the media before he steps onto his helicopter, you’ll have to get them elsewhere.
Trump TV sounds like state TV, but it's little more than a vanity project
Which you can, by the way. No one, including TV networks, newspapers, radio and news websites, has stopped covering the president. They just won’t broadcast his every move in the way Trump and the network audiences are used to.
Thus, Trump TV.
It has the whiff of state TV, something you would find in Russia or North Korea, where leaders are praised, never criticized. It also sounds like what Trump wants when he says, as he did Friday to reporters, that “something is wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories.”
No, there is something right with such a country, one whose First Amendment protects free speech. There is something wrong with a country that doesn’t.
But really, Trump TV doesn’t rise to that level of threat. Trump hasn’t shut down any networks. (The only ones shutting down news organizations these days are the greedy owners of news organizations.) Free speech still exists in the U.S., and this sad little venture won’t change it. It really is a Trump dream, a vanity project that will insulate him further.
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Media commentary with a side of snark? Sign up for The Watchlist newsletter with Bill Goodykoontz.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump TV sounds like state TV. It's just a sad vanity flail | Opinion
