Should Trump's CPAC Speech Be Covered Live?
The lure of the Dark Side will be powerful to cable TV producers ...
image via wikimedia commons
Should Trump’s CPAC Keynote speech on Sunday be covered live by cable networks? The lure of the Dark Arts will, of course, be powerful to cable TV producers. Trump has not given a public speech since his revisionist history Final Farewell Address at Joint Base Andrews. That speech can only be properly construed under the category of revisionist because it minimized the infamous Capital Riot speech, its predecessor, that used the words “fight,” or “fighting” 20 times. And the Capital Riot speech, Trump’s last-ditch attempt to thwart the concluded election of 2020, incited terrorists to storm the temple of American democracy. Trump, we cannot fail to note, has also made tens of thousands of false of misleading statements when he was President. In other words, the former President of the United States is a liar, and a dangerous one at that.
So, to put it more clearly — Should a dangerous liar’s CPAC Keynote speech on Sunday be covered live by cable networks?
The argument can be made. An ex-President’s first public outings are usually newsworthy. Ex-Presidents faced criticism — newsworthy criticism — for giving lucrative speeches on the “mashed potato” circuit upon leaving office. Those speeches are almost exclusively to the overclass, always at an outrageously inflated price. Obama has been criticized for post-Presidential paid speeches; Bill Clinton mints his own speechifying money; Reagan gave two largely derided speeches in Japan for $2 million, considered quite excessive at the time. To what degree, one wonders, do ex-Presidents have their post-office financial future in mind when, say, considering estate taxes and capital gains?
But I digress …
It must be added that Trump is also a ratings generator of the highest magnitude. No small factor indeed in the cable producer’s mind. He is an ex-President giving his first formal speech after office that just happens to attract eyeballs — can you hear the producers saliva hitting the consoles? So why not cover his CPAC speech live on a Sunday and reap the whirlwind of viewer wrath on a (generally) slow news day? Isn’t that kind of show-me-the-money what cable is supposed to be for? And not just cable news, dear reader, but also print journalism. The controversies of the Trump Presidency were a stimulus package to ailing media! CJR’s Musa al-Gharbi reported in September:
Trump has been great for business. The Times saw a record spike in subscriptions over the course of the 2016 election cycle, due largely (in the Times’ own accounting) to the mutual antagonism between Trump and the paper of record. The publication now boasts a record-high number of paid subscribers. It is not alone: many outlets have seen sharp increases in readership and subscribers by capitalizing on (and reinforcing) the obsession with Trump.
And just as Trump has been good for the media, likewise the media has been good to Trump. Jeff Zucker, for example, has had a curious — and financially very lucrative — relationship with The Donald. No one is more responsible for raising Trump’s national profile than Jeff Zucker. But when Trump ran for President, Zucker initially dismissed his former television protégé as a sideshow. “But as soon as he saw the ratings his old star could still deliver, he spent 2015 and 2016 turning CNN into a platform for his ambitions,” Ben Smith notes in the New York Times. “He went so far as to turn the camera to the empty podium before Mr. Trump’s rallies (a chyron read: ‘DONALD TRUMP EXPECTED TO SPEAK ANY MINUTE’), while other presidential candidates seethed and suspected — accurately, it turns out — that the two men maintained a cozy back channel.” Charmed, I’m sure. Zucker has since been largely criticized for going easy on Trump in the 2016 election season.
But Trump is now in the hour of the wolf. While still powerful, he is without a prominent social media handle. He is a twice impeached ex-President in exile at Mar a Lago. He seethes at McConnell, while McConnell has actual legislative power. Trump can stir public sentiment, to be sure, but his only real ability to affect change involves the size of his steak at the club. How far the mighty have fallen.
Again — Should Trump’s CPAC Keynote speech on Sunday be covered live by cable networks? The cablers have shown willpower in the past, eschewing free, unwavering coverage of Trump’s white grievance rallies. An interesting exchange on the subject at the Hacks on Tap podcast, between Never Trumper and GOP activist Mike Murphy and Robert Gibbs, who served as the twenty-fifth White House Press Secretary from 2009 to 2011 under President Obama. Transcribed from the Hacks on Tap podcast:
Mike Murphy: “Should the cable channels cover the speech live, giving him more oxygen, like they’ve done for so long? Or now that he’s ex President, should they not, and what do you think they will do. Other than Fox …
Robert Gibbs: “I was going to say Fox will probably declare Sunday at CPAC a national holiday and not just film Donald Trump live (laughter) but probably interview (Trump’s) children and their grandchildren and anything else. Here would be my test if I was a producer at a cable network, say CNN or MSNBC: I do not believe that the test of a former President speaking and going live should be one that they acquiesce. I think that when Presidents speak we cover them regardless of what they say or when they say it or where they say it because they’re Presidents. And I think the networks all too late to the idea of needing to do some correction at what he is saying. I don’t think the litmus test of somebody like Trump speaking should be covered live.
“Should it be a news event? Absolutely. I mean, whether Mike (Murphy) or anybody else likes it or not Donald Trump remains the head of the Republican Party, and he will for the foreseeable future until somebody decides — or he decides — he’s not the head of the Party. So it should be covered as a news story, but not as a live event.”
The notion of covering the CPAC as a news event, perhaps even supplying highlights after the fact is an interesting compromise to airing the whole thing uninterrupted. Trump, as previously noted, is a liar who has been known to incite violence in crowds. To turn over the public airwaves to such a man, already seething with anger at his diminished state would be the height of irresponsibility from the cablers. If a viewer wants to see the rally live, they can always turn to Fox or Newsmax or OANN. Murphy, ever the strategist, later in the program posited: “If (Trump) does something amazing that’s huge news— cover it bigger. But live feed is purely a moneymaking scam and I’m hoping they’ve learned from their mistakes and are now being more prudent.”
Let us hope they have.