Trump’s Angry Tirade Over Failing Press Ban Reveals His Achilles’ Heel: One of the most frustrating things about the capitulation of elite institutions to Donald Trump—from law firms to universities to media companies—has been that the logic of the situation so clearly counseled the opposite. As many have noted throughout Trump’s second term, if institutions facing Trumpian persecution had shelved short-term self-interest and banded together in resistance instead, it would have hobbled his authoritarian tactics at the outset.
Helpfully, this has now been confirmed—belated but significantly—by none other than Donald Trump himself. Late Thursday, while erupting in a wild fury over media companies that have joined forces against his effort to ban select ones from the White House grounds, he accidentally revealed an Achilles’ heel of sorts.
Trump raged as follows:
They only write badly about a man who won the Election IN A GIANT LANDSLIDE, winning all 7 Swing States, the Popular Vote, and 86% of the Counties, etc., and whose Popularity has grown because of the unprecedented SUCCESS our Country is having on both the World Stage, and at home. CNN and MSDNC, to show you how fake they are, today refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the Highly Respected President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng. The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to “TRUMP,” they refused to be there.
Buried in all that derangement is an important revelation. After Trump banned CNN, Politico, and MS NOW—ostensibly on national security grounds, but in reality out of pique—the networks that run the press pool joined them in solidarity, which suspended the pool’s rolling coverage of the president.
As my colleague Tim Noah observed, this has only worked to Trump’s detriment. Though a judge has now temporarily blocked Trump’s ban, the immediate result of the pool… https://newrepublic.com/article/215884/trump-angry-tirade-failing-press-ban-reveals-achilles-heel