May 10, 2024 | Reading Time: 4 minutes
Are elite Democrats losing faith in the Washington press corps?
Hillary Clinton leaned into reporters, talking about how they’re personally at risk if a “determined demagogue” wins the election.
Hillary Clinton was on “Morning Joe” Thursday. Host Joe Scarborough asked the former secretary of state and former Democratic presidential nominee for help. He said that while we seem to talk about Donald Trump a lot, too many Americans still don’t have an urgent sense of the unique dangers he poses to democracy. “Help us out with that if you will.”
What’s interesting was her choice of subject.
It was the Washington press corps.
This is interesting, because elite Democrats like Hillary Clinton don’t typically do that. They usually spend their time with the news media talking about the political opposition, about shared social problems, about policy solutions to those problems and why the Democrats will work toward implementing those policies if they get enough votes.
In particular, she could have spent her limited time speaking directly to “Morning Joe” viewers about the threats that Trump embodies, perhaps even citing his most recent interviews with Time magazine, in which the former president said he’d break the law by withholding congressional funding for things he doesn’t like, literally the same crime that got him impeached the first time when he withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for its cooperation in smearing Joe Biden.
Amazing was Clinton’s suggestion that continued faith in American institutions – in this case, the press – is misguided. “People did not take the kinds of things that we saw before in the 1930s as seriously as they should, including American journalists. People were taking it at face value. ‘Oh, this can be controlled. [Adolf Hitler] may have said some outrageous things but, you know, the institutions will hold.’”
Importantly, elite Democrats like Hillary Clinton usually characterize their political worldview as if it were not inherently political. Instead, they say it’s common sense or it’s the right thing to do. In this, they encourage people to keep faith in political institutions with the idea that such faith will advance the interests of the Democratic Party.
But she didn’t do that.
Instead, she implied that the reason we can talk about Trump nonstop without there being a broader understanding of his unique threats to democracy is because the Washington press corps isn’t doing its job properly. “It’s one thing to cover the circus, and the circus is covered,” Clinton said yesterday. “People can’t stop covering the circus. Every utterance, every insult, every outrageous action or comment – it gets covered. The context is often missing. What does that really mean?”
In an amazing turn, she suggested that if reporters don’t change course soon, some of them “might be forced out of business” by a “determined demagogue” who “doesn’t believe in elections” but instead “believes in his own power, his own right to power, and his demand that he be installed regardless of whether he gets the votes or not.”
More amazing was her suggestion that continued faith in American institutions – in this case, the press – is misguided. “People did not take the kinds of things that we saw before in the 1930s as seriously as they should, including American journalists. People were taking it at face value. ‘Oh, this can be controlled. [Adolf Hitler] may have said some outrageous things but, you know, the institutions will hold.’”
She said: “I don’t think the press has done enough to basically say: ‘OK, you can watch the circus. But let’s tell you what that means. Let’s talk to people who have a real understanding of how dictatorships evolve. Let’s look at the people he admires and what they have already done.’”
Back in 2016, we didn’t have interviews with him. We didn’t have a track record of four years in office. There was a lot of speculation. I understood that people wouldn’t take what I said as gospel about what I thought could happen. I get that. But now, we know.
We’ve seen him and we’ve heard him. We need to do a better job of making it absolutely clear that someone who says these things, well, maybe he wouldn’t jail all of his political opponents. One is one too many. Maybe he wouldn’t try to force out of business members of the press who didn’t agree with him. One is one too many.
Maybe this would be our last election.
Like I said, elite Democrats don’t usually do this. If they criticize the press corps, it’s usually obliquely. Clinton’s points, however, were very pointed, I thought. Also, given who she is, I wonder if this thinking is more widely shared among Democratic elites. They used to trust the press corps, even when it was dripping in bad faith. Yet here’s Clinton leaning into reporters, talking about how they’re personally at risk.
Perhaps it is indeed widely shared. The president implored reporters during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to take politics more seriously. “Eight years ago, you could have written off it as just Trump talk,” he said. “But no longer. Not after January 6th.” He went on to say:
“I’m sincerely not asking of you to take sides but asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment; move past the horserace numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics; and focus on what’s actually at stake. I think, in your hearts, you know what’s at stake.”
It wasn’t just an ask.
Prior to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Biden sat down for a long interview with satellite radio host Howard Stern, a decision that was widely interpreted as a snub to the publisher of the Times. It was reported that the only way to get publisher AG Sulzberger to stop making a fetish of the president’s age was for him to sit for an interview with the Times or one of the other major news media outlets.
Then, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Biden mocked Sulzberger and, by extension, the Washington press corps. “I have higher standards,” he said. “I do interviews with strong, independent journalists, who millions of people actually listen to, like Howard Stern.”
Again, he wasn’t just asking reporters to be better.
By sitting with Stern, but not the Times (or the Post or CNN), Biden was putting out there the possibility that access isn’t assured – that there is a cost to doing journalism as usual, and that if the Times and the others keep covering the circus, then covering it some more, without providing essential context and perspective in the service of democracy, they may have more than a Republican Party constantly on their backs. They might have a Democratic Party on their backs, too.
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. He writes the daily edition. Find him @johnastoehr.
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