How Trump silenced himself

Lewis Goodall (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

Jon Sopel (0:06)

Okay, so there is no microphone, because there's no microphone, because the pool cameras aren't there. So maybe, Tim, this is one example of it backfiring just a little bit, pick up on some of things Michael was saying. And...

Emily Maitlis (0:22)

This is what it sounds like when the media as one decide they will not cover Trump.

Lewis Goodall (0:29)

That was on Newsmax, the most sympathetic channel there is to the president. And it's beginning to look like that Donald Trump's media ban is backfiring spectacularly. So what's he going to do? Surrender or be defeated in the courts? Welcome to The News Agents.

The News Agents It's Jon.

Emily Maitlis (0:55)

It's Maitlis.

Lewis Goodall (0:55)

It's Lewis. And this time yesterday, we were wondering what would be the reaction of the US media to Donald Trump's ban on the three news organizations. And I think we all thought that, oh, well, you know, it's a dog eat dog world and there will be no solidarity. And the media organizations will go their own way. And life will continue without CNN or MSNOW or Politico in the White House press office, press pool, and we were wrong.

What has happened is that they have stood united. Stills photographers have stood united. And so Donald Trump was off to New York to go and see Zoran Mamdani, head of the UN General Assembly.

And there weren't cameras there to film him departing. There weren't cameras there to film him arriving. There weren't the Stills photos of made available to all the news organizations. And suddenly Donald Trump, who loves nothing more in the whole wide world than a camera, didn't have one in front of him.

Emily Maitlis (2:02)

I cannot tell you how unusual that is. I mean, unprecedented. Because the reason there is always this central camera, pool camera, and it rotates between the different broadcasters. But the point of the pool camera is, it is there to witness a moment of history at any single point in the US presidency. In other words, if there had been an assassination attempt, as we have seen in the past, if there had been a moment when something cataclysmic happened, you would have wanted it to be recorded, not just by some fellow on a smartphone, but by a registered media outlet. And that didn't happen. And so, actually, the fact that we're talking about Trump and Mamdani, Trump was never meant to be at that press conference with Mamdani. He crashed a press conference, from what we understand. He turned up a Mamdani side. I mean, he, you know, called ahead, invited himself, all the rest of it. He called ahead to say, I will be with Mamdani, to find the press corps that he just rejected.

Lewis Goodall (3:07)

I mean, I think this is...

I think this is, in a long history of, a checkered history between Trump and the media, I do genuinely think that this is a moment. I mean, previously, it had always been said, and of course, there was truth to this, that Trump has enjoyed an abrasive, but ultimately deeply symbiotic relationship with us, right? You know, we feed off him. Just us. Just us personally, in particular, Jon, especially. But, you know, basically we feed off him, and he feeds off us, and he, on some, there's actually a bit of a sort of dark arrangement in a sense, which is that people like us and people in journalism slightly rail against him, but actually that we sort of almost depend on him for our kind of news life support. I think this is genuinely a moment because Trump is going one step further from simply using us and using the media to further his own ends, right? This is, to me, what the last 24 hours has been that this is not so much a media ban, but actually an attempt to basically introduce a licensing system for journalism, i.e. you only get a license to report on me if and only if I like what you do. Now, that is a continuation in development on things he's tried to do before, including in the Trump first term. But I think this is the first time and concerted time that you've seen different media organizations with very different ideological stripes actually responding in a way, which is to say, this is the line. So I think it is a real moment in the long history.

Emily Maitlis (4:30)

We should point out that Fox, like Newsmax, were part of that pulling away.

Lewis Goodall (4:34)

Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. So there was absolute unity across the whole spectrum of opinion in US media that this was not acceptable what Donald Trump has done.