Sarah Matthews and Jason Horowitz: Trump Propaganda and Italian Fascism

Tim Miller (0:12)

Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Daily. I am your host, Tim Miller.

I got a great email, an uplifting email this morning from a listener, Nicole Bassett, who said that, in part because of some rants that I've done on this show, she decided to jump into an R plus 19 state senate district in Oregon.

And I do truly believe this. I just think that there are not enough people running in some of these local districts that you think are Republican, but where folks might be gettable this year because they're so unhappy with Trump. And so I'm happy Nicole jumped in. You can go find out more about her at bassettfororegon.com. Appreciate her. We've got a double header for you today. In segment two, it is Jason Horowitz, an old friend of mine. We're going to talk about fascism in Italy and the Bulwark Pope. But up first, couldn't be happier to welcome back to the show, a contributor to the Bulwark doing our TikToks and more. She's also sparring with Scott Jennings on CNN a lot and really getting some good reps in there. She used to be Deputy White House Press Secretary in the first Trump administration. It's Sarah Matthews. What's up, Sarah?

Sarah Matthews (1:15)

Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me back on the pod.

Tim Miller (1:17)

I'm happy to do it. I wanted to chat with you a little bit because I feel like sometimes I get into my insider-y gossipy side about politics, and there are a lot of people out there that are like, what the fuck are you talking about, Tim? I think that's particularly potent when you get into these media stories around what's happening in the White House. So that would be interesting since you were there as a deputy press secretary to talk about just the basics of what's happening here, with Politico and CNN and MSNOW getting kicked out. What does that mean? Do these guys have an office in the White House?

How do you get a seat in the pool? Maybe just run through for people what actually happens and then why it's significant.

Sarah Matthews (2:01)

Yeah.

So you can be credentialed White House media and not necessarily be part of the pool because the purpose of the pool is that it's just a select number of reporters who are on duty to follow the president's movements that day. And that's because you can't have all of these hundreds of credentialed White House media in the room at every event. You can't squeeze them all into the Oval Office. You can't take them all on Air Force One. And so it becomes this group of around 15 to 20 reporters. And it's all split up between you have print reporters who are putting out a press pool report of what the president is doing and saying throughout the course of the day. You have a TV camera crew that is there that is recording all the video and audio. And then they're sending that and sharing it to all the other TV networks.

A radio reporter, still photographers, the list goes on. And so you have those reporters who are on duty to be part of the White House press pool that day, and then just share and disseminate what they are gathering from the president's actions that day.

And the reason that this is important is because the White House is sending out its own information. They send out their own transcripts. They publish their own photos and video and all of these things. But the White House gets to choose and be selective about what they are sharing with the public. And so that's why you need an independent White House press pool that is there gathering what is actually happening, because they can tell you, here's what happened when the cameras were off, here's who walked into this meeting or left this meeting, and give you all these details that maybe the White House wouldn't be so willing to share. And what we've seen happen, actually, that's been interesting even before Trump's ban on Politico and CNN and MSNOW, is that at the beginning of Trump's tenure in Trump 2.0, the White House actually took control of the White House pool Typically, this was decided by the White House Correspondence Association. They would set the rotation for who was a part of the pool each day. But when Caroline Levitt took over as press secretary, that was probably the biggest change that she made, was that she said, no, we're taking that away from the White House Correspondence Association, and we're going to be deciding who those pool reporters are. And that gave them substantially more power over how the president was covered. And that's why we're seeing these new media seats sometimes be part of, which I would say is bullshit, fake news, my interpretation of fake news. But these kind of fake outlets like OANN and Newsmax, where it's completely biased. But Caroline took control of that and set who the pool reporters were. And now we're seeing what the consequences of that are, of WHCA even giving a little bit of power to the White House, where now the White House is banning certain press from not just being part of the pool, but not even having access to the White House in general.