Trumpã¢â‚¬â„¢s Love-hate Relationship With Fox News Just Turned to Hate Again

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has clashed with several media notables, including Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly. (John Minchillo/AP)

Donald Trump has a few thoughts — well, a lot of thoughts; this is Donald Trump, afterward all — most the news media. He likes reporters, he says. Except the ones he doesn't.

"In that location are some very quack people in your profession," Trump says in an interview. "You learn very speedily who'south fair and who's a professional. I'd say l per centum of the reporters I've talked to are expert people. Twenty percent are totally dishonest. Thirty percent are okay, they're fine."

Despite Trump's recent run-ins with Fox News'south Megyn Kelly, Univision'southward Jorge Ramos and other media figures, it's fair to say that many of the reporters who've interviewed Trump tend to like him dorsum. That'south not necessarily a annotate on his politics or his outsize personality but on his unfiltered style of dealing with the press.

Few candidates accept been as open or as direct with the news media — or have thrived on it for as long — as Trump. The billionaire businessman gives and so many interviews, and says so many controversial (and frequently erroneous) things, that it's a full-time chore keeping upwards with his latest outrages, contradictions and misstatements. The abiding barrage seems not just an extension of Trump'due south in-your-face persona but besides may well be strategic, a way to keep his competitors constantly off-residuum.

Unlike most public figures, Trump doesn't ready fourth dimension limits on his interviews or make elaborate pre-interview demands. He rarely goes off the record or "on background," the mode people in ability often do when they offer disparaging comments they don't want traced dorsum to them. Trump disparages plenty, but he does so openly and without apology.

Univision ballast Jorge Ramos, left, asks Donald Trump a question virtually his clearing proposal during a news briefing Aug. 25 in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos was after removed from the room. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

In the class of a 25-minute conversation on Monday, for instance, Trump dropped in shots at Hillary Rodham Clinton ("She's afraid to talk to press. She's got no conviction"), Mitt Romney ("He had besides many pollsters telling him what to do") and Jeb Bush ("low free energy").

He is fully aware that he is what former-schoolhouse newspaper reporters chosen "good copy" — a colorful character who makes news. But Trump seems to crave the media just equally much as it wants him.

"He really loves attention," says Time magazine'southward Michael Scherer, who wrote concluding week'southward cover story on Trump ("The Donald Has Landed. Bargain with Information technology"). "Deep downward, it actually soothes him. Getting attention from the press and the crowds, existence in the spotlight, talking an hour or so without notes, knocking people down — it clearly makes him very happy. In that location's a joy there."

Scherer says Trump'southward entrada media strategy is an extension of the business-building methods he's employed for the past ii decades: "His business empire doesn't exist separate from the attention" he's garnered for himself. "He's a brand. He sells his proper noun, [and puts it on] buildings or bottled water or ties. The more than attention he gets, the more value there is for him."

Trump grants interviews (to favored reporters, at least) with a minimum of bureaucracy and delay. Near of his media requests — "I have hundreds," he claims — are answered promptly past Hope Hicks, 26, his campaign communications manager. She connects her boss with reporters with minimal vetting of topics to be covered. No adviser sits in on the conversation.

Dissimilarity this with the oftentimes tortured negotiations between other presidential candidates and journalists. New York Times Mag reporter Mark Leibovich described his lengthy efforts to land an interview with Clinton for a contour in July. His eventual meeting with the candidate was ground-ruled and caveated to almost suffocation by Clinton'south staff; 1 demanded that Leibovich care for Clinton's unabridged 40,000-square-foot entrada headquarters every bit "off the record."

In an interview, Trump tin be charming, convincing and personal, soliciting your opinion almost this or that. ("You remember Hillary is in trouble with these e-mails?" he asked at ane point the other twenty-four hours.) He can slip-slide from one topic to another, daydreaming of continuity or logical sequence.

"Trump doesn't really sit for an interview, calmly answering question after question," wrote The Washington Mail'due south Robert Costa, who has interviewed Trump more than a dozen times since January. "Instead, he plunges into a roiling, tangential and humor-spiked chat from the moment his assistant, Rhona Graff, connects y'all with his line at Trump Tower."

"He'south ever rarin' to go," says Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist who has interviewed Trump several times over the past decade, including in Baronial for a series of columns. "He listened to my questions and answered them," including whether he considers himself a narcissist (his answer: "I am a human being of great achievement. I win, Maureen, I always win"). Dowd says her experiences interviewing Trump over the years leads her to one conclusion: "It'due south remarkable how petty he's changed."

Although he has held fewer entrada events than some of his rivals, Trump has maximized his media profile by calling into, rather than appearing on, many Television news programs, notes Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies campaign communications. The tactic profoundly increases his visibility without the time-consuming demands of appearing in person, she says.

"He'south probably calling in his pajamas," says Jamieson, who oversees Factcheck.org, which vets candidate statements. "It's as if he's using the national media as his personal channel of unpaid communications. If he calls, he's confident they'll take his telephone call." (Indeed he is: "You've seen the ratings I go," Trump says. "Information technology's all about ratings. I double, triple and quadruple the ratings on CNN and Fob.")

The event is that Trump has been "winning" the news bike on a nearly constant basis since announcing he was running in mid-June. A search of "Donald Trump" in the Nexis database for just one mean solar day at random, Aug. 15, returns 630 mentions of him in the news media. This is far more than Republican challengers such every bit Jeb Bush (372 mentions), Marco Rubio (204), Scott Walker (139) or Ted Cruz (101). The just candidate who approaches Trump in sheer media tonnage is Clinton (581 mentions), the Democratic front-runner.

Trump'southward relationship with the media can be testy, as his theatrical throw-downs with Kelly and Ramos attest. It's not always clear, however, whether his grudges are real or just concocted. He's said some nasty things on Twitter, for example, about "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd. ("pathetic," he called him in July). Yet at that place was Trump on "Meet the Press" on Aug. 16, being amiably grilled by Todd.

For his part, Todd says he'southward let Trump's insults slide off his back. "Five years ago, I might take cared," he says. "My feeling is if you as a journalist determine to internalize the criticism, y'all terminate up losing focus. If you internalize it, this is not the environment you should exist in."

Every bit for Fox host Kelly, Trump says the feud is over. "As far every bit I'1000 concerned, it is," he declares. "Megyn probably doesn't like me, but that'southward okay."

Besides, he suggests, he can go along with Fox — supposedly the Republican kingmaker — without Kelly. Sean Hannity "did a show with me, and he got the highest ratings he's ever had," Trump says. "The [GOP candidates'] fence was the biggest affair e'er on Fob. If I'thousand non in the debate, the ratings are nothing. They know that."

Trump, 69, is a fleck old-schoolhouse when information technology comes to his own media consumption habits. He reads newspapers (The Post, the Times and the Wall Street Periodical), newsmagazines (Time) and news sites voraciously, particularly what's being written most him. Before campaign appearances, he'll os up on regional issues by perusing the local paper, as he did before a contempo advent in Alabama. He also likes the iii leading Lord's day-morning time news programs — "Meet the Press," "Face the Nation" and "This Calendar week" — and "Morning Joe" on MSNBC.

Curiously or non, he doesn't mention any Fox programs.

"I'm very decorated," he says of his media intake. "I don't have time to read authors writing great fiction." Merely he does accept fourth dimension for social media, particularly Twitter. Trump, a relentless tweeter, tends to dictate tweets to his assistant during the twenty-four hour period and does it himself at night on an iPhone. He notes proudly that he has more than iv 1000000 followers — all of them presumably attuned to the thoughts of Donald Trump.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-medias-love-hate-relationship-with-donald-trump/2015/09/01/16d8ee38-50cb-11e5-933e-7d06c647a395_story.html

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