‘No different standard’: How one reporter prepares for a second Trump term

Episode transcript

Gail Chaddock: The 47th president of the United States won’t be inaugurated until January 20. But it feels as if the second Trump administration is already underway, with a surge of nominations, all vetted in prime time, and sweeping changes in the works for Day 1.

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Chaddock: This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m this week’s guest host, Gail Chaddock. We’re back today with Cameron Joseph, senior Washington reporter. Last week he talked with us about a national decline in trust in journalism and how to restore it. Cameron, welcome and thank you for coming back.

Cameron Joseph: Thanks for having me back.

Chaddock: Some of Trump’s Cabinet nominees are already meeting early resistance in the Senate, including within GOP ranks. Do you expect many more of these nominations to go the way of Matt Gaetz?

Joseph: Short answer is no. You know, I did a story last week, when Pete Hegseth was looking like he was really in trouble. And his nomination for running the Pentagon, it looked like it was really dicey. And since that story [was] published, it’s all of a sudden looking a little more like even he may get confirmed, in spite of multiple reports that he’s a rather heavy drinker. There was a police report accusing him of sexual assault. I saw another publication, uh, Trump adviser referred to him as a heat shield and basically said that he’s drawing some of the attention and fury and concern that some of the other nominees that are deeply controversial but less problematic at a personal level. So, look, it’s a Republican Senate. They have a larger majority than in 2017. It is a much Trumpier Senate than it was eight years ago. And while some of these nominees are really controversial, they can afford to lose a couple of votes.

Chaddock: That’s interesting. Why is there such a focus on this nominating process? And why is it so important?

Joseph: Well, it’s important because these are the folks who are going to be running the government. And we’re really getting a very clear sense that this Trump administration is going to be vastly different than the first Trump administration. You have to remember that when Donald Trump won in 2016, he was as surprised as anybody else by it. And they basically didn’t have a plan for who was going to come in and run his administration. And so what happened was a lot of folks came in who weren’t really MAGA Trump types. They were donors or they were, you know traditional conservative Republicans who didn’t necessarily see eye to eye with Trump. And, he said his biggest mistake was putting Jeff Sessions in as attorney general. And Sessions obviously was very Trumpy on immigration issues, but he decided to recuse himself in the Russia investigation. And Trump really never forgave him for that, and made sure that when he tried to make a comeback in the Senate, that he wasn’t going to win his primary.

And so this time around is remarkably different. Trump is putting in a lot of folks who are aggressively loyal to him. Pete Hegseth is one example. I think the best example is Kash Patel who’s talked about going after journalists. Basically it was an enemies list, including, I think it was about a dozen former Trump officials who had come out against him.

Republicans want to confirm Donald Trump’s appointees. And he’s put out folks that really are giving them, you know, a fair amount of them pause. But you know, Republicans have done this before where they express concern, they signal to Trump: “We don’t really want you to do this.” And sometimes Trump backs down, sometimes he pushes forward. And often when Trump just decides to ignore folks who are kind of asking him to slow down, they end up acquiescing.

Chaddock: Cameron, can you help our listeners understand what “outside normal” means?

Joseph: One example is Tulsi Gabbard, former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, who has said some positive things about Russia, has met with now former Syrian strongman [Bashar al] Assad, and has said some things that frankly sounded a lot more like what you normally hear in Russian news propaganda. And so, that is raising a lot of concerns for some folks from across the aisle. The position that she’s been nominated for in Trump’s first term, he put up Dan Coats, who was about as establishment a Republican as you could find, as director of national intelligence. So to see Tulsi Gabbard, who is kind of proof of the horseshoe theory of politics, where you go far enough left and you eventually get right, uh on foreign policy at least.

And, you know, Matt Gaetz, who is this firebrand congressman who helped bring down the Republican Speaker of the House. And his replacement, Pam Bondi, who was the former attorney general of Florida, is very much a Trump loyalist. You know, she had been involved early on in disputing the 2020 election. But she’s viewed as kind of a normie Republican at this point, compared to some of these other nominees. And I think she’s likely going to sail through.

Chaddock: You’re talking about very sensitive issues. This is not a president that likes to see in print a criticism of what he’s doing from members of his own party. So how do you go about trying to get an honest answer, from the Republicans especially that you’re talking to right now?

Joseph: Well, it’s always difficult to get an honest answer from a politician. This is a thing that, in my entire career, has been an issue. Uh, but, you know, what I try to do is just talk to them as much as possible. And what I really love about covering Congress that is unlike most other beats in D.C. is the access is just so good. And I just spent so much time in the basement of the Senate, by the subways which shuttle senators back and forth from their offices, looking for the members I want to talk to, uh, chasing them down the hallway. Sometimes if there’s specific members I want to get time alone with, and not be around other reporters, so they can sometimes speak off record or on background honestly, I’ll just hang out outside their offices when I know votes are coming up, so I’ll get, you know, a few minutes with them alone, or walk back with them to their offices when they let me.

So I really try not to fall into just talking to aides whose job it is to spin you. Uh, some of them are very good, some of them, you know, are very honest within their job. But it’s always better to talk to the principals. And I’ve covered the White House as well, and it can be a very frustrating thing because it’s, I like to joke that it’s 40 golden retrievers chasing one ball. It tends to be the same story every day. And they come out to talk to you when they want to and it’s usually a bunch of reporters peppering them with questions, some who are more interested in getting a great on-camera moment than getting to new information.

Frankly, it’s easier on the Hill because there’s always multiple stories going on. Even when there’s one big story, there’s always different members to talk to. You can always kind of find your own, uh, your own chew toy, especially if you’re willing to put in the time and show up to the inconveniently timed votes that are, you know, late in the evening, early in the morning, you can find moments where you’re talking to these important people one on one.

Chaddock: When you’re talking to people, do you accept or encourage information off the record or on deep background, comments that you cannot attribute to someone but nevertheless have influenced your own thought?

Joseph: Well, I don’t know if I can really give a percentage on that, but it certainly is the case that the more sensitive the topic, the less likely people are going to want to put their names on it. Sometimes people tell me things that, if it came out that they were talking about it, they could lose their jobs. And so there’s a good reason to protect them, so that they’ll speak to you again and I’ll give you real information. Now It doesn’t mean that I take one person’s background claims without putting their names on it and just run a story with it. That is where you have to talk to multiple people and confirm it.

You know, especially when you’re covering “Trump world,” I think that really is, the only way to get real information out sometimes is talking to multiple Trump staffers. Uh, there’s often, willingness to stretch the truth to make people look bad. There’s competing camps in Trump world even now, less so than there used to be. I frankly have had people tell me things that are just proved to not be true in the past. They like to toy with the press, frankly. This isn’t everybody in Trump world, but, uh, they’re willing to say things that may be half true to benefit themselves, or to throw you off the scent of another piece they don’t want you working on. And so it can be really tricky. The best reporters covering Trump, I think, are the ones who are so well sourced that they can sniff that out.

Chaddock: I wanted to just pick up on what you just said, with Kash Patel having an enemies list in a recent book. I go back to the Nixon era, and a real sense that there was something deeply wrong with that presidency and impeachment was justified. Uh, and one of the major items was the enemy list. I mean, this was an appalling thought at the time, that the president, with all the powers of the White House, would have an enemies list and go after them. Why has that term lost its power to shock?

Joseph: I think people are just fundamentally a lot more polarized than they were. You know, we saw, even through the 1990s, really huge swings in public opinion and the electorate and huge spikes and drops and presidential approval, and, you know, folks who voted Republican one election, Democrat the next, back to Republican.

We just don’t see that as much anymore. There’s also been an active effort on the right to convince folks that Democrats are doing the same thing. And, you know, we see a lot of claims about the enemies list from the other side. So it’s, I just think that people have become a little bit inured to it. I also think Donald Trump is very good at playing with the press. And Trump has just been at this for eight years, and I think things that even he used to do that would shock everybody and be a full day or couple day news story, people have just gotten a little bit inured to. Trump is talking about massive deportations of people, I think that will wake people up. If we start seeing legal prosecutions of Trump’s so-called enemies, I think that will certainly generate a lot of headlines. But as it is right now, I think people are just a little bit burned out on both sides.

Chaddock: It’s way too early to be burned out, Cameron. You’ve got to revive the collective energy of your profession on this front. But I do want to talk about exhaustion. Let me just set that aside for one minute. I don’t want to lose another point you just made. We’ve talked about enemies lists being a term that’s taken on a softer meaning. Let’s talk about pardons. We’ve seen a week where President Biden, despite many times saying he would not do this, pardoned Hunter Biden with a very broad pardon, prompting fierce criticism, including within his own party. There’s also now talk of blanket pardons for Trump critics who may have reason to fear prosecution or persecution in the new administration. What do you make of this liberal use of pardons all of a sudden?

Joseph: Well, I think it’s really toxic. I think it’s reasonable to question whether Hunter Biden would have been prosecuted if he had been not named Biden for his actions. There’s a lot of prosecutorial discretion about what to prosecute and what to not. But it is clear that he’s getting off because he is the son of the president, and I think Joe Biden deserves a lot of criticism for that, including from a lot of Democrats who are incredibly frustrated and alarmed that this just basically gives Trump a “but he did it too” type claim.

Now, we have to remember that Donald Trump pardoned a lot of pretty controversial folks in his first term, not least to them, the father of his son in law, Jared Kushner’s father, who’s now appointed ambassador, Charles Kushner. So this isn’t like Biden did something that no one else has ever done. And some of the folks who are outraged about this now, were either ignoring or defending Trump then.

This is frankly a loophole in the Constitution that is now being abused by both sides. And I understand the arguments from some of Biden’s allies that the reason he did this was because Kash Patel was picked to be the head of the FBI, and Biden had a renewed worry about selective prosecution, targeting of a son. And I think that’s a legitimate cause for alarm, not just for Biden, but for a lot of people. And that’s why we’re seeing pushes from some on the left and some anti-Trump folks to pardon everybody who is on Kash Patel’s so-called hit list. But the rule of law is being undermined, it’s a dangerous pattern that we’re in right now.

Chaddock: Peggy Noonan, who is probably better at framing questions than anyone in the Talking Head universe, phrased an interesting one on Saturday on this point. She said: “What have our leaders been up to in the past four years that they require such unprecedented forgiveness?” Is that a fair question?

Joseph: I think it’s a fair question to raise, but I don’t know if the answer is necessarily that they’ve done such, the implication is that they have done such terrible things that they deserve to be brought up on charges. And look, Hunter Biden self-admittedly had some serious drug problems and courts have found him to have done some illegal things. Some of the others who theoretically could be brought up for charges would simply be because they went after Trump. Being a political enemy is not cause for being put in jail in this country. And that is one of the basic promises that keeps American society and democracy running. And if that goes away, I think that we are into uncharted waters as a country.

Chaddock: Well, I think that’s also a concern that has been raised by people that might be accepting of such a pardon. You know, what does that say about their own understanding of their activities in the past?

Listen, the last thing I want to talk to you about is probably one of the most important. You use the word exhausting, and that’s the word that occurred to me when I was thinking about where our podcast should go, because that is a term that journalists were using constantly, and for different reasons.

For example, fact checking. There is so much disagreement about what is a fact in “Trump world,” that if you actually did that, it is exhausting. How do you possibly get your readers to read all the detail you need to unravel what you think are misstatements of fact? What is a fact check that is really imperative to do? And are there others that you just don’t do at this point?

Joseph: I think fact checking is important, but I also think that isn’t insufficient. People are going to believe what they want to believe and, you know, there’s the, that old saw about, you know, the lie has made its way around the world before the truth has put its shoes on. I’m botching that quote. But, you know, if you’re trying to assiduously fact check in real time everything that is said, and this is true for all politicians, but it’s so much more true for Trump, you’re not going to be able to keep up. Trump knows this, and this is one of his superpowers as a politician. You know, I think back a lot to this 2018 comment that Steve Bannon, former senior White House official, still very close to Trump, said, and pardon my French, but it’s not my French: “The Democrats don’t matter, the real opposition is the media, and the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with [expletive].” And I think that when you’re trying to fact check people who are intentionally throwing as much fecal matter at you in real time as possible, you’re going to need a pretty big shovel. And it’s impossible to keep up.

There are many reasons that journalists and the media are losing this fight, and have lost it, over the last decade. Um, and I think part of this is just simply that people are not consuming journalism in the same way that they used to. People may be getting their news from their social media feeds which may be people commenting on other people’s posts that are analyzing or talking about the original media story. Um, and so the quality of information that gets down to people is really falling off.

Chaddock: Cameron, are you planning anything different in how you frame your questions or report stories for a second Trump administration?

Joseph: You know, I’m really not. I’m not holding Trump to any different standard that I hold to Democrats or other Republicans. Like, if you lie to me, you’re gonna get called out for it. I’ve written, you know, pretty hard hitting stories that folks from across the political spectrum have been very mad at me about over the years. And I think that, yeah, I carry that as a badge of honor. Because I think you can’t be a good journalist and be a fair journalist without doing that. There’s a danger to access journalism where you pull your punches to keep your sources happy, and that’s something that I’ve always shied away from a bit.

Hopefully, I’ve learned some lessons from my previous mistakes, and can think a little quicker and move a little faster in my processes to be able to get good stories out there. I’m really hoping that we as an industry writ large, that we are better prepared this time than we are eight years ago. Frankly, I’m not convinced of that. I’m seeing a lot of the same mistakes be replayed. Trying to adhere to the facts and getting information out there for the public is our fundamental job. And that’s something that I take very seriously.

Chaddock: Listen, Cameron, thank you so much for joining us again for this podcast. I think this is actually your fourth time in a row, which no one else has even approximated, so...

Joseph: Well, I hope you and the listeners aren’t sick of me yet.

Chaddock: Thank you.

Joseph: Thanks for having me.

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Chaddock: Thanks to our listeners. You can find more, including our show notes, with a link to the stories we’ve discussed in this podcast, at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Gail Chaddock. Edited and produced by Clay Collins and Jingnan Peng and Mackenzie Farkus. Our sound engineer is Alyssa Britton, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by The Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2024.