The air must be getting thin inside the Trump team’s bubble

Picture, if you will, a church…

It’s a small church, out of the mainstream, with its own brand of religion and its own beliefs. A new minister arrives in town under dubious circumstances and takes over the pulpit every Sunday. He rails against dishonesty, unfairness, faithlessness and phony belief, and every Sunday the message is the same.

Over time, his congregation grows tired of the same old message and begins to complain about the new preacher in restaurants and cafes and on street corners throughout the town. They start looking into where he came from and what he did while he was there. The word spreads until one Sunday, when they show up for services as usual, they find themselves barred from entering the church. Only the choir is allowed to enter, and then the preacher begins the service.  

*   *   *

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press briefing at which certain news outlets were blocked from entering. Those friendly to Alternative President Donald J. Trump were allowed in, however, and Spicer presumably went about…well…preaching to the choir, as it were.

As a former news reporter, I have a lot of thoughts about this occurrence and none of them is good. I have strongly defended the First Amendment for most of my life and nothing has changed that now, even though I do get frustrated with the “infotainment” that passes for news these days thanks to the 24-hour news cycle.

Spicer’s “invitation only” gaggle of reporters brought to mind some past confrontations between the media and the White House, mostly during the Nixon years when I was a young reporter just beginning to earn my stripes.   

* There was Nixon directing Vice President Spiro Agnew to attack newspapers and TV networks as if they were rival political parties. Sound familiar? Agnew said the president was the victim of “a small and unelected elite” who controlled the media. Not quite “enemy of the people,” but close.

* Angew at one point issued this famous diatribe about the press: “In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club – the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” Closer still.

* The anti-media ravings of the Nixon administration turned into threats after Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler claimed that all of the TV networks were “anti-Nixon” and would “pay for that, sooner or later, one way or another.”

* Another top adviser, Charles Colson, told the head of CBS News that Nixon’s administration would “bring you to your knees” and “break your network.”

Nixon’s history with the press is well documented so I won’t repeat it all here. You can click this link to read more or google it for yourself.

Of course, Nixon’s battle with reporters didn’t end well for the president, who was brought down by The Washington Post and forced to resign after the Watergate scandal, but the blanket mistrust of the mainstream media that took root during Nixon’s administration grew branches and leaves in the intervening years and bore fruit last year when Donald Trump made it a cornerstone of his presidential campaign.

Now the ball has shifted to the media’s court, and I’m curious to see what they will do next. I have some radical suggestions:

* Stop covering Trump speeches and rallies in real time. Send a reporter and a camera and – assuming they let you in – record the event, but if he makes the same old speech and doesn’t generate any actual news, report that and move on to the next story.

* Do the same for next week’s address to Congress. Don’t broadcast it live. Trump desperately needs the press to spread his message of gloom, doom and hate, but he can’t do it if no one but his base is listening. The media needs to band together on this or it won't work. 

* Boycott the annual Correspondents’ Dinner but don’t announce it in advance. I have this image of Trump rolling in wearing a tuxedo with Melania dressed to the nines and he looks out at the audience and there’s no one there but Breitbart and that crazy guy from InfoWars.

I have to say I don’t see this media war ending well for the current White House, either. We know that 27% of the people in this country would lie down in front of a bus for Trump, and those same people may get the daily briefings from the news outlets that Trump approves, but that will not expand the Alternative President’s base of support.

While his message is bouncing around inside the Conservative bubble, he is alienating greater and greater segments of the population who are free to move around outside, and those people will not stop until they find out about Trump’s Russian connections, the possibility of collusion during the campaign, any illegal deals that were made and, of course, the tax returns.

After all, the media already found the two guys who handed out those Russian flags during the CPAC meeting today. What. A. Hoot.

Not to get too melodramatic here, but as Trump keeps narrowing his inner circle, I keep seeing this image of him and his cronies packed shoulder to shoulder inside a station wagon parked inside a garage with the windows rolled up tight and the motor running.

I think I know how that’s going to end.