As President Trump set out to systematically eliminate or intimidate those who stood in his way — inspectors general, judges, law firms — the news media loomed as one of his most stubborn obstacles. Or so it seemed.Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The New York Times, explains how Mr. Trump is circumventing and undermining the fourth estate in a way no president before him ever has.Guest: Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine.Background reading: President Trump’s blueprint for bending the media to his will has Nixon written all over it.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: How did Nixon handle the media during his presidency?
Well, in many ways, we would not be where we are in the media sphere were it not for Richard Nixon. And I mean that on a couple of different levels. Nixon was the first president to really face... the full force of an independent, truly challenging press corps. It started, Johnson was facing some during the Vietnam War and was very angry about it.
Nixon inherits this news media that's in its kind of full flower of independence.
Direct from our newsroom in New York, In Color, this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
It is challenging presidents and government in ways that weren't non-existent, but weren't as common.
The big question is whether the Vietnamese can take over and hold on as the United States withdraws.
In his view, the media was hounding him about Vietnam.
The bugging of the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington's Watergate Hotel was back in the news today.
And then, of course, we move into these stories about the break-in at the Watergate.
Good evening. The country tonight is in the midst of what may be the most serious constitutional crisis in its history. The president has fired special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox.
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Chapter 2: What strategies is Trump using to circumvent the traditional media?
When they try to do things at the FCC, they realize it's kind of a bridge too far. They can try to enact some changes of regulation, but that's years away. They can't really just snap their fingers. And ultimately, what Nixon can't do is stop the railroad train coming at his White House of Watergate.
And basically, it is ultimately the powerful independent press that gives him no option but to resign.
You know, the media is always talking about the imperial presidency, the power of the imperial presidency. I think we ought to hear a little bit of discussion of the imperial media and its power.
So in the end, Richard Nixon's relationship with the media is he's furious with it, wants to weaken it, wants to stop it, can't, and the media quite literally conquers him.
Yeah, the press, the power of the press prevails. And the reason I've been thinking about it a lot lately is is that the echoes to that moment, to that period in time, are so loud in these early days of the new Trump administration, strikingly so.
He's going after the press in ways that are very similar to the ways Nixon did, but he's going farther than Nixon did already in just the first couple months. At the same time, he's completely able to make an end run around the press, around its journalistic narratives, to this huge new media sphere that will present the world only on the terms that Trump wants it presented on.
And that is something that Nixon could have only dreamed of.
So talk to us about the mechanics of how Trump is Doing what Nixon couldn't. Realizing Nixon's fantasy of a relationship with the media. Starting with Trump's ability, as you just said, to go around this monolithic media.
2016, 2020.
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Chapter 3: How has social media changed under Trump's influence?
Yeah, in 2016. So he already had Fox News, which... always was very friendly to Republicans, especially its primetime hosts. For Trump, after a bumpy period in the beginning, they really get into his corner. And that just grows through his administration. They're even more in his corner, night after night, kind of parroting what he's saying. And he's kind of sometimes parroting them.
And there's a real symbiosis. And that, for its time, was really new. But then when he leaves office, in just the short period of time, we're only talking four years, right? When Trump is shooed out of Washington following the violence of January 6th, the media will go on to radically change. And perhaps most importantly, it's changed in a place where so many people now get their news.
And that's, of course, social media. Mm-hmm. And you know where I'm going, right? Where I'm heading here now is to talk about X, formerly Twitter. Since 2020, it goes through this enormous change. Of course, it's come under the control of Elon Musk. And he goes on to reconfigure it from a place where—think about this— Trump couldn't even post by early 2021.
He'd been completely banned after the insurrection. So now it goes from that to being a real megaphone for his message, for his supporters message. It's reaching tens of millions of monthly active users in the U.S., many more globally. And, by the way, it's a place where information moves out algorithmically to the top of people's feeds, and that is controlled by said Trump fan, Elon Musk. Right.
That's huge. Can I just pause?
I think it's worth just describing this. If you open up X, what used to be Twitter, under Elon Musk, and now in the era of Donald Trump, you experience... something very different than what you did a couple of years ago.
I mean, I could open mine and show you this, but essentially, whether it's Elon Musk himself coming on to praise President Trump or a bunch of conservative accounts I had never followed suddenly are very prominent on my feed. I used to just follow a bunch of journalists and use it for informational purposes. But very much it now feels like a daily megaphone for Trump and the entire MAGA movement.
In my experience, radically the same for you.
Mine too, and people have done experiments because, you know, these algorithms are sort of still... bafflingly among the least understood things in American politics right now. But that is my experience. That's the experience of people who try to do kind of neutral studies.
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Chapter 4: What role does the 'Manosphere' play in Trump's media strategy?
Right. And it just seems important to note that suddenly one of the most important, widely used social media platforms in the country, if not the world, is is being managed for the president.
Empirically, it seems that way. Musk won't always say that. Sometimes he'll deny that. Often he'll deny that. But it's, I mean, it's just universally study after study finds that. And that is directly tied to something that gets a ton of promotion on X, but it's its own media sphere.
And it's emerged in this entirely new way, and that's this world of male-dominated media, largely podcasts often referred to as the Manosphere. Which has grown exponentially since Trump was last in office. A number of shows and popularity. And so who are these people? These are like, they're kind of just bros. The best way to describe what they do is bro casual.
They're reaching this disaffected young male audience that's historically been very hard to reach. These guys are talking to them, and they're talking to them about video games or silly pranks or mixed martial arts or professional wrestling. Mm-hmm.
If you'd like to, yeah.
We're rolling right now. These are nice. I haven't seen one of these. Some high-quality mics. That's pretty cool. We walked in on the other side.
And Trump starts showing up on these shows.
My son's a big fan of yours, Barron. Really? Barron is? Yeah. He just graduated high school, right? That's right. He just did. He knows you very well. He said, Dad, he's big. Wow. You're a big one. That's cool. That's where it is nowadays, right? Yeah, well, it's interesting.
He actually credits his son, Barron, for showing him that these shows could be a powerful way to reach what his team termed low-propensity voters.
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Chapter 5: Why is Joe Rogan significant in Trump's media landscape?
And if you bring down the cost of energy and if you do some very basic things. Get rid of the windmills. The windmills. That's why I didn't go to Coachella this year.
Because when you drive to Palm Springs, you got to see all the windmills. And ever since you said that, it just pisses me off when I see all the windmills.
How about the old ones that are sitting there rusting?
Just kind of shooting the breeze. sometimes about politics, but all sorts of other things. You know, we know how it's like a constant weave. Remember how he would do the speech, he would call it a weave because he would weave all over the place? These things are built for that. And you know what?
He plays golf and he plays well. He hit a perfect drive with me. I said, do you play?
But no one at that world is more important, and I would say fewer more important now in modern media than the prototypical star of the Manosphere, and that is Joe Rogan.
I was 100% a left-leaning person who lived in Los Angeles. I never voted Republican my whole life. I was very left-leaning. But California went nuts, man.
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Chapter 6: What is the impact of Elon Musk's changes to Twitter?
Joe Rogan has incredible credibility with this crowd because he was a Bernie Sanders guy. His podcast is really breezy.
Well, they canceled The Apprentice when you were running for president, correct? No, they had Arnold Schwarzenegger do it.
And he has an interview with Trump during the campaign.
You know Elon Musk? Yes. He endorsed me. By the way, he gave me the nicest endorsement, too. He said, the country's going to fail. You should do the same thing, Joe. Because you cannot be voting for Kamala. Kamala. You're not a Kamala person. I know you.
And... But get this, that interview with Trump has racked up more than 50 million views on YouTube alone. Now, those aren't ratings points, right? 50 million views, we don't know how long those people were there, but that is a lot of people. Now we're talking like Cronkite level person.
We need like a realist, someone who's like conservative fiscally and understands foreign policy and how to deal with dictators.
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Chapter 7: How does Joe Rogan's show differ from traditional news broadcasts?
And he's going basically all in with Trump.
Actually endorses him.
Yeah.
And it just came over the wires that Joe Rogan just endorsed me. Is that good?
And endorsements only go so far in this world. That's a big endorsement.
That's so nice.
Right.
That one went, as best we can tell, real far. Because we see it in the exit polls and the post-polling analyses that Trump gained with young voters overall, with young men. And that's all well and good for a campaign. But here's the thing now. is that that's all still here for Trump.
And so as Trump has set out to, you know, reorder government and really push the limits of anything that establishment Washington has certainly seen, he still has this media world to promote his agenda.
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