MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Why is the mainstream media so agitated about President Donald Trump’s close relationship with Fox News host Sean Hannity? A right-wing critic emails with a taunt: ‘Everybody loved it when Bradlee and Kennedy were in bed together.’ Not sure I buy the premise. Speaking for myself, not ‘the media,’ I found the level of detail in the New Yorker’s recent examination of the president’s symbiotic relationship with Fox News arresting—Trump and Hannity supposedly talk off-the-record nearly every night after his show, among other evidence amassed by writer Jane Mayer—but I’m not especially worked up about it. No reason Trump and Hannity should not talk as often as they like…The Hannity revelation underscores a striking paradox: Even as Trump wages almost daily attacks on individual reporters and news organizations, and often seems bent on undermining the very idea of independent news media, behind the scenes, he arguably has the most frequent, most informal, and most sustained personal interactions with reporters and commentators of any president since the days of Kennedy and Bradlee (as well Joseph Alsop, Charles Bartlett and other journalists of that era who enjoyed special access to JFK).”
–John F. Harris, “Why Trump Loves the Fake News,” Politico, March 8, 2019