Transcript: Trump Press Sec Seethes at Journos Amid Sudden Poll Slide
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 12 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
The political war over President Trump’s dispatching of the military into Los Angeles has taken a new turn. Journalists are rushing to amplify the White House’s spin that this is a big political winner for him, but the evidence isn’t cooperating with that take. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was clearly thrown on the defensive under harsh questioning from reporters about Trump’s true intentions, and a new poll had absolutely terrible news for Trump—especially on his core issue of immigration. So how much longer will commentators try to sustain the fiction that this is all a big political boon for Trump? Today we’re talking about all this with Jennifer Rubin, editor-in-chief of The Contrarian, who has a new piece arguing that California is a test run for the whole country. Thanks for coming on, Jen.
Jennifer Rubin: It’s my pleasure. Great to be here, Greg.
Sargent: So Jen, journalists seem to be very receptive to the White House spin on what’s going on in Los Angeles. The Atlantic quoted one White House aide saying, “We couldn’t have scripted this better.” The New York Times has a headline that reads “Democrats Enter Risky Political Terrain as Protests Grip California,” and the piece says Democratic leaders are worried the confrontation elevates a losing issue for the party. Jen, it’s hard to find journalists asking whether sending the military into a U.S. city is risky politics for Trump. Your thoughts?
Rubin: Exactly. And there are two levels in which I think the media is doing a great disservice to the public and possibly dangerously encouraging a president who, as we now know, will deploy military troops—not just National Guard but the Marines—to the streets of American cities. First, the degree to which you see this mostly on cable TV and local TV, that they run and rerun the very isolated instances of violence. How many times have we seen those Waymo cars burning? So the impression they give is the one that Trump wants to convey, that it’s everywhere. The city is out of control. There are riots on and on. And the reality is so different. We’re talking about dozens of arrests, not thousands, not hundreds. We’re talking about a curfew last night in Los Angeles that was a few city blocks; that was all. The second, as you outline, is this assumption that Trump must be winning. It must be a good thing to show what a tough guy you are.
Well, you could speculate that that might be the case, but now we know it’s not the case. We have polling showing people hate this. They think it’s a terrible idea. And that’s in part because the American people are not nuts. They know that it’s not a normal thing to send the U.S. Marines into a city to help execute a bunch of obviously inflammatory raids by ICE. And whatever poll you’re looking at, the raids are not popular. The immigration policy of Trump is not popular. Trump himself is not popular.
