The Daily Signal - Trump Still Finds a Way to Shape the News

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Tim Murtaugh served as communications director for President Donald Trump's re-election campaign last year, witnessing firsthand how a single tweet could dominate the news cycle. Now, with Trump banished from social media platforms, the former president is still finding a way to wield his influence. Through daily postings on current events and political issues, Trump is once again commanding attention. Murtaugh, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and Daily Signal contributor, explains what it means on the latest episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast." "President Trump absolutely has a way of throwing a wrench into a news cycle if he so chooses," Murtaugh tells me. "And as much as the media likes to pretend that, oh, they hate President Trump and they're tired of the tone and the mean tweets and all that stuff, they can't get enough. And so when he puts out statements, it really does roil the news cycle for that given day." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, May 24th. I'm Robert Blewey. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Rob talks with Tim Murta, the former communications director for President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign and a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow and daily signal contributor. They discuss why President Biden is getting such favorable coverage from the news media. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a college

athlete who just became the first person with Down syndrome to compete in an athletic, collegiate championship event. Before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to tell you about the best job placement program for conservatives, the Heritage Foundation's Job Bank. The Heritage Job Bank connects conservatives of all career levels to jobs with conservative employers all over the country for free. If you sign up, the Job Bank will send you new job openings every week and invite you to their virtual job fairs and career seminars. The job bank team also offers one-on-one career consultations.

Signing up is easy. Just go to heritage.org slash job bank and click on register today. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Tim Murtaugh, the former communications director for President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, and now a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and contributor to the Daily Signal. Tim, welcome back to the podcast. Great to be with you again, Rob. Happy to be here. Well, the world has certainly changed in the last month since we spoke. Masks are now out. The Middle East is a blaze. Inflation is on the rise. Gas prices are also up. The border crisis is worse, it seems, than it was before. And the Biden administration appears to be unable or unprepared to lead us through these many

chaotic moments that our country finds itself in. Tim, do you think the American people missed Donald Trump yet? I should think that they would. I mean, when when Donald Trump was president, I know people had to had to suffer the mean tweets, and that's what always had the media, a Twitter, so to speak. But the president, President Trump, that is, was always very decisive and you knew precisely where he stood. And let's take a look at the coronavirus situation.

The news media said that he couldn't do it, said that it was impossible, that the timeline that he had set forth with Operation Warp Spee. was unattainable. And here we are now in the Biden administration. And the multiple vaccines that were created under President Trump's Operation Warp Speed are allowing Joe Biden to take credit for the path that we're on in beginning to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. And so I think that President Trump laid the groundwork for a lot of the things that Joe Biden is going to be able to take credit for. and I think Americans ought to be able to remember that it really was only four months ago, that the guy who put all these policies in place was in office.

And then if you look at the ones that Joe Biden has undone, like unraveling the President Trump's border policies and absolutely creating the crisis, and that's what it is, it's a crisis on our southern border, even though the Biden White House won't use that word, you can see that the Trump policies were actually working for this country and where Joe Biden has made changes, it has blown up. Tim, you talk about the success of Operation Warp Speed, and it really was tremendous in the efforts that the Trump administration made.

Of course, Vice President Pence leading the coronavirus task force, so many people contributing to that effort throughout the final year of his term in office. Yet President Biden talks so often about the importance of bipartisanship and working with Republicans. it strikes me as odd that he's unwilling to give President Trump any credit or acknowledgement for the success and the reason he was set up in the way that he was. Why do you think it is so difficult for him to acknowledge his predecessor's work? Well, he's not permitted to by his liberal Democrat base. I mean, I think that's pretty obvious.

You are not permitted in any capacity, if you are a Democrat, to acknowledge that Donald Trump ever did anything worth noting positively. I mean, Jen Saki, the White House press secretary, has been directly asked, how come you don't got, you guys don't give any credit to Donald Trump for Operation Warp Speed and the vaccines? And she says, we try not to talk about the former administration as often as we possibly can. So they are flatly refusing to acknowledge that the prior administration did anything worthy of praise or support. And I think that is extremely partisan. And it's because, as we said all along during the campaign in 2019 and 2020, it's because Joe Biden is absolutely a prisoner of the extreme left. And if anybody from the Biden administration were to get up or God forbid the president himself, get up and say, hey, you know what?

Donald Trump did some pretty good things on X, Y, and Z. The left would erupt. And so Joe Biden absolutely can't do that. That's why. Tim, your most recent column touches on the media's failure to accurately cover or critically report on some of the failures of the Biden administration, some of which you've already touched on here. One outlet even suggests that they're mere brush fires. Has any president benefited as much from this favorable media coverage in your lifetime than President Biden?

No, I mean, this is really something to behold. What has happened here is that you have a press corps who worked as hard as they could for four entire years, including during the presidential campaign to undermine and defeat the incumbent president Donald J. Trump. And now they've got their guy. Now, maybe it wasn't the guy they would choose Joe Biden, but he is their guy. Once he became the Democrat nominee, he became the candidate of the press corps. And now that he's president, he is the president of the press corps, he is one of them. There's no question to that. And Joe Biden, the column you just mentioned, Joe Biden was set up for an easy glide path into success. There were so many things lined up.

The economy was coming back. The country is emerging from the coronavirus pandemic. The Middle East was in peace. The economy was roaring, millions of jobs being added. And all he had to do really was not screw it up. He's like a golfer going into the final hole of a tournament with a three-shot lead. And all he has to do is keep it in the short grass and he'll win the tournament. But instead, Joe Biden has been in the woods and in the water and in the sand trap and out of bounds.

And he's blowing it, just like we've all seen golfers do with the jitters on the 18th or the 72nd hole of a golf tournament. And so what he's done is he's thrown so much federal money at the coronavirus problem and at the economy that he has made it more beneficial for people to stay on unemployment benefits than to take jobs. We've got 8.1 million open available jobs in this country. And from coast to coast, small businesses, restaurants, all kinds of employers say that they can't get people to come to work because the benefits of unemployment are better. And now we have the very real fear of inflation. Inflation. People won't take the jobs. There's so much money being thrown at Americans. You know, they talk about the spending to rescue America.

They have effectively doubled the size of the federal government in just the first four months of Joe Biden's administrations. It's really, really reckless. And Joe Biden is in the process of blowing the pretty easy setup that he had. Tim, as you talk about some of those issues, and I want to delve into a couple of those in just a moment, but as you think about the press's coverage, I mean, let's face it, when Bill Clinton was in office, the conservatives complained that he was getting an easy ride. Same thing with Barack Obama. But there was a point in each of their presidencies where you did see critical and unflattering stories from the news media.

I'm not suggesting there haven't been any from media outlets that paint the Biden administration in a negative light, but the overarching narrative tends to be focused on the positive things or excusing some of the crises that he may find himself in. What is it going to take, or do you think that the press corps has just fundamentally changed and we won't ever see a press corps that is tough on a Democrat of President? No, I mean, unless something radically changes, and it may take a generation of reporters, I don't know, but, you know, take a look at Lester Holt, who's the lead anchor at NBC News. He got an Edward R. Murrow Award recently, and he said, this is a direct quote from the anchor of NBC Nightly News. Fairness is overrated, he said. And so I think that the entire press corps has given itself permission to take sides. I think they absolutely have. Just look at the political. for one and the Associated Press for another. Politico is a very inside the Beltway publication, but the Associated Press reaches virtually every news outlet in the country and around the world.

Those two news outlets have said that their reporters are not to use the word crisis to describe what's happening at the southern border. Now, why is that? Well, it so happens that the Biden administration won't use that word either, and they went first. And so now the AP and Politico are falling in line saying they're not going to use that word either. Well, it is a crisis. And when you have these two major news outlets towing the line and following the lead of the administration in not wanting to acknowledge that what's happening at the southern border

is bad and is in fact a crisis, you have the effect of major news outlets, which influence all other news outlets, the Associated Press absolutely does, willing to run cover for the administration. It really, frankly, is unheard of for something that widespread to be happening. happening and for them to have given themselves cover to actually take sides in a political debate.

Really, it's not healthy for journalism, certainly, and I don't believe it's healthy for the people of this country. Tim, one other story that has come out recently, which actually some New York Times reporters, Jeremy Peters in particular, criticized was the White House demanding that they have quote approval on reporter's stories, particularly if they give a background interview the White House does. they want the reporter to then send the quote back to them to review it before they allow it to be printed or published. Certainly, as somebody who's been on both sides, on the journalism side, on the communication side, I can't imagine many reporters granting me that permission.

But it's also come under criticism because, frankly, it's another example of how the Biden administration is maybe playing by a different set of rules than what happened previously. in Republican and Democratic administrations. You've been in the communications business a long time. What's your take on this particular thing that's popped up? Well, you know, I don't get up in arms about that necessarily because, you know, in the course of my career, I've had reporters send us the quotes that they plan to use. That doesn't mean that we get quote approval.

That means that they were giving us a heads up, hey, this is what I took from the interview, heads up. This is the quote that I'm going to use. We never had a situation where we have, final authority to say whether something that was said on the record was allowed to be used or not or to be able to edit those quotes. And I don't think that that's something that's normal. I also don't think that it's normal for the press court to be relying so much on anonymous sources. And in many cases, anonymous single sources. We had a pretty embarrassing episode for the Washington Post

and some others. When there's this phone call from the Georgia Secretary of State and an elections official had a conversation, phone conversation with Donald Trump while he was still president. And based on a single anonymous source, everyone wrote a story attributing quotes to Donald Trump. And then months later, the actual tape of the conversation came out. And Donald Trump had never said those things. And three major news organizations, the Washington Post and a couple of others, had to issue retractions. Now, how is it that a single anonymous source could be the basis of a story without anybody actually checking to see that the source was in fact accurate. And then somehow other publications were able to independently confirm the first story.

It's amazing. And then, of course, they were all wrong. So there's a lot of practices that go on, both in journalism and on the White House side, that I don't think that we've really seen before. And again, it's just not a healthy situation. Tim, I attribute some of this to a failure of journalism programs, but also newsrooms themselves for not having better standards. For instance, I remember years ago when I was, as somebody who has a journalism degree, intro to journalism was taught by a professor who was more interested in pursuing kind of a socialist activist ideology in terms of how you pursue journalism than actually teaching the fundamentals. Fortunately, there was a change in professor during the course of the semester, so I was able to get an intro to journalism class where

we had at least a standard of three sources needing to verify something. So you didn't rely on a single person who could have an agenda and be steering a reporter in the wrong way. There's a reason that you check with multiple sources in a situation like that, particularly at an organization like the Washington Post. You'd think that they'd have a standard in place where that was more important. So, yeah, I hear exactly what you're saying. I bemoan that. It's why I think here at the Daily Signal, we stress the importance of that and why I get frustrated when when other organizations with a lot more resources and significantly larger staff can't abide by those same standards.

Yeah, I think that's important. Another thing I want to bring up that I think is bad for journalism and therefore the public at large is social media. You know, a lot of these reporters have Twitter accounts. I would say actually 100% of them have Twitter accounts. And that's a place that for one reason or another, all these reporters feel pretty safe in spitting out their hot takes on any given topic. and injecting an awful lot of opinion in the 280 characters of a tweet. And so that is a very easy way to have those kinds of opinions bleed over into their actual reporting. You know, I know that reporters chase retweets and likes on Twitter like everybody else does. Everyone likes to see that what they have said is interesting to other people. But it encourages journalism to journalists to issue all of these hot takes and show how,

witty they can be and show how woke they can be. And, you know, I think it's not too hard to see that all of these takes that the reporters just spew out all the time always seem to trend in one direction. They're always coming from the left. And I don't think it's healthy for reporters to feel like they have absolute complete free reign to exhibit their personal opinions and not have to ever really play the role of an objective journalist. And Tim, on that note, I want to a story that's more localized that maybe some of our listeners aren't aware of, but Virginia recently had its Republican convention, nominated a black woman for lieutenant governor, a Cuban American for Attorney General. And you've pointed out that for all of the stories

that are written about the historic first that are happening in politics across the country, somehow this was just overlooked on the part of a lot of reporters. Yeah, somehow the Republican ticket in Virginia did not come to the attention of the Washington, D.C. or the Beltway media or any media, frankly, not even the Virginia media has paid attention to this. NBC News wrote a story just a few years, a few days ago about all of the black women who are going to be candidates in the 2022 cycle. And it did not mention Winsome Sears. Now, she's the 2021 cycle, but still the point holds. Winsem Sears is the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia. She is the first ever black woman nominated for a statewide office in Virginia history. Now, her misfortune is that

she's a Republican, and therefore the media doesn't pay any attention to her. And she won't, you know, if she were a Democrat, you'd see stories about her with the word historic in the headline over and over and over again. But because she's a Republican, they want to erase her and pretend that she has not broken this barrier. She's the first black woman ever nominated for a statewide office in Virginia history. Virginia is the mother of presidents. It's the cradle of our democracy, and she's the first black woman ever nominated statewide. And the media could care less.

It's remarkable. And then that leads us, of course, to Jason Mierrez, who's the Republican nominee for Attorney General. And he is of Cuban descent, and he's a very strong conservative. And he rails against what his family experienced in prior generations escaping from the Castro regime and the socialist paradise that is Cuba. And of course, the mainstream media doesn't want to hear any of. of that either. And so, Winsome Sears and Jason Miaras have broken barriers in Virginia. And if we weren't allowed to talk about it here, you and me, Rob, I don't think anybody would ever hear

about it. That's true, Tim. That is so true. Well, speaking of breaking through the news cycle, even after being exiled from social media, President Trump is still making news. He's ramped up his commentary of late, both on current events and political matters. He even was able to dominate an entire news cycle when he compared President Biden to Jimmy Carter. How do you see President Trump, having previously worked for him, shaping the debate in the future, even if he's not allowed to have a Twitter account or a Facebook account? Well, he still clearly does. And I think it really chafes the news media that he is able to control news cycles like that. It was made easier that the Carter reference, the Carter comparison by you pointed out to me by the really bizarrely proportioned

photo that the Carter Library released when the Bidens went to visit. We had giant Joe Biden and little Jimmy Carter and their wives there. It was a very strangely composed photograph. But President Trump absolutely has a way of throwing a wrench into a news cycle if he so chooses. He's not on Twitter. He's not on Facebook. He's not on YouTube. But he puts out statements every day and they call them press twilises or something like that. And the news media picks them up. and he comments on various things, sometimes multiple times a day. And he is a former president. And as much as the media, like to pretend that, oh, they hate President Trump and they're tired

of the tone and the mean tweets and all that stuff, they can't get enough. And so when he puts out statements, it really does royal the news cycle for that given day. And with regard to how long that's going to be, and the president, President Trump still controls the momentum and really the heart and Seoul, the Republican Party, he absolutely does. And it's because of the policies that he enacted. They were so successful for the American people, and we can see how successful they were because Joe Biden is undoing them and causing lots of problems all over the place. And the rank and file of Republicans in this country still stand by those policies and the man who brought them to the country. And that's why the President Trump still has so much influence is because so many millions of

Americans still respect and admire and want more of that kind of leadership. And so Republicans in Congress and those running for governor or any office anywhere else, they need to have the support of the voters who still support President Trump. And that's why President Trump still has so much great influence. Well, and Tim, let's end on this question because Republicans on Capitol Hill are confronting some big legislative challenges, the American Families Plan, the election, election integrity bills, whether it's HR1 or HR4, both of those seem to be still out there and moving and a threat to our election integrity, a major infrastructure package, which, of course, we know is not much infrastructure, but a lot of other things that the left wants to prioritize.

What is your advice to them as they go forward and confront some of these big legislative priorities on the left? Well, I don't think they need my advice, particularly I think they know what's going on. but it's important for them to still stand for the principles and understand that what the Democrats are doing is trying to ram through all of these radical ideas. During this, we hope, small window where liberals can pass things with the numbers that they have in Congress. They want to federalize the elections. That's what HR1 and S-1 are all about, making sure that liberals cement their power in not only federal office but in state office for decades to come. The infrastructure bill, you mentioned it, less than 10% of the money that's spent, that is planned to be spent in that infrastructure bill goes to things like highways and bridges

and railways and airports and seaports. Everything else is a liberal wish list. And look, they are effectively, with all this spending, as I said before, they are effectively doubling the size of the federal government in just the first four months of Joe Biden's administration. And when the Republicans block that, the Democrats cast that as, oh, they're going to. they're standing in the way of getting rid of authoritarianism, as though objecting to the doubling of the federal government is somehow authoritarianism. I thought when government gets big, that is

authoritarianism. So everything is backwards. And I think the Republicans have to effectively message this because, you know, the Democrats make it an easy sell all the time. Very often they say, oh, we want fair elections and leave it at that and don't explain exactly what it means when they're actually making it easier to cheat in elections. Well, Tim Murtaugh, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast. We appreciate your contributions to the Daily Signal, and we look forward to talking to you again soon. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about one of my favorite podcasts.

Harage Explains is a weekly podcast that breaks down all the policy issues we hear about in the news at a 101 level. Host Michelle Cordero and Tim Desher mix in news clips and music to tell a story, but also bring in heritage experts to help break down complex issues. Heritage Explains offers quick 10 to 50 minute explainers that bring you up to speed in an entertaining way. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast.

We even put the full episode on YouTube. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first? In response to Dennis Prager's piece, Men Give Birth, America was founded in 1619, and Israel is the aggressor. Woody Savage of Cordova, Tennessee, writes, great article. It is amazing that we Americans sat out for most of World War II while six million Jews, men, women, and children were killed before we eventually actively entered the war. How soon we choose to forget our history.

Israel needs our support, and we need to remind the world that Israel has as much right to exist as do all the Arab states. And in response to former Vice President Mike Pence's latest daily signal column, Democrats could end border crisis quickly. Instead, they're making it worse. Elle Vanderstuf of Birmingham, Alabama, writes, I agree with everything former Vice President Mike Pence wrote. Sometimes reality is hard to see, hard to look at, difficult to comprehend. This plague needs a vaccine. a wall at our border, and enforcement of our laws against criminal activity.

Thank you, Mr. Pence, for your insightful article. Your letter could be featured on next week's show, so send us an email at letters at dailysignal.com. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about a great way you can stay in the know on all the news the Daily Signal covers. Social media. The Daily Signal has an active presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We are constantly posting news stories,

clips from interviews, videos, and more across all our social platforms. Follow the Daily Signal on social media so you can get all the latest content from Reels on Instagram to video clips on Facebook and political commentary on Twitter. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us on this Monday. Over to you. Thanks so much, Rob. For the past two years, athlete Amy Bachersteady has been capturing the attention of the golfing community and Americans across the country. Amy has Down syndrome, but that has not kept her from pursuing her love of golf. She made history several years ago when she became the first person with Down syndrome to earn a college athletic scholarship.

In mid-May, Amy made history again, becoming the first person with Down syndrome to play an athletic collegiate championship event. Amy attends Paradise Valley Community College in Arizona, where she's in her third season of golf. About a week ago, the 22-year-old competed in the National Junior College Athletic Association Women's Golf Tournament in Florida. And while Amy may not have taken home any trophies, the event was a big win for her and all aspiring athletes. Amy's mom, Jenny, told ESPN that people are just moved by her and she loves people. Amy's dad, Joe, says his daughter's story has meaning for different people in different ways, noting that one family brought their 12-year-old daughter who has Down syndrome to the tournament just to meet Amy. Amy and her dad, Joe, joined CBS News before the tournament to talk about Amy's love of the game.

I'm not meeting new friends at the tournament. I have fun. Yeah, we joke in our family that Amy plays golf in order to meet new friends. Amy has made many new friends playing golf. Her teammates told AZ family that she is a great support to them on their good days, and their bad days. Every time any of us have a bad tournament, she's always sitting on the 18th hole ready to give us all a hug.

Like, I love Amy. Amy first gained national attention in 2019 when she played the 16th hole during a practice round at the Waste Management Phoenix Dream Day with PGA Tour player Gary Woodland. Amy was lined up for a put shot after hitting the ball out of a sand trap and told Woodland with confidence, I got this.

What do you think? Going a little left? Yeah. Don't you go ahead and make that? Okay. I got this. You got it? Let's do it. Amy made that shot, and the words I Got This became Amy's tagline as the video of her playing with Woodland went viral. After that, Amy and her family started a foundation called the I Got This Foundation to inspire people with intellectual disabilities to find joy and confidence through the game of golf. And earlier this year, the foundation went a step further.

starting the I-Got-This Golf Academy to teach the game of golf to others with Down syndrome. About 20 individuals with intellectual disabilities are now learning to love the game of golf over the course of an eight-week class. Amy says now her tagline is, we got this. You can learn more about Amy's story and the Golf Academy by visiting her website, I-got-this. foundation. Virginia, thanks so much for sharing that inspiring story. It's great to hear about this young woman doing such fun. phenomenal things. Absolutely. It really is encouraging. Well, we're going to leave it there for today.

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