Trump Says Cable News Is ‘Garbage,’ But He’s ‘Got No Choice.’ He’s ‘Got To Watch’

Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House Tuesday morning that one of the requirements of his job–at least in his mind–is having to devote hours of his day consuming “garbage” on cable news channels like CNN and MSNBC, networks he described as “scum” and “gutless losers” for their coverage of his attacks on Iran and their aftermath.

“CNN is scum, and so is MSDNC, and frankly, the networks aren’t much better,” he said, using his mocking nickname for MSNBC. “It’s all fake news. CNN ought to apologize to the pilots. MSDNC ought to apologize. These cable networks are real losers. They’re gutless losers.”

As always, Trump is intensely aware of what’s being said on TV. What’s interesting here, however, is why. If a friend or loved one complained daily about what they saw on television, it stands to reason that you might say, ‘have you considered just not watching?’ Not an option, Trump says.

“I have no choice,” Trump said of making space each day to soak up what people like Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper are saying. “I’ve got to watch that garbage. It’s all garbage.”

Were Iran’s nuclear sites really ‘obliterated’?

In this case, Trump rushed to the cameras to complain on CNN about how CNN covered his attack on Iran. The president, who earlier in the day delivered an expletive-riddled tirade after Israel again attacked Iran despite the president having announced a cease fire “deal” between the two countries, was angered by news coverage suggesting there were questions about just how much damage the administration’s attacks did to Iran’s nuclear facilities–and its ability to produce a nuclear weapon.

A CNN report Monday said that while Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “obliterated,” some Iranian officials suggested that was not the case. Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, told CNN that it was too soon to judge whether the attack had caused internal damage to Iran’s underground nuclear site.

‘They’re really hurting great pilots that put their lives on the line’

“Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Trump said Saturday night in an address at the White House. “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.”

Tuesday, Trump suggested that by questioning the results of the air attacks, cable news networks like MSNBC and CNN were effectively questioning the talent of the Air Force crews that carried out the bombings.

“Those pilots–those B-2 pilots–did an unbelievable job, and the fake news, CNN in particular, they’re trying to say, ‘well, I agree it was destroyed but maybe not that destroyed.’ You know what they’re doing? They’re really hurting great pilots that put their lives on the line,” he said.

“Those pilots hit their targets,” Trump said. “They’re not after the pilots—they’re after me… .when I see CNN all night long–they’re trying to say, well, maybe it wasn’t really as demolished as we thought—it was demolished.”

Eight hours a day in front of the TV

All night long? Those three words in Trump’s comments Tuesday morning hint at one of the defining truths about his time in power: he spends a lot of time in front of a TV set. “The man loves him some television,” said then-MSNBC anchor Brian Williams 7 years ago, after a report that Trump spent up to eight hours a day watching television. For most Americans, eight hours is a full day’s work.

For Trump, TV, especially TV news, and in particular, cable news, is part of a familiar process, with the president watching, then commenting in real time on social media, and then commenting on what he’s seen to reporters and in speeches. The president’s angry messages on Truth Social, sometimes posted early in the morning or very late at night, at times send pundits off in search of which segment on which cable news show angered the president.

The results of those searches–in his first term and so far in his second–suggest that Trump watches both friendly and not-so-friendly coverage, using what he sees as either validation or fuel to “fight, fight, fight.”

“Around 5:30 each morning, President Trump wakes and tunes into the television in the White House’s master bedroom,” said the Times report in 2017. “He flips to CNN for news, moves to Fox & Friends for comfort and messaging ideas, and sometimes watches MSNBC’s Morning Joe because, friends suspect, it fires him up for the day.”

Since television took its place as the dominant form of media in the 1960s, presidents and their staff have carefully watched to see how the boss is doing, what analysts have to say, and to decide which journalists are friendly and which are not.

Television coverage of brutal attacks by police officers on civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama, so vividly playing out on Americans’ color TVs, captivated the nation and pushed President Johnson to take action, leading to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America’

Johnson invested so much in how TV news covered politics and policy, that an end-of-newscast commentary by CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite in February 1968 is seen as a turning point leading to the end of the war in Vietnam.

“It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could,” Cronkite said to an audience of nearly 29 million Americans.

Cronkite had just returned from a two-week reporting trip to the war zone, seeing up close the reality of what was happening in Vietnam, dubbed the nation’s first “living room war” as viewers were able to see events nightly on television. It’s unclear if a famous quote attributed to Johnson, “if I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America,” was ever said by the president, but it captures the mood of the times–and the power of TV news to shape history.

‘It creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment’

The political motivation for staying in tune with what’s being said on network news has not changed through the decades, but has any previous president ever considered devoting hours each day to actually consuming news coverage literally part of their job?

President Barack Obama certainly didn’t, making news in 2015 when he said–in a supposedly off-the-record conversation with journalists that he “never” watched TV, and never watched cable news, considering it essentially toxic and a waste of his time.

In 2019, Obama advised future presidents not to watch TV news or to be absorbed in social media–both fundamental parts of Trump’s life. “So those are two things I would advise if you’re president not to do, because it creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment.”

Obama’s thinking around the news media–especially broadcast and cable news–was shaped by the rise of social media. As Obama’s White House Jay Carney told Vanity Fair in 2018, the president at one point urged him to prioritize non-traditional media.

“You guys pioneered ways of using the Internet to communicate directly with the public without going through the press,” Carney said. “You should keep doing all those things, but maybe don’t rub the press’s face in it so much. You have to understand: reporters are going through an existential crisis where they don’t know if their job or industry is going to be around for that much longer.”