Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Washington Secrets. If a friend sent you this and you’d like to sign up, CLICK HERE. Today, all eyes are on Donald Trump at the United Nations in New York, even if there are no pool cameras to follow him. We look inside Trump TV, plus we have AOC’s almost too perfect quote…
When Donald Trump’s ban on three media outlets blew up into a bigger standoff over presidential coverage on Monday, White House officials were ready to roll.
At 7 p.m., a new channel debuted on YouTube. Trump TV promised a stream of the president’s greatest hits 24 hours a day.
But rather than a scrambled effort to run an end around the blacked-out networks, an insider told Secrets it was the culmination of months of preparation.
“It was something that had been in the works for a while,” said a source familiar with the project. “It was waiting for the right time to launch.”
In fact, the idea has floated around since 2020. Trump and his advisers weighed setting up a TV channel as he sought to stay in the spotlight and sidestep networks that he felt had betrayed him during the election campaign.
The right time finally came on Monday evening.
The president’s surprise move to withdraw White House press credentials from CNN, Politico, and MS Now touched off a rare moment of unity among television networks. They announced Monday that they would not cover the president’s public activities as part of the TV pool — sharing footage with other broadcasters and outlets — while the ban remained in place.
The result was briefly farcical.
Trump cut the ribbon to open a new White House helipad. But without the usual pool TV crew, with its boom mic and sound engineer to capture high-quality audio, his words were lost in the buzz of Marine One’s engines.
A conservative writer saw the joke. “That could help him politically,” they messaged Secrets.
And then there was no one to film his departure on Air Force One to New York, despite reports that Real America’s Voice, a scrappy right-wing channel which was also due to travel with the president, was ready to step into the breach.
The result is a key test of Trump’s resolve. He has long wanted to rein in critical media coverage, believing that alternative channels, new media, and his own social media accounts should allow him to sidestep legacy players.
But Secrets understands that first Karoline Leavitt, his press secretary until recently, and Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, had gently cautioned against blowing things up.
In the meantime, YouTube had been developing new features that could be used to set up something akin to a 24/7 Trump feed. There are, after all, hundreds of hours of Trump speeches, as another insider put it.
When things blew up on Monday, officials worked with YouTube to roll out the new channel.
“The press, in some cases, reported inaccurately or not at all on the Administration’s many record breaking accomplishments on behalf of all Americans,” posted Kaelan Dorr, White House head of digital strategy. “Trump TV is a 24/7 livestream of the Administration’s greatest hits, unfiltered.”
It opened with the president’s July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore from earlier this year.
Whether it is enough to satisfy a president who needs TV coverage for validation is another matter.
Readers with a long memory may recall “From the desk of Donald J. Trump.” It was a short-lived blog that was pressed into service when the president was banned from social media in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
And there has been talk of a Trump TV channel for years.
Yet the moves this week come during what could be one of the most pivotal moments of his presidency, with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping arriving in Washington on Wednesday.
Trump shrugged off the idea of a blackout on Monday afternoon when he arrived in New York. He met Mayor Zohran Mamdani in front of a phalanx of cameras, which were not part of the White House pool.
“They said they’re going to boycott me, but they never boycott me, so I wasn’t very worried about that,” he said. “Look at all that press.”
Whether or not any of this will provide the positive headlines he craves is another matter.
As Fox News pundit Brit Hume put it on social media: “If he thinks this will lead to more favorable coverage, I think he’s dreaming.”
Trump’s busy day
Tuesday will be one of the very busiest for the White House TV pool, rushing in and out of rooms at the United Nations in New York to cover meetings with visiting world leaders. This is what will be missing from pool coverage, although some elements will be captured by other cameras.
9:55 a.m.: President Trump delivers remarks to the United Nations General Assembly.
10:40 a.m.: President Trump participates in a trilateral signing with the Prime Ministers of Denmark and Greenland.
11:45 a.m.: President Trump holds a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
12:30 p.m.: President Trump holds a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of Japan.
1:15 p.m.: President Trump holds a bilateral meeting with the President of Ukraine.
2:15 p.m.: President Trump participates in a Shield of the Americas event.
2:45 p.m.: President Trump holds a multilateral meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
7:15 p.m.: President Trump participates in a UNGA leaders’ reception.
7:40 p.m.: President Trump holds a pull-aside meeting with the Acting President of Venezuela.
Phew. With such a lot going on maybe we can overlook the reference to the “United Kingdom of Great Britain” which should obviously be the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Unless there is some kind of political point about a united Ireland being made…
Quote of the day
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to the New York Times by phone from her apartment as she recovered from COVID-19 last week. She was due to talk about a midterm campaign trip to help Democrats in her home state, but ended up delivering this extraordinary quote that manages to channel Eminem and Ferris Bueller at the same time as she discusses 2028.
“There’s an argument that some make that this is a very unique political window and, oftentimes in politics, you do only get one shot. And you don’t — and just in life in general — life doesn’t wait for you to be ready for things. Sometimes life just makes things ready for you.”
As Bueller might have put it: “The question isn’t ‘What are we going to do,’ the question is ‘What aren’t we going to do?’”
Lunchtime reading
The literary world’s D.E.I. checklist: Bret Stephens on the identitarian drift and ideological leanings in the longlists for the National Book Awards.
The FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way: An ex-defense contractor told agents his company won millions in federal contracts by bankrolling campaigns of powerful politicians. ProPublica has another big investigation.