It's hard to trust the press when journalists keep saving scoops for future books

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/maggie-haberman-book


Hello, dear readers,

This morning, I woke up to news that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s long-awaited Trump book has a name and a cover. Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, is out October 4 from Penguin Press.

And like the promotion of other books from other White House reporters and Trump-trackers, Haberman’s announcement came with a juicy new tidbit to help promote it. In this case, the scoop was news that White House residence staff had occasionally discovered clumps of printed paper clogging the former president’s toilet, and believed that he had been flushing documents. Additionally, she reported that Trump has kept in touch with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un since leaving office.

Cool, cool, cool. Okay. Now, not having read the book (as we’re still months out from its release), I can imagine that these excerpts were chosen because Trump’s handling of documents has been back in the news. It was just a few days ago that The Washington Post reported that Trump took his “love letters” from Kim with him to Mar-a-lago upon leaving office in a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act, a 1978 law mandating the preservation of presidential documents. Had some other topic been making headlines in recent days, it’s reasonable to assume that Haberman and her publicity team would choose a different topic to lead her announcement.

But why are we just learning about this now?

I don’t really care about the toilet story. Trump has been flouting the PRA for as long as he was in office1, so it’s not exactly a gigantic shock that he’s continued that practice. More worrying is yesterday’s New York Times report that Trump’s collection of stolen documents at Mar-a-lago may have contained classified information. Naturally, the Times buried that story on page 15 of today’s paper.

*snip*

[intrepidity]

1. Yes, this really disturbs me

A LOT.

[UpInArms]

2. Jonathan Karl did this, also

I hate these awful people …

[Ferrets are Cool]

3. You could have stopped after "it's hard to trust the press"