Whenever Republican officials sit for an extensive interview or series of interviews with a liberal media source, their supporters ask: Why did you have to do that? Why does Donald Trump need to speak to Michael Wolff or Bob Woodward? Now, it's Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles talking to author Chris Whipple for the lefties of Vanity Fair.
But if Republicans made an energetic policy of not accepting any interview requests from liberal journalists, the press would paint it as authoritarian "North Korea," because liberals dominate the media. It's much easier for Democrats to accept zero interviews from conservative media than the reverse.
President Joe Biden wasn't going to sit down with Fox News or with some spunky magazine writer from the right wing. No one expects it. Biden barely sat down with anybody for an interview, and when he did, it was typically tender softballs from sympathizers, like actors Drew Barrymore and Kal Penn.
Republicans should not be surprised when their words end up spun against them. But the drama over Wiles and her 11 interviews with Whipple can be overdone. Mediaite put these words in their headline: "The Trump Era Is Ending." Year One isn't over yet. Here's what's funny: They're quoting former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci. The "Scaramucci Era" at the White House was 10 days -- in part because he granted an interview to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. Oops.
Whipple wrote a flattering book that came out in 2023 about Biden titled "The Fight of His Life." He told NPR he asked for an interview with Biden. "I was told I could email questions and I would get written answers in reply. You know, clearly, they were uncomfortable even then with the prospect of the president having an interview in real time with a reporter."
The stage management wasn't a problem. The media elite didn't care about their own access. They were members of the Biden team, sharing their questions to Biden in advance so they could type them up on note cards. It certainly didn't matter with Whipple, who appeared on the "PBS NewsHour" for a book interview back then and cheerfully proclaimed Biden was hitting his stride: "I think he goes into his third year really with the wind at his back."
No one finds a scandal in the way Whipple operates. In his 2025 campaign book "Uncharted," he depends intensely for juicy details on former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain. But Klain seems to have two personalities. There's the one who can see Biden can't possibly be president for another four years as he watches him bumble disastrously in debate prep. Then there's the one who thinks it's a "mistake" for Biden to withdraw. Whipple doesn't reconcile the two Klains. The insider source is always right in his case.
President Trump has granted far more access to reporters in his second term than Biden, and yet the media elites never stop trying to wreck his presidency. He knows he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says can and will be used against him in a court of public opinion.
You can't win by granting access, and you can't win by denying it. The authors and activists of the Democrat press approach Trump with the mentality of "heads we win, tails you lose."
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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