Matt Latimer is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is currently a co-partner in Javelin, a literary agency and communications firm based in Alexandria, and contributing editor at Politico Magazine.

A White House under siege. A president considered underqualified for the job, distrusted by global elites. An administration that has branded a harshly critical media as unpatriotic and rooting for America to fail. This was the George W. Bush administration in its final years, when its long, hard slog against the U.S. press reached its peak. I was working as a White House speechwriter then, part of the team that was frustrated and angered by relentless negative coverage—so much so that some of us branded the press as the enemy, and shut them out completely.

This was a mistake.


Today, I’m watching the Trump administration go down that same road—dismissing press criticism, calling the media the “enemy of the American people,” and taking solace in a glowing counter-narrative of their own making. Trust me, I understand the impulse. But I’ve also seen where this road leads. And while the ride seems enjoyable, the car still ends up in the ditch.

Let’s start with what should be an obvious observation. Trump is justified in having a beef— insert Trump steak joke here—with the media. Throughout the 2016 campaign, our nation’s most esteemed and seasoned reporters and pundits, intentionally or unintentionally, did mislead the American people time and time again. The reason Trump’s constant “rehash” of his victory seems to bug so many reporters is the primary reason Trump does it: because his election triumph made them look foolish, close-minded, arrogant and wrong.

I spent a few hours over the last week scanning YouTube to watch Election Night coverage on various news networks. Most striking were the similarities—regardless of the channel. For the first two hours or so, informed by the same wretched exit polls, our nation’s top newscasters and analysts all but forecast a Clinton victory. As the evening went on, and actual returns in places like Virginia and Florida were not living up to expectations, the tide turned toward the possibility of a Trump shocker. (A prospect that no one seemed to delight in.) Every single newscast expressed the same confident assertions as inviolable truths: Trump had to win Florida (in fact, he would have won without it); Georgia was on a knife’s edge (Trump won by 5 points, far better than Clinton did in, say, Minnesota); Pennsylvania would go Democrat (it didn’t); a “surge” of Hispanics and African Americans was bad news for Trump (he likely did better with both groups than Mitt Romney); the blue wall foreclosed realistic Trump paths to victory (he had more paths than Clinton did all night). No panelist or reporter I saw ever corrected these falsely uttered “facts,” of course. To Trump supporters, in light of a news media righteously indignant over every Trumpian exaggeration or misstatement, this was, and remains, understandably galling.

Since his election, the TrumpWorld grievances have mounted: the mistake in reporting that Trump quickly removed Martin Luther King Jr.’s bust from the Oval Office, the AP “factchecking” Trump’s opinion—an opinion that millions of Americans shared, by the way—that he inherited “a mess” from Obama. (One doubts any major media outlet factchecked Obama’s similar gripes against George W. Bush.) The prosecutorial zeal on any meetings anyone ever connected to Trump may have had with anyone linked to anything to do with Russia. And so on.

Which bring us to the second point—the press might not be the president’s friend, but he should not brand them as the enemy. Most reporters almost certainly voted against him; their tweets attacking everything he says and does can be grating—as even media watchdogs have contended. But summarily dismissing media criticism will backfire. Just look at what happened to Bush.

With the Iraq War being branded a “quagmire,” Russia on the march in Georgia, and the global economy on the verge of total collapse, Bush had enormous problems with which to grapple. And while many reporters are now, as is their habit, lauding him with praise when he no longer is in office, most were vicious toward him when he was in power. He was branded a racist over the perceived lack of response for Hurricane Katrina; he and his aides were called war criminals over the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; he was being blamed for the housing crisis that contributed to the 2007-2008 economic collapse; he was criticized for his “feeble” response to Russia and mocked for having once claimed to have seen Vladimir Putin’s soul.

Sentiments inside the Bush administration toward the media hardened. Under fire from all directions on nearly every issue, the attitude was both human and understandable: These guys are biased against us; there’s no point in engaging them. Certain networks no longer appeared on many White House office TV screens. Administration officials tended to veer toward more friendly, or at least sympathetic, networks and outlets. That was not in and of itself a terrible strategy—especially in the current era in which there are far more alternatives than ever.

But, in the end, this solution only added to the problem. Because even if the Bush administration no longer cared what, for example, the New York Times was reporting, their allies in Congress, their constituents, their foreign allies and the rest of the outside world did care. (And the administration actually did, too.) Hiding from the mainstream press might have made us feel good, but it didn’t lessen its impact. And, because we’d given up trying to persuade many of these reporters, our side had a harder time coming through.

One case in point was Vice President Dick Cheney, who was one of the few administration officials who for the most part truly did not care what reporters said about him. Although he had many capable and talented press aides, the effect of the vice president’s disinterest in courting skeptical reporters and responding to every press attack was the creation of a caricature of him as a Steve Bannon of yesteryear—a mythical and mysterious shadow president who had a dictatorial bent, shady private interests, and didn’t care about the business of the American people. Cheney was none of those things, as reporting years later has begun to show. But that impression did cause damage to him and the administration.

The worst, and most consequential, result of the tune-out of the mainstream media was that many of us started to discount criticism altogether. The argument is dangerously seductive: If the media is so biased against us, therefore everything they report, and everything people on their programs say, is also biased and untrue. Cloistered in a world in which bad news is filtered out and good news is always sought created a false perspective that did more damage to us than the media ever did.

We demanded a focus on the “good” things happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, gradually discounting the bombings, violence, disorganization and chaos underway. For some time, we doubled down on strategies that didn’t seem to work because we decided they were working, just not being reported fairly or accurately. It was only when the president turned to the advice that had been freely offered in the media for years—specifically on the need for a new approach and a “surge” of forces in Iraq—did things begin to improve there.

As the economy veered toward catastrophe, the president would go out and speak in an effort to reassure the markets … and the Dow would collapse 300 or 400 points each time. As with Iraq, for some time we didn’t think that maybe there was a problem with our message or that critics may have had valid points. Instead, we sent the poor guy out again and again to say the same thing, with the same results. It was only when the administration brought all sides together, including some of its sharpest critics, did a consensus for dealing with the disaster emerge.

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If Republicans were hostile to the media back then—and in some cases for good reason—it’s far worse now. One of the main reasons Trump won the presidency was because he effectively channeled conservatives’ anger and disdain at media coverage of their beliefs and positions—and the media’s growing tendency to see the world from the elite confines of America’s coasts. Indeed, a recent study showed that 91 percent of coverage of the Trump administration has been negative. But that doesn’t mean the media is irrelevant, or can be ignored. Instead there needs to be an even more aggressive effort to challenge, respond and, where possible, find ways to see each other’s perspectives more accurately.

The danger and lesson for the Trump administration is clear: In a media environment where everything the president says and does is grist for his many media critics, and many reporters are demonstrating a clear, well let’s just say, zeal to confront and expose any perceived missteps, the temptation to shun and ignore all criticism is very strong. But doing so will only leave the administration defenseless from attacks and increasingly tone deaf to the legitimate concerns media outlets often bring to the fore.

For a time, the administration seemed to be going in the wrong direction last week on Obamacare repeal. One can almost hear Bush-era echoes in the strategy: “Everyone in the media says we will fail; fine, we’ll ignore them and go forward anyway.” Fortunately for them, they pulled back.

The aftermath of the repeal failure presents an opportunity to learn from this, and take heed of the generous offering of criticism the media puts forward every day (some of it occasionally even coming from people trying to help). If history is any guide, listening to critics, or at least being open to them, will prove far more valuable than pretending they don’t exist.