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New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet speaks at the SXSW Interactive festival | The New York Times Times editor on Trump: He really likes us

AUSTIN, Tex. — The New York Times’ top editor, Dean Baquet, says Donald Trump loves the Times and lashes out when he can’t win its favor.

"I think he wants our favor, but when he can't have it, he gets hugely angry. I think The New York Times .... historically sets a certain kind of agenda. But I also think he's a New York guy, and The New York Times means a lot to him," Baquet said at the Austin Convention Center Sunday morning, part of a South by Southwest Interactive event cheekily titled “Covering POTUS: A Conversation with the Failing NYT.”

At “Covering POTUS,” Baquet also addressed the Times' efforts to ramp up coverage of the Trump administration, while nonetheless preparing for cuts this year that will reduce the number of journalists on staff. "We will do nothing to cut our ability to cover this presidency and this revolution in Washington," Baquet vowed. And he weighed in on the rise of digital outlets. He acknowledged that BuzzFeed was a journalistic competitor, but declined to say the same of Breitbart, the alt-right site formerly run by Trump’s counselor Steve Bannon. “Breitbart? Not so obvious. I'm not convinced," said Baquet, because "they're not in an honorable pursuit of the truth. They're propaganda." Nonetheless: "I look at them everyday."

Trump and the Times have had a tumultuous relationship throughout the presidential race, with Trump often lashing out at the Times after it published hard-hitting reports about his campaign, his tax returns and other topics. In addition to referring to the paper as the "Failing NY Times," Trump has lumped the Times in with other media outlets as being "fake news."

A White House spokesperson had not responded to a request for comment as of publishing.

South by Southwest Interactive has become a magnet for journalists and politicians looking to boost their digital credibility. Last year, former president Barack Obama made a high-profile pilgrimage to the conference, a media, tech and innovation bonanza that descends on the Texas state capital every March.

At this year's SXSW, Trump may not be present in body, but he is still everywhere to be found.

Trump, the election and the state of national affairs were a hot topic at many panel discussions. High-profile politicians, including Joe Biden and Cory Booker, were in town to give talks as well. FBI Director James Comey and U.S. General Paul Selva were scheduled to appear, but pulled out last week due to what festival organizers described as "scheduling conflicts." And the city was crawling with media figures who have starred in the drama of Trump's war with the press.

On Saturday afternoon, at a downtown event space the Times had commandeered for the weekend, Baquet was onstage with Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton when the conversation turned to anonymous White House sourcing.

"It's startling the stuff we hear from inside the White House," said Lipton. "There's so much being said that's so embarrassing to the president and his people. ... It's an expression of the chaos. ... Federal employees are giving us information because they're so disturbed by some of the things they're seeing."

"Our role is not to be the opposition to Donald Trump. Our role is to cover him aggressively," Baquet added.

Gawker founder Nick Denton, appearing at the Austin Convention Center on Sunday, begged to differ.

"The fact is, most of the liberal media is working to halt Trump," the former Gawker Media boss said. "They're getting leaks from sympathetic bureaucrats in the federal bureaucracy, and they are acting as the opposition to Trump, and I don't think there are many people in the middle who are looking to bridge those divides. ... I think they believe they're acting in defense of liberal democracy, but Trump does not believe in liberal democracy and his voters do not believe in liberal democracy, and that makes the liberal press part of the opposition. You can't deny that anymore."

As for Breitbart, "The answer to Breitbart is not gonna be, let's do more aggressive fake news on the left," Denton said. "My hunch is, the response to Breitbart is actually gonna be some kind of Zen Buddhist response to Breitbart, which is gonna be almost impossible in the current environment, because the temptation is, you wanna punch the Nazi. The celebration of punching Richard Spencer" —Denton was referring to the White Nationalist who was decked on camera during an interview in January — "of celebrating actual and and rhetorical violence ... Once that civil conflict begins, it's really hard to stop."

Dan Rather, who has used Facebook to build out a new media company that is taking on Trump, compared covering the Trump White House to another infamous administration.

"With the Nixon administration, they lied and they lied regularly," but reporters had plenty of time before deadline to pick up the phone and figure out what was really going on, the legendary newsman said during a panel on fake news at the Times venue on Saturday. "Now, in the time of Trump ... for reporters, with Twitter and Facebook, there's a deadline every nano-second." Also: "We need some form of teaching, no later than the seventh grade, on how to be an intelligent news consumer."

Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who broke some of the biggest stories about Trump during the campaign, dismissed the notion that Trump hates the press.

"Trump isn't at war with the media. He is a creature of the media," Fahrenthold said during a Sunday afternoon discussion about media in election years. "He looks to the media for meaning in his own life. ... He's more dependent on the media than anyone you've ever met. He hates us because he needs us so much."

There was lots of other politically-oriented media programming over the weekend as well, including a live Glenn Beck podcast hosted by Recode's Peter Kafka; CNN's Jake Tapper in conversation with Ana Marie Cox; and a keynote by CNN contributor Van Jones. Tapper and Jones were both mingling at CNN's opening night party on Friday.

POLITICO Playbook hosted a Monday event with the mayor of Austin. Kara Swisher is doing a conversation Tuesday with the former Obama staffers who founded Crooked Media. NBC is doing a live “Meet the Press” podcast and party with Chuck Todd on Tuesday night. And on Thursday, “The War at Home: Trump and the Mainstream Media,” will feature Rather, NBC's Katy Tur, ABC's Matthew Dowd and CNN's Brian Stelter.

“I think it is more political than usual," Hugh Forrest, the 23-year-old festival’s director, told POLITICO, "and probably as political as it’s ever been.”

Alex Weprin contributed to this report.