Trump displays his runaway transactionalism

President Donald Trump speaking during a joint
news conference with Polish President Andrzej
Duda in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday.
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In Europe, Trump
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By Eric Black | 07/07/17
Congratulations to President Trump for
figuring out that ambiguity about the basic
idea of the NATO alliance was not the way to
preserve the NATO alliance.
NATO relies at the most fundamental level on
the ability of all of the member states to know
that all of the others will come to their aid if
they are attacked and for all non-NATO
members to understand that an attack on one
will be treated as an attack on all.
(So far, the only nation to “collect” on that
guarantee was the United States, when NATO
closed ranks in response to the Sept. 11
attacks.) Until yesterday, Trump had refused
to do what every post-World War II president
had done, to affirm that the United States
would stand behind its commitment to
mutual defense among NATO members.
Yesterday, on his European tour, he said the
magic words.
Yay.
In a day of small-medium-and-large moments
in Poland and Germany, the Washington Post
seemed to question the propriety of Trump
calling, at a press conference in Poland
yesterday, on a reporter, David Martosko of
the Daily Mail, who had recently been under
consideration to become Trump’s press
secretary. One infers that that the WaPo
viewed it as an obnoxious act of favoritism,
more evidence of the transactional, reward-
your-friends, screw-your-neighbors, attitude
of the current incumbent.
I’m neither shocked nor horrified that he
recognized Martosko for a question. And
wouldn’t it be almost as wrong for Trump to
not call on someone for that reason as to call
on them?
But the answer our president gave to
Martosko. Omigod. Maybe I’ve got to get past
the point where I can be horrified by the way
Trump views everything as a business deal
and a corrupt business deal at that, but it’s
not easy.
Here’s the exchange, as reported in the
Washington Post:
I have to ask about this,” Martosko said,
after starting on the subject of North
Korean nuclear deterrence. “Since you
started the whole wrestling thing, what
are your thoughts about what has
happened since then? I mean CNN went
after you and has threatened to expose
the identity of a person they said was
responsible for it. I'd like your thoughts
on that.
It's a dumb, poorly constructed question. In
case you don’t get the reference, it’s about the
gif that Trump tweeted showing him as a
wrestling bully attacking a figure with the
CNN logo on its head. But it was Trump's
answer that sent me to the moon:
Yeah, I think what CNN did was
unfortunate for them. … As you know,
now they have some pretty serious
problems. They have been fake news for
a long time. They've been covering me in
a very, uh, very dishonest way.
“Do you have that also, by the way, Mr.
President?” Trump said, in an aside to Polish
President Andrzej Duda, who was standing
next to him and who did not respond. Then
Trump continued:
But CNN and others — and others; I
mean NBC is equally as bad, despite the
fact that I made them a fortune with
'The Apprentice.' But they forgot that.
But I will say that CNN has really taken
it too seriously, and I think they've hurt
themselves very badly, very, very badly.
And what we want to see in the United
States is honest, beautiful, free — but
honest — press. We want to see fair
press. I think it's a very important thing.
We don't want fake news.
And by the way, not everybody is fake
news. But we don't want fake news. Bad
thing. Very bad for our country.
OK, maybe this is just typical Trump. And it’s
way, way obnoxioso. But the part that really
got me was to suggest, just in passing as if
this is the way everybody thinks, that the
news division of NBC, the journalists, might
be obligated to give him more sympathetic
coverage than they have done, because he
formerly starred in a (can I say pretty stupid)
show, “The Apprentice,” because the show
made NBC “a fortune.”
Skipping past the fact that the show made
Trump a fortune also, how much deeper can
you sink into runaway transactionalism,
measured in dollars, than for the president of
the United States to not only think, but
publicly assert, that the news division of one
of the three major broadcast networks owes
him favorable coverage on that basis.
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