Donald Trump May Be Having a Change of Heart About Reporters as He Plots His Social Media Return
There is no lost love between the media and former President Donald Trump, who went through a handful of White House press secretaries before disbanding press briefings altogether for a time. In the past, he’s said of reporters that they “should be executed,” per former National Security adviser John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened, and declared directly to individual reporters that they are, among other things: “a disgrace,” “fake news,” “threatening,” “very nasty,” and “horrid.” But these days, senior adviser Jason Miller is taking a different approach when he speaks of reporters regarding Trump’s post-White House days ahead. In an appearance on Fox News with Media Buzz host Howard Kurtz, Miller teased Trump’s plan to launch his own social media platform in wake of his Twitter ban, and specifically cited a (unnamed) reporter’s praise for the “Office of the Former President” statements coming out of Mar-a-Lago. While Trump may not have enjoyed reporters’ attention as president, it seems Miller is eager to prove that he’s evolved into a new, more reporter-friendly version of himself in these recent months.
While talking to host Kurtz, Miller made one assertion we’re not able to verify before passing along the opinion he’d heard from one reporter on Trump’s new form of correspondence.
“His press releases, his statements have actually been getting almost more play than he ever did on Twitter before,” Miller told Kurtz. “I’m not sure if that’s because of the length of them, they’re a bit longer. I even had one reporter say that she thought it was much more elegant the way that the president was able to communicate his thoughts, it very much looked more presidential in that longer form.”
It does stand to reason that a statement might look more inherently presidential than a tweet — but what’s surprising here is that Miller is going out of his way to note a reporter’s apparent praise for Trump. In truth, a media landscape without Trump’s constant tweets has felt like a relief to many Americans, and Miller may be trying to stoke interest in Trump’s rumored new social media platform by promising a change for those who don’t want to return to those tweeting times.
“I do think that we’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here with his own platform,” Miller continued. “And this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media, it’s going to completely redefine the game, and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does. But it will be his own platform.”
Miller adds there have been “a lot of high-power meetings he’s been having at Mar-a-Lago” and that the new platform will “bring millions and millions, tens of millions of people,” big promises about which he can offer zero details. All that remains to be seen is how many of the reporters Trump has previously scorned will be invited to join the platform alongside him.