Karen Tumulty on Journalism in the Era of Trump

Editor’s Note: The following interview has been edited for length. Click here for the entire interview in podcast form. This interview is a collaboration between the Chicago Policy Review and the University of Chicago Public Policy Podcasts (UC3P).

What’s it like reporting in the age of Trump? Are the differences demonstrated by President Trump more a matter of degree, or are they more a matter of kind? Where do we put him into context in terms of what we’ve seen in the past and how we should expect that to look in the future?

This is not comparable to anything I have ever seen, and I’ve been covering presidents since Reagan. And I think we’re all kind of learning our way. The fact that an entire day of news can be dictated by a Tweet at 5:30 in the morning is completely new, and quite frankly—and I’ve been away from the day-to-day grind—I do wonder if we in the media are going to have to sort of recalibrate this because we go to Defcon on everything that happens, and I think it’s becoming hard for our readers to separate what is just the flap of the day and what is the real issue that is going to have a major impact on their own lives. Also, social media has a tendency to make big things look small and small things look big. And it’s really our job in the media, I think, to help people sort through the difference.

It’s a matter of degree, I think. The number of things that he says that are not true—I think our fact checker has a new tally out, possibly today, that they have had to call him on close to 1,600 of his statements—that is unprecedented. I think that the degree to which policy becomes swept aside in favor of partisan arguing about an issue, and where you never get to the argument over the merits of specific policy choices, is also something that I think is pretty much unprecedented—in the time I’ve been in Washington, at least.

What dangers face Trump in the form of pending lawsuits alleging acts of sexual assault? Are these issues of his past—including potential financial misfeasance—more likely as opposed to some high crime or misdemeanor?

Well, there are a couple of sets of dangers. One is that there’s one specific lawsuit going forward; it’s one on defamation. One of the accusers has accused Trump of defaming her. If the courts allow the lawsuit to proceed, that takes us to discovery, and potentially (as Bill Clinton was) being deposed under oath.

But I think that’s also the case with the larger investigation that is hanging over the Trump administration right now, too, which is the Mueller investigation. I think most of the legal experts that I have talked to think that the larger danger for Trump and the people around him may not be the actual acts themselves but what happens afterwards: whether there’s a case for obstruction of justice, or, again, going back potentially to the firing of James Comey as the FBI Director.

First of all, it’s far from clear that a sitting president can be indicted for anything. So the only potential procedure here is impeachment. And the founding fathers did not spell out what constitutes a high crime and misdemeanor. That is really in the eye of the beholder, as far as Congress goes at any given time, and it is really hard to imagine what it would take for this Republican Congress to begin hearings in the Judiciary Committee in the House that would lead to articles of impeachment. That said, the whole playing field becomes very different for Donald Trump for all of this if next year the elections bring a Democratic House.

The New York Times’ and The New Yorker’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein has completely changed the national conversation on sexual misconduct and assault. Journalists, including Mark Halperin of NBC; Michael Oreskes of NPR; Lockhard Steel of Vox; Leon Wieseltier and Hamilton Fish of The New Republic; Ken Baker of E! News; and others have been fired for sexual misconduct and assault. How could this have happened and stayed a secret for so long from the public? What role did media institutions and their management play in covering up and abetting the sexual misconduct and assault by Weinstein and others?

That is a very good question, and I think a lot of people are questioning their own reactions to things. I do think Harvey Weinstein has completely changed the conversation. And, yes, I think in a lot of these cases—there were public jokes against Harvey Weinstein! Michelle Cottle in The Atlantic writes an amazing story looking at the ambiguities around Leon Wieseltier at The New Republic, who was just known for this behavior. I just think that the whole nature of the conversation has changed. I don’t know how long that is going to be the case, but it’s forcing a lot of conversations that should have happened decades ago.

One thing is that people are learning to think of these acts not as being about sex but as being about power. And they are usually a situation where someone who has a lot of it is taking advantage of somebody who does not have a lot of power.

There’s a lot of reflection going on [for example] at NPR. Did the management there knowingly put their female employees in a vulnerable situation? But we’ve also seen, for instance with Harvey Weinstein in the report most recently in The New Yorker, the lengths to which he went to shut down these stories: hiring a former Mossad agent to essentially entrap some of his accusers; using The New York Times’ own lawyer to put pressure on them to kill the story. I think there’s a lot of self-reflection going around in all of this, and it should be. Particularly in Fox’s case, it seemed to be that they thought hush money could make these problems go away.

Prior to this reporting, including by The Post, did you know anything about systemic issues with harassment that permeated media institutions? Did you ever experience sexual harassment, misconduct, or worse during your 40 years of work in journalism?

I knew of specific incidents. And I’m thinking only in one of these cases that I had heard about a long time ago. But it’s only when women start really talking to each other and to people in authority at the places they work that you begin to understand that, no, this wasn’t just one set of circumstances and one particular woman.

Certainly, when I hear of some of the stories of other women, nothing as drastic as what I am hearing now [happened to me]. I think all of us, though, have been exposed to situations that we’re just not comfortable with language that’s being used around us; with jokes that are being made around us; things that, again, at the root of them are not about sex. They are about power, and they are about making you feel you are in a situation where you don’t have any of it, and you’re being made small by them.

Recent reports allege that former President George H.W. Bush has inappropriately touched multiple women, even as recently as this year. There is now a connection between Presidents George H.W. Bush and Trump, both in that they have been accused of sexual assault and that their supporters have largely given them a pass. Are presidents immune from accusations of sexual assault?

No. Also, the whole President Bush business. I don’t know all the details of this. But President Bush does suffer from a neurological disease, and he specifically suffers from a form of Parkinsons that is known to affect your impulse control. So if there are reports that he was doing this before that period, when he was healthy, I’d feel a little different.

There is a problem here of making all these charges look alike, and in doing that, you minimize the really serious instances. People forget that President Clinton was impeached because of perjury in a deposition over a sexual harassment lawsuit. That was a real consequence, but it was actually his decision to lie about another relationship that got him into trouble. Ultimately, he ended up paying Paula Jones in the six figures in a settlement, and he lost his law license, and he was impeached. But those were not the direct consequences of his initial actions; those were the consequences of his actions after the actions.

[Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted on November 14, 2017. On November 16, CNN reported that a seventh woman has accused President George H.W. Bush, an accusation of groping during his 1992 campaign.]

How are we supposed to distinguish and not make false equivalencies then?

Given the environment that we are in, there is more of a burden on us in the media to show our work when we do these things. To get as many people as we can on the record. In The Washington Post’s report on the women accusing [Republican Senate candidate] Roy Moore down in Alabama, there are several paragraphs that point out exactly how The Post got wind of this story. We had a reporter in Alabama working on another story; pointing out that these women did not themselves come forward, because a lot of people were accusing them of political motivation. It dealt with their reluctance to come forward. I was really amused over the weekend, Breitbart News ran what they thought was a gigantic exposé, where they said, “The Washington Post went to these women! They asked them to be interviewed!” And it’s like, yeah, that’s called journalism. Breitbart might try practicing it some time.

Your book on Nancy Reagan will be available soon. That said, we’ve nearly reached the point where at least 25 percent of the United States population was born after her service as First Lady. That includes me. What can you tell us about Nancy Reagan, her life, and her work?

I think that theirs was a truly extraordinary marriage in its closeness, and that she played a function that was not appreciated in her lifetime. In many ways, her instincts were better than his at some crucial moments. I was reading a biography of Ronald Reagan by Lou Cannon. He had a line in there that really struck me as I’m looking at Nancy Reagan. He said, “Ronald Reagan always knew where he wanted to go, but Nancy had a clearer idea of what it was going to take to get there.” And I’m certainly finding that to be the truth as we look at her life.

Karen Tumulty’s book on Nancy Reagan will be out in 2019.

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