Recommended Reading

Matthew Yglesias summarizes the battle over CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta's press credentials. He also offers a solid (I think) view of it all and how it's to both Trump's and CNN's mutual benefit. Here's a little taste. Referring to how Kellyanne Conway is so often on CNN, Yglesias writes…

It's true that CNN hosts typically give [Conway] a hard time about the controversy of the day, and make various faces indicating disgust or outrage at her dishonesty. But they don't respond to that disgust or outrage by doing something sensible like declining to book her in the future.

Generally speaking, if you are interested in informing the public, you don't dedicate lots of airtime to letting a deeply dishonest person speak and then make weird faces as if you're surprised to discover she's a liar. You just go book someone more honest instead.

By the same token, if the Trump administration genuinely believed CNN was broadcasting "fake news," it wouldn't send its people to the network.

True. And by the way: Isn't it amazing that the person Trump sends out to try and convince everyone that he's a great, benevolent leader is a woman who hasn't even been able to convince her own husband of that? In the same way, James Carville couldn't convince his own wife that Bill Clinton was a force for good. Those both seem to be fairly happy, stable marriages.