Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth

by Howard Kurtz

Overview

"The mainstream media’s obsessive hatred for President Trump outruns his anti-media fixation by a country mile, argues this evenhanded and incisive study of press relations with the Trump administration."

-Publishers Weekly

"‘Defiance Disorder’: Another new book describes chaos in Trump’s White House"
–Ashley Parker, Washington Post
According to the media, Donald Trump could never become president. Now many are on a mission to prove he shouldn’t be president. The Trump administration and the press are at war—and as in any war, the first casualty has been truth. Bestselling author Howard Kurtz, host of Fox News’s Media Buzz and former Washington Post columnist, offers a stunning exposé of how supposedly objective journalists, alarmed by Trump’s success, have moved into the opposing camp.

Kurtz’s exclusive, in-depth, behind-the-scenes interviews with reporters, anchors, and insiders within the Trump White House reveal the unprecedented hostility between the media and the president they cover.

In Media Madness, you’ll learn:

Why White House strategist Steve Bannon told Trump he is in danger of being impeached

How the love-hate relationship between the president and Morning Joe hosts—Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski—turned entirely to hate

How Kellyanne Conway felt betrayed by journalists who befriended her—and how she fought back

How elite, mainstream news reporters—named and quoted—openly express their blatant contempt for Trump

How Bannon tried to block short-lived Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci—and why Trump soured on him

How Ivanka and Jared Kushner aren’t the liberals the pundits want them to be—and why Trump tried to discourage them from joining the White House

Why Trump believes some journalists harbor hatred for him—and how some liberals despise his voters

How Trump is a far more pragmatic politician than the press often acknowledges (and how the press dismisses his flip-flops when he flops their way)

What Trump got wrong about Charlottesville—and how Steve Bannon predicted the debacle

How the media consistently overreached on the Russian “collusion” scandal

Why Trump actually likes journalists, secretly meets with them, and allows the press unprecedented access

Why Reince Priebus couldn’t do his job—and the real reason he left the White House

How Sean Spicer privately berated journalists for bad reporting—and why he and Kellyanne Conway were relentlessly attacked by the media

Never before has there been such an eye-opening, shocking look at what the White House and the media think about each other. It’s not pretty. But it also makes for the most important political book of the year.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780594890867
Publisher:	Regnery Publishing
Publication date:	01/29/2018
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	393,708
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Howard Kurtz is the host of Media Buzz, bestselling author of Spin Cycle and other books, and a former columnist for the Washington Post and bureau chief for Newsweek. A graduate of the State University of Buffalo and the Columbia School of Journalism, he has written for Vanity Fair, New York, and other magazines and newspapers, and is a former host at CNN. He lives near Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

1 A Catastrophic Media Failure 1

2 Trump Works the Refs 9

3 Trump Trauma 19

4 A Question of Loyalty 29

5 A Leaky Ship of State 33

6 The Dossier Surfaces 41

7 Spicer Goes to War 53

8 Bannon as Darth Vader 63

9 Kellyanne Under Siege 71

10 Trump Targets Media "Enemies" 77

11 The War over Wiretapping 81

12 "The Knives Are Out" 91

13 Answering with Airstrikes 101

14 White House Game of Thrones 111

15 Jared and Ivanka Fight Back 121

16 The Comey Firestorm 131

17 The Media Go to DEFCON 1 141

18 Collusion Confusion 151

19 Climate Change Calamity 161

20 The Mueller Escalation 169

21 Investigative Overreach 183

22 The Secret Russia Meeting 197

23 The Mooch's Moment 209

24 Charlottesville Catastrophe 223

25 Tackling the Sports World 233

26 The Fight over "Fake News" 245

27 The Era of Harassment 253

Afterword 269

Acknowledgments 273

Index 275

Editorial Reviews

02/05/2018
The mainstream media’s obsessive hatred for President Trump outruns his anti-media fixation by a country mile, argues this evenhanded and incisive study of press relations with the Trump administration. Kurtz (Reality Show), host of Fox News’s Media Buzz and an ex-Washington Post media reporter, surveys innumerable battles between a president who pillories the press as purveyors of “fake news” and enemies of the people (while ardently schmoozing them) and the liberal media that passionately return the hate. (“Is Donald Trump Simply the Worst Human Being We Can Imagine?” mused one Salon headline.) Drawing on his long acquaintance with Trump and interviews with journalists and White House figures, Kurtz stays neutral in the fray, noting the untruths and nonsense spewed by the president along with the distortions, exaggerations, and, indeed, fake news purveyed by his detractors. He also paints a vivid portrait of White House infighting and leaks, with sympathetic profiles of Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, and other staffers who have tried to restrain Trump’s inflammatory tweets and extinguish the ensuing media firestorms. Alongside Kurtz’s lively, entertaining narrative of vitriolic news cycles is a penetrating critique of a liberal news establishment that, he contends, has abandoned objectivity for a hysterical partisanship that galvanizes Trump’s support among the conservative voters it disdains. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly