News Analysis: Trump seeks to reclaim spotlight with old playbook of lying, talking smack to media

Standing next to a spread of coffee, cereal and breakfast meats at his New Jersey golf club on Thursday, former President Trump started what he billed as his second news conference in as many weeks by highlighting increased costs of everyday foodstuffs due to inflation — a major issue for voters in November. Before Trump’s Thursday event, for example, the Harris campaign predicted to the press that the GOP nominee would “deliver another self-obsessed rant full of his own personal grievances to distract from his toxic Project 2025 agenda, unpopular running mate, and increasing detachment from the reality of the voters who will decide this election.” “Tune in for the same old thing,” the message concluded. whatever that was,” the Harris campaign reduced Trump’s long speech into him having “huffed and puffed.” Jennifer Mercieca, a political historian and communications professor at Texas A&M and author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” said the Republican’s latest use of news conferences — and interviews with sycophants such as billionaire Elon Musk, who this week lobbed softball questions to the former vice president on his social platform X — is classic Trump. “The stream of consciousness has become less clearly connected to real events, and more connected to a sense of grievance and anger.” Mercieca said that politicians answering questions directly from the media is a good thing — an important part of any democracy — but that Trump has managed to flip that on its head, using his lies to undermine the media, people’s trust in the Fourth Estate and “democracy itself.” Trump says whatever he wants — truthful or not, bigoted or braggadocian or cruel — because he knows the media will repeat it, and because he knows he won’t be checked on any of it by his base or the Republican establishment, which has handed the party over to him. To avoid being used, Mercieca said, reporters should write about Trump’s “news conferences” only if he says something newsworthy, not whenever he says anything outrageous — because the latter, at this point, is his standard shtick, a stump speech that’s old news.