How Trump Works: Press Gaggles

Hi! Today we’re going to talk about Donald Trump’s press gaggles, and:

• How they’re unique for a President.

• How the makeup of the press pool has moved toward fanboys.

• How even the traditional press helps Trump with their questions.

• Why some of Trump’s worst ideas are the gaggle’s fault.

Today there was another Trump press gaggle. Gaggle is, of course, an Olde English word for “the act of yelling over each other.” Trump gaggles are good for business if your business is clicks — because he gets to make headlines about a wide variety of topics. Gaggles traditionally have been a good chance to throw a relevant question out directly to the President and to get a (somewhat) spontaneous answer. But… it’s 2025. The WH Press Corps has been gutted, with real journalists replaced by fawning, far-right partisans. If you want a long, smart-guy explanation of this, here’s one by Dan Rather (and team). And obviously, Donald Trump is the one doing the answering. And he will just lie or throw out an answer based on facts he’s totally made up. Like this:

That’s just a lie. They asked him about blowing up a boat and killing people with no legal authorization, and instead he just said a thing that wasn’t true. Last year, globally, there were 600,000 drug deaths.

Whose fault is it that someone doesn’t just say “That number is off by 290 million people, and if you mean Americans, would mean around 80% of Americans died last year. Do you have a real answer for killing those people on the boat?” Well, you’d have to ask the gaggle.

Instead of doing the thing they would do if any other President did it, they just roll with clear and obvious lies. And for a growing percentage of the gaggle, that’s easy. Because over the course of the year Trump has replaced members of the press pool with open partisans guaranteed to throw him softballs. It makes for a nice afternoon to sit at your desk and have people ask why you’re so great. There are spots in the press pool for, almost verbatim, people to ask things like “Why don’t the Democrats want Americans to have safe streets?”

Now, some reporters are doing yeoman’s work (gonna be honest, don’t know what a yeoman is but it sounds complimentary). Trump does get asked a few real questions snuck in here and there, which is great to watch — but doesn’t get headlines. Although Biden’s brain goo-ifying was closely watched breaking news, Trump not knowing how many votes it takes to pass a budget is less than a non-story.

Because what gets headlines now is just letting Trump cook. Instead of a specific question, you just ask one magic phrase:

“What are your thoughts on….”

Trump is always gonna give you his thoughts on anything (or pivot to a thing he wants to talk about), so this always works. And as an outlet, you don’t have to put out a story about facts on the ground or what’s happening with a bill. You get a nice little soundbite where Trump says for example “My enemies hate America and they’re sick people.” And you, depending on your outlet’s leanings, can contextualize that into whatever you want!

A bold, brash Trump strikes out at his opponents.

Trump follows calls for end to violence with venomous attacks on political opponents.

Trump calls out America-hating Dems.

There are infinite rolling examples of this. Hold on, I’ll look one up.

Woah! Ok, I’m back. I don’t have a link, but how interested are you in ocean plants?

But we haven’t gotten to the WORST PART OF PRESS GAGGLES.

Which is this. Press gaggles are one of the prime ways that Donald Trump gets new ideas.

So the press. Is suggesting. Ideas for him. To implement into the government.

Donald Trump lives in the moment. He is an incredible scrambler and wriggle-out-of-troubler, but he is not a multi-step-planner. This is why, when asked about something he doesn’t have an answer for, he throws out that there will be an answer “in about two weeks.” To Donald Trump two weeks is eternity. Everything could be different then, so make it Future Trump’s problem.

But now, sitting in the gaggle, someone has handed him a semi-formed policy position that he can try out loud in the moment. He can react, roll it around as something he likes, or go off on it as something he hates. Either way, he’s got a starting point and an initial stress test. (And a few hours later when headlines get filed, he’ll get the reaction of the entire political establishment.)

This is great for Trump.

They are, literally, giving him ideas. They are bailing him out time after time as they create headlines for themselves. You can just throw anything out to Trump — “We heard you’re going to turn the Chicago River into a log flume ride once the city is safe.” He’ll riff on how bad Chicago is, how bad the mayor is, how fat Pritzker is, how he can send in the Guard he just hasn’t done it yet… and then he’ll get around to talking about how “We might actually do something with river, something people will like very much.”

…and then water will remind him of California and how he “freed the water” to fight fires and that Gavin Newsome is bad and that liberals are nasty and bad and want to cheat with mail-in voting.

But the nugget.. the headline in there will be “Trump Considers Federal Takeover of Chicago River, Suggests Adding Tourist Attraction.” And boom, now it’s news.

Now it’s the headline on all papers and blogs.

Now it’s leading all 3 hours of shows on all 3 cable networks.

Now it’s hit Twitter, and several thousand MAGA bot accounts have started dumping out whatever image you get from frenetically typing “Trump Hot Sexy HUGE HOG log flume Chicago river” into an AI trash machine.

And it’s hit Bluesky where a bunch of people with collections of “It’s Mueller Time” merch are feverishly typing “trump orange fat crying dunked on by chris murphy and michael jordan” into a different AI trash machine.

All because a reporter had a wild idea they wanted to ‘run by’ the leader of the free world who has to ask them to repeat themselves, either because he can’t hear them or needs time for his brain to catch up. Could it be both? You said it, not me!

Thanks for reading! This week I’m going to do the first mailbag. Keep an eye out for that post, it’ll basically be a place you can drop questions. - Greg