Press Watch

1 week ago | presswatchers.org | Dan Froomkin

News organizations, along with good-government groups and other interested parties, are doing a commendable job of chronicling the damage the Trump regime is doing to the government, the country, and the world. But none of them, individually, is in a position to give the public the full picture. It’s just too much. This is a feature of Trump’s strategy of “flooding the zone.” No one entity can possibly keep up. And as we go forward, how can any one organization keep tabs on all the fallout?

2 weeks ago | presswatchers.org | Dan Froomkin

It’s not just that he said something breathtakingly stupid and wrong, it’s that he wouldn’t let it go. In an interview Tuesday with ABC News’s Terry Moran, Donald Trump repeatedly insisted that the Maryland man his administration wrongly rendered to an El Salvadoran prison has the letters and numbers “MS-13” tattooed on his knuckles. He does not. Trump went on and on about it, even trying to bully Moran into agreeing with him.

3 weeks ago | presswatchers.org | Dan Froomkin

When you sit down to conduct an interview with Donald Trump and he lies to your face – repeatedly, constantly – you have a choice. You can either just let it go, or you can address it. Letting it go is the coward’s way out – and, sadly, it’s what Time reporter Eric Cortellessa and editor Sam Jacobs did during most of their April 22 “100 days” interview with Trump. It wasn’t a terrible interview; they questioned him forcefully about a few topics.

3 weeks ago | presswatchers.org | Dan Froomkin

Many of the major actions Donald Trump has taken as president have one thing in common: They’re flatly illegal. That’s why of them are being challenged in court. It’s not just that he’s offended various constituencies, although he certainly has. It’s that what he’s doing, time and again, is quite obviously contrary to the letter and spirit of the law. Cutting congressionally-mandated departments? Illegal. Firing federal workers without cause? Illegal.

1 month ago | presswatchers.org | Dan Froomkin

Donald Trump billed his “reciprocal tariffs” as a tit-for-tat measure: You tariff our products at 20 percent, we’ll tariff your products at 20 percent back. He said it again in his Rose Garden announcement: “Reciprocal —  that means they do it us and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get any simpler than that.”It’s not good policy, but it made a certain amount of sense.