How TV Warps Trump's Worldview
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a cunning political operator, but even he can't weaken President Donald Trump's bond with television. The two leaders are at odds again over Gaza, now because of human-rights-organization warnings of widespread starvation. Under intense international pressure, Netanyahu has allowed some food aid into the region, but he insists that there is 'no starvation' in Gaza.
This morning, before a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, Trump was asked by reporters whether he agreed with Netanyahu's assessment. 'Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry,' Trump said. Later, he added: 'That's real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can't fake that.'
Trump has arrived at the right conclusion in a terrible way. As president, Trump has access to the most powerful information-gathering network in the world, yet he takes his cues from what he watches on television. This helps him see the news from the same perspective as the general public, which has enabled his political success. But it also narrows his understanding, and it makes him highly susceptible to manipulation.
In this case, the evidence suggests that Trump is right. Cindy McCain, the executive director of the UN's World Food Programme, has been warning for months of humanitarian disaster; WFP says one-third of Gazans have not eaten for multiple days in a row. Other organizations say Gaza is on the brink of famine. The Israeli government has defended its restriction of aid by saying that Hamas is pilfering food, but that doesn't address its responsibility to feed the civilian population caught up in the war. As Hussein Ibish recently wrote in The Atlantic, more than 1,000 Gazans may have been killed since May just trying to get food.
But Trump had little to say on the matter until it broke through mass media, where images of skeletal adults and children with distended bellies make the point more viscerally than any statistics. The spread of videos and photos has helped force this story to the center of attention, just as previous footage helped turn American opinion against the war in Gaza. Less than a quarter of Americans now say Israeli military actions are ' fully justified.'
Trump is attuned to—and responds to—this kind of change in public opinion more than he responds to the substance of underlying events. I often think about testimony from Hope Hicks, Trump's former press aide, during his trial in Manhattan related to hush money. Prosecutors asked Hicks how Trump reacted in 2016 when The Wall Street Journal reported on his alleged extramarital sexual relationship with Karen McDougal. Hicks couldn't recall, but added: 'I don't want to speculate, but I'm almost certain he would've asked me how's it playing.' Now, as president, he sometimes approaches news events not as things over which he has control but just like a guy watching from his easy chair, remote in hand: opportunities for punditry, not policy making.
Trump's reverence of television interacts dangerously with his skepticism of anyone who represents independent expertise. 'I know more about ISIS than the generals do,' he said in 2015. Former aides say he doesn't read or pay attention during briefings, and he particularly distrusts the intelligence community, to the point that he has repeatedly taken Vladimir Putin's word instead. This means that despite access to high-quality information about what's going on in Gaza, he seems to really perk up only once it's on the tube.
Such a narrow information stream is a problem, because TV is not a good source of information on its own; it should be consumed as part of a balanced news diet. That's especially true for the television channel that Trump seems to consume most, Fox News. (The liberal researcher Matt Gertz painstakingly documented the direct connection between Fox News segments and Trump tweets during his first term.) Various research over many years has found that Fox viewers are less informed than other news consumers.
Trump's reliance on television news presents an easy target for anyone trying to influence him, as Gertz's research underscores. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina adopted a strategy of going on TV to try to get messages to Trump. 'Have you conveyed this personally to the president?' a host once asked him during an interview. 'I just did,' Graham answered. Politicians seeking Trump's support have tried to use TV too. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, ran ads in Florida when he was up for reelection in 2020 to get them in front of Trump. So have Trump opponents wishing to troll him.
The fact that the president can be so easily persuaded is concerning enough on its own, and helps explain the policy whiplash during his two presidencies. But it's especially dangerous in an age of misinformation. I wrote in 2017 about how Trump's tendency to fall for fake news could cause him trouble. Eight years later, Trump has a White House staff less interested in saving him from himself, and technology has developed to allow for extremely convincing and realistic deepfakes. Trump's naive belief that you 'can't fake' what you see on TV is belied by the many tear-jerking but counterfeit AI images that circulate on Facebook. When it comes to Gaza, he has access to much more reliable evidence and warnings from human-rights experts, but those don't really seem to penetrate.
News coverage is not the only obsession shaping, or warping, the administration's approach to Gaza. The president's inclination to view nearly everything as a potential real-estate deal inspired his bizarre suggestion to clear the strip and turn it into a luxury beachfront development, the 'Riviera of the Middle East.' And his poorly concealed fixation on winning the Nobel Peace Prize seems to animate many of his choices in the region. As an added benefit, a Nobel would play well on the news.
Even as TV news is driving Trump's worldview, Trump's worldview is reshaping TV news. Having worked to dominate news coverage for years, Trump now wants to control it directly, as he and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr seek unprecedented control over broadcasters such as CBS. Trump once considered starting his own TV network, but he and the nation's major broadcasters could instead create a closed loop with Trump taking his tips from channels that do what he says. Who needs facts when you can construct your own reality?
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Today's News
President Donald Trump announced that he will shorten the 50-day deadline he gave Russia two weeks ago to reach a peace deal in Ukraine. He warned of severe tariffs if no agreement is made soon.
About half the country is under active heat advisories, affecting more than 198 million Americans, according to the National Weather Service; some temperatures are reaching higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
A federal judge extended a block on a policy in Trump's bill that would have banned for one year Medicaid funding to health-care providers offering abortions.
Dispatches
The Wonder Reader: Isabel Fattal explores how reading outdoors can transform a traditionally indoor activity into a form of outdoor play—and suggests great reads to bring along on your next adventure.
The Weekly Planet: Rising summer heat is leading many Americans to stay indoors—and seems to be contributing to a rare form of seasonal affective disorder, Yasmin Tayag writes.
Evening Read
The WNBA Has a Good Problem on Its Hands
By Jemele Hill
For the first time in the nearly three-decade history of U.S. professional women's basketball, its star players have become household names. What would it take for them to get paid accordingly?
While warming up recently for the WNBA All-Star Game, players wore T-shirts that read Pay us what you owe us, in reference to the ongoing collective-bargaining negotiations between the players and the league. Until that point, there had not been much buzz about the WNBA's negotiations, but the shirts had their intended result, taking the players' labor fight mainstream.
More From The Atlantic
Listen. Justin Bieber's new song, 'Daisies,' is not the summer anthem we expected—but it might be the one we need, Spencer Kornhaber writes.
P.S.
Back in May, I wrote about Trump's plans to accept a white-elephant 747 from Qatar: 'If there's no such thing as a free lunch, there's certainly no such thing as a free plane.' I was thinking primarily about what Qatar might expect in return, but in The New York Times, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt report on the more immediate costs of refitting the plane for its new role as Air Force One. No one in government will talk about these costs, Sanger and Schmitt report, but the military appears to be raiding nearly $1 billion from a missile-defense project to pay for Trump's pet project—all while achieving no savings on the plane. It's enough to make you wonder just how sincere Trump is about government efficiency.
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