When I covered the White House for Newsday in the 1990s, a running joke among reporters in the briefing room adapted a Winston Churchill quip about democracy: “Covering the White House was the worst beat in Washington, except for the others.”

President Donald Trump’s unhinged attack this week on CNN’s Kristen Holmes, followed by a highly personal attack from a White House social media account, shows that the White House beat really is the worst job in journalism today.

Previous presidents got annoyed by media coverage but mostly bit their tongues. In his second term, Trump has taken his war on journalists to new lows.

Indeed, there has been a disturbing evolution in Trump’s language. In his first term, Trump mostly attacked the media as “fake news,” with occasional zingers aimed at reporters who annoyed him. Even then, the personal jabs mostly concerned decorum or competence, such as describing someone as “rude.”

In his second term, however, Trump increasingly attacks the journalist as a person simply for asking a question. In doing so, he turns away from the question at hand and makes his perception of the reporter’s body, temperament, intelligence and worthiness the subject, I wrote in an article for MS NOW. Please follow this link to read my analysis.

After earning my graduate degree in 1983, I moved out of university housing and into my first New York City apartment, a tiny fourth-floor walk-up in a small building in Hell’s Kitchen. My landlord was Tony Schwartz, who lived on the lower floors with his family. I paid about $550 a month, which seemed like a fortune on my $16,000 salary at the time.

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Tony was a legendary sound engineer and ad maker who always insisted his clients come to his home. He once showed me his diary for a single week. Among the visitors were Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy. Not bad for my first New York City landlord.

Tony was most famous for his role in creating the “Daisy” commercial for the Lyndon B. Johnson campaign. The ad was so controversial it only ran once — just before the evening news — but it generated enormous free publicity and dominated the political conversation at the time. In it, a little girl picks petals from a daisy, and her counting turns into a countdown to a nuclear explosion reflected in her eye.

Then LBJ said: “These are the stakes: To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.” A narrator added: “Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”

Johnson’s GOP opponent was Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, and the Goldwater campaign immediately erupted in fury. Leading Republican lawmakers lined up to denounce the ad.

The ad never mentioned Goldwater or showed his image. That was deliberate. Schwartz told me that the campaign had set a trap. The campaign’s big fear was that Goldwater would respond by embracing the message of the ad — that nuclear war was horrific — and thus neutralize its impact. Instead, by forcefully condemning the ad, Republicans reinforced the idea that the ad was about Goldwater — and that Goldwater was a dangerous warmonger.

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I was reminded of this story this week when Republicans denounced Sen. Jon Ossoff for this line in a speech about Trump: “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

“Natalie” is Natalie Harp, a 34-year-old Trump aide who is almost constantly at the president’s side and helps manage his Truth Social account. She was even one of the few aides who accompanied Trump on a decoy aircraft when U.S. intelligence deemed a threat by Iran to be credible. (By contrast, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was left on the aircraft believed to be a target.)

Ossoff slipped in the words “travel with Natalie” and could credibly claim he was just stating a fact. She does travel with Trump constantly. And just like the Goldwater campaign, Trump’s allies fell right into a trap.

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Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications’s director:

Tim Murtaugh, former Trump communications aide:

Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary:

Scott Jennings, Trump ally and CNN commentator:

The over-the-top reaction then gave the mainstream media an excuse to write stories about Natalie Harp and her unusual role in the Trump White House. After CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked for a response to Ossoff — which Trump deflected, with a jab at Ossoff as a “Pee-Wee Herman lookalike” — an official White House X account piled on with a personal attack.

Why would Trump’s allies immediately assume Ossoff was offering sexual innuendo? That’s a question only they can answer.

As a reporter, I often experienced how headlines could shape readers’s impressions of an article I wrote. I once got a call from a congressional aide saying that a dozen House members had changed their votes after my article — with an inaccurate headline — appeared on the front page of The Washington Post. Another time, the State Department spokesman denied the story because of the headline — even though the text of the article was completely accurate.

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After that, I became notorious for sneaking into the Post system after 10 p.m., checking the headline crafted by the copy desk and then offering (more accurate) suggestions that would fit the allotted space. (This was in the heyday of the print edition. On the web, space restrictions are much looser.)

There’s really no excuse for assuming a headline accurately reflects the article, especially since the text likely will have nuances not easily captured in a few words. It’s pretty shameless to circulate a headline without looking at the article itself.

But of course, the Trump White House is shameless — and maybe officials don’t bother to read the full story.

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Last week, The Post published an article with this headline: “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years.”

Donald Trump took office only a year and a half ago, and anyone with a basic knowledge of economics knows that policy changes take time to work their way through the economy. But that didn’t stop Trump and his minions from touting the drop in prescription drug prices.

Trump approached reporters on Aug. 14 with the article in hand and waved it around. “The headline today is exactly that,” he said. “You see it? It says, ‘Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years.’ Okay? Got it? Everybody have it? And I told you that was going to happen.”

The White House also touted the price drop on social media.

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But rather than crediting Trump, the article said actions taken under Joe Biden were more likely responsible for the price decrease. For instance, right in the third paragraph: “Some experts said a Biden-era policy that requires Medicare to negotiate prices for some popular prescription drugs is more likely to be driving down costs.”

The article noted that the White House cited Trump’s efforts to reduce the cost of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.

“But bigger trends in the GLP-1 marketplace were already driving down prices independent of Trump’s negotiations, according to experts on drug pricing,” the Post said. “Spotty insurance coverage for Wegovy and Zepbound for weight loss has produced enormous demand for lower consumer prices. And cheaper compounded drugs have posed genuine competition for the brand-name companies, adding even greater downward pressure.”

The article quoted Richard Frank, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as doubting that Trump’s initiatives were behind the drop in drug prices. “If I was a betting guy on what mattered most, it would be probably stuff around the Inflation Reduction Act,” Frank said, adding that Trump’s efforts “wouldn’t be where I’d place my money.”

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The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, of course, was one of Biden’s key legislative achievements. It required Medicare to begin negotiating drug prices with manufacturers for costly prescription drugs. When did the first price reductions take effect? This year, with an estimated $6 billion in savings.

Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University, also told The Post that the Inflation Reduction Act is a more plausible contributor to the decline in prices than Trump’s initiatives.

For the Trump White House, history appears to begin on Jan. 20, 2025. The headline was useful to Trump. The article underneath it was not.

Karoline Leavitt, the outgoing White House press secretary, is the embodiment of a presidency unleashed, with little regard for truth or transparency.

Reporters expect press secretaries to put the best possible gloss on an administration’s policies. But they’re also supposed to provide information that helps reporters accurately explain what the White House is doing.

Over three decades working in Washington, I have dealt with 20 White House press secretaries, from Dee Dee Myers, the first woman to hold the job, to Leavitt, the youngest person to hold the job and Trump’s fifth press secretary as president.

Under Trump, the role of the White House press secretary has been diminished almost to the point of meaninglessness, I wrote in an article for MS NOW. Please follow this link to read my analysis.

Three Donald Trump quotes:

2008: Asked what he would do as president, Trump said, “those oil prices would drop like a rock.”

2022: High gasoline prices are “the equivalent of a massive tax hike on America.”

2026: “Short term oil prices... is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”

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Gas prices are the most visible sign of inflation to many Americans because pump prices are prominently displayed to drivers. Out of office, Trump has always insisted that the president owns the price of gasoline. Even when he acknowledged fragile oil markets, he rarely treated those limits as an excuse for a president—not for OPEC, not for war, not for events abroad.

Well, guess what: As gasoline prices spiked this year — though not quite to 2022 levels — Trump claimed a wartime carve-out apparently available only to him. Never mind that he started the war with Iran almost on a whim, and he can’t figure out how to end it.

I realize that saying Trump is hypocritical is like saying the sky is blue. But it’s worth recalling how little quarter he gave his predecessors over the price of gas.

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Trump built a blunt political rule of presidential responsibility, and he applied it first to Barack Obama and then to Joe Biden. In February 2012, as gas prices climbed, he said, “We have nobody in the White House to protect us,” and told Americans to “get used to paying tremendous gasoline prices because we have nobody, nobody to protect us.” In January 2024, he told voters plainly that “you can do a lot of things if you’re president.” The premise was always the same — the levers exist, and a competent president pulls them.

He also made specific promises during the 2024 campaign. He pledged to “cut fuel prices in half within 12 months.” And he presented that rule to voters as a ballot test. “MAGA — MAKE AFFORDABLE GAS AGAIN!” he posted in July 2024. Weeks later, he posted: “If you want lower prices, VOTE TRUMP!”

The clearest precedent came in 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave Biden the kind of foreign-war defense Trump now claims for himself.

On March 9, 2022, an interviewer asked Trump directly whether gas prices were rising because of the war in Ukraine. He conceded the smallest sliver — “I think it’s because of that a little bit” — then buried it beneath his larger claim. Under his policies, he said, “War or no war, [prices] would have been very low because we were dominant.”

He also mocked the Biden administration’s label for the spike. “Putin, they called it Putin price hikes,” he said in April 2024. “It wasn’t only Putin. It was Putin and plenty of other things that Biden got wrong.” Similarly, in 2011, Trump used the Arab Spring to reinforce his argument about presidential failure, noting that after unrest in Egypt, “OPEC announced an increase” — and blaming Washington for having “nobody that calls up OPEC” to stop it.

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Now, most economists would argue a president has little control over gas prices. The biggest factor, after all, is crude oil. More than 50 percent of the price at the pump is directly tied to the cost of crude oil. About 18 percent of the cost reflects state and federal taxes. About 15 percent stems from distribution and marketing, while 13 percent comes from refining costs and profits. Crude is priced globally. Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz disrupts oil shipments and lifts pump prices no matter who sits in the White House, just as the Libyan uprising affected crude supplies in 2011.

When I ran The Washington Post Fact Checker, I routinely dinged politicians for blaming other politicians for the price of gasoline.

“It’s that time of year again: Gasoline prices have spiked, and politicians are trying to make political hay,” I wrote in 2021. “The Fact Checker has had to deal with this faux issue for decades. We wrote about it in 1996 when then-Sen. Bob Dole campaigned for president and urged a repeal of the 4.3 cent gasoline tax because gasoline then was on track to reach $1.31 a gallon. We wrote about it in 2000 when gas prices appeared to have popped to the highest level ever. We wrote about it in 2012 when Republicans misleadingly complained that gasoline prices had doubled in President Barack Obama’s term. And here we are again. President Biden has been president for only six months, and somehow his policies have already led to high gasoline prices.”

There was probably no bigger offender than Trump. On rally stages and in all-caps posts, year after year, Trump told voters to read gas-station signs as a verdict on the president.

Now that the gasoline signs are flashing red, Trump plays Emily Litella —“Never mind.”

(Note: research into Trump’s rhetoric and Truth Social posts over the years was assisted by the “Ask Trump” collection of Sourcebase, where I am chief content officer. Readers are invited to get a free account and explore our extensive collections of documents.)

When journalism awards were announced at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Friday, one of the winners was the Wall Street Journal for an investigation of President Trump’s association with disgraced financier and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein — reporting which led the president to file a $20-billion lawsuit against the newspaper. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer mentioned the lawsuit while announcing the award, Trump mugged for the cameras as he sat on the dais.

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The most revealing moment came as Trump stood to congratulate the WSJ reporters who wrote the winning entry. Khadeeja Saftar was first in line. Trump’s lawsuit had disclosed her address, forcing her family to relocate. She mouthed “thank you,” but did not smile or speak as she shook Trump’s hand. He threw up his hands in an exaggerated, palms-up shrug, expressing mock bewilderment at the reporter’s chilly reception. The crowd roared.

By contrast, the five WSJ journalists who followed — all talented reporters — smiled broadly and, in some cases, engaged in chitchat with Trump. As I watched this scene over and over in a clip posted on social media, I wondered — what would I have done? Proximity to power can make one’s standards sag.

Proximity to power has always been the core problem of the WHCA dinner. I attended once, in 1994, a few weeks after I first arrived in Washington as a correspondent for Newsday. I was disturbed by the idea of mingling with government and Hollywood figures with whom the press should always maintain a skeptical, arm’s-length relationship, and swore I would never attend again. To the annoyance of my bosses, I held to that standard even after becoming White House correspondent. Eventually, some news organizations, including The New York Times, came to the same conclusion.

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At past WHCA dinners, which raises money for scholarships, the president traditionally made brief remarks, usually with a humorous or self-deprecating tone. Trump refused to attend during his first term, but accepted the invitation this year. The reward for the assembled journalists was a rambling, vitriolic one-hour spiel in which he attacked and belittled the media, name-checking many reporters — including one who had just greeted him with a smile. Trump remarked, “He’s been killing me for years. And yet tonight, he shakes my hand. He hugs me. Everything nice.”

Most of the audience, except for Trump aides, sat in silence. As far as I know, no one walked out in protest.

None of it should have been a surprise. Since taking office a second time, Trump has methodically attacked news organizations. He’s filed lawsuits that were often frivolous — and some media companies have settled them, paying him millions of dollars to avoid the hassle of tangling with the president. One of his allies took over CBS, tarnishing the network’s crown jewel, 60 Minutes. The program had remained a huge success, but Trump’s relationship with it had long been contentious. Key producers and correspondents were forced out or quit under the new regime.

Meanwhile, Trump regularly insulted or belittled individual reporters — by my count, 48 times between his return to office and Friday’s speech.

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Trump’s appearance at this year’s dinner was an example of the insidious way he bends institutions to his will. Given Trump’s antagonistic attitude toward the media, which he often labeled “the enemy of the people,” there was no reason to ever invite him. Of course, as a matter of courtesy, the president is always invited. Trump had skipped four dinners in his first term and the first one in his second term, so organizers likely thought he would once again refuse to appear.

Trump had set the trap. This time, he accepted — and the WHCA was stuck. It would have been a bigger story if the WHCA had disinvited him, and would have fed into the president’s narrative that the media has Trump Derangement Syndrome.

After a gunman interrupted the original April dinner before Trump had a chance to speak, the WHCA had an out. Trump at the time complained that he had planned a “vicious” speech and was disappointed not to be able to deliver it. So he had telegraphed his intended tone. The WHCA could easily have announced that, in the interest of caution, the dinner would be limited to just reporters and no president or administration officials.

But instead, organizers invited the president yet again. In a ballroom devoted to honoring the First Amendment, the clearest display of journalistic independence came from Khadeeja Saftar, who did not smile.

One day after U.S. officials announced that the Trump administration had provided Saudi Arabia with nuclear technology—including the right to enrich uranium—Donald Trump on Thursday added a new condition to the deal with a post on Truth Social.

“The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!) being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords. The United States is not opposed to Civil (Non-Enriched) Nuclear Facilities.”

Okay, there’s nothing new about Trump reversing policy on a whim. Perhaps he received an outraged call from Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. After all, the United States had long maintained that such a deal with Riyadh would be possible only if it included Saudi recognition of Israel. That’s why the news reports on the agreement generated so much attention, as it apparently did not include such a provision.

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But look at what Trump slipped into the post — a reference to Iran, with which he’s stuck in a never-ending war. Trump wrote “which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have.” For years, U.S. officials have argued that Iran has been building a pathway to a nuclear weapon under the cover of its civilian nuclear program.

Last year, in an interview on Fox News, Trump said that Iran was so oil-rich there was no need for a nuclear program. “They have pure, unadulterated, good oil,” he said. “And you say, why does somebody that has that kind of oil -- other than being politically correct. But when you have unlimited amounts of oil and gas, why are you putting up -- why do you need the civil nuclear? I just don’t see it.”

He added, “I think nuclear is fine for civil if you have a country with no oil. But if you’re sitting on one of the largest piles of oil in the world, why are you talking about putting up nuclear civil?”

(Of course, the same complaint could be made about Saudi Arabia.)

Is Trump signaling something by referencing Iran — a willingness to show more flexibility in negotiations over its nuclear ambitions? He mentioned the United Arab Emirates in the same sentence. The UAE in 2009 signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S. in which it gave up the right to enrich uranium— something that Iran has insisted is its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A policy shift? Or a typo? With Trump, you never know.

On Tuesday, a reporter presented Donald Trump with a tough but reasonable question—the kind of question presidents have fielded for decades in the Oval Office. ABC’s Mary Bruce asked: “There are no signs that Iran is ready to stop fighting—so, what is the plan? Is the plan to just keep bombing until they give up?”

Trump snapped back: “How would you know there are no signs? Why, do you know something I don’t know?” Then he added: “You don’t get that when you listen to your fake station, but you don’t know, you don’t know anything.”

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The exchange is typical of Trump in his dealings with professional journalists. It comes just days before the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which Trump will attend even as his administration intensifies leak investigations and subpoenas journalists in pursuit of their sources.

According to Sourcebase’s “Ask Trump” database, Trump has insulted or belittled reporters on 48 occasions since he regained the presidency in 2025. That is nearly three times a month.

Below, in chronological order, is the complete list. Trump’s contempt for reporters knows no bounds.

Jan. 28, 2025 — Jim Acosta (Substack) — Truth Social: called him “one of the worst and most dishonest reporters in journalistic history,” “a major sleazebag,” “no talent,” and “a major loser who will fail no matter where he ends up.”

March 9, 2025 — Michael Birnbaum (Washington Post) — public remarks: “You’ve lost a lot of credibility.”

March 13, 2025 — Kaitlan Collins (CNN) — Truth Social: said she looked like “the third rate, low ratings reporter, she is!”

March 17, 2025 — Ashley Parker (The Atlantic) — Truth Social: called her “not capable of doing a fair and unbiased interview,” “a Radical Left Lunatic,” “as terrible as is possible,” and “not capable or competent enough to understand the intricacies of High Level politics.”

March 17, 2025 — Michael Scherer (The Atlantic) — Truth Social: said he had “never written a fair story about me, only negative, and virtually always LIES.”

March 23, 2025 — Peter Baker (New York Times) — Truth Social: called him “a really bad writer and Obama biographer and sycophant.”

March 23, 2025 — Susan Glasser (The New Yorker) — Truth Social: said she had “less talent.”

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March 23, 2025 — Maggie Haberman (New York Times) — Truth Social: said she “may be the least talented writer in the entire stable of New York Times’ MEDIOCRITY!”

March 30, 2025 — Kristen Welker (NBC) — Truth Social: said she “doesn’t want to talk in detail about anything that matters” and “wastes my Administration’s time by talking to them about ‘NOTHING.’”

April 29, 2025 — Terry Moran (ABC) — interview: told him, “you guys didn’t want to write it because you’re fake news,” and said “ABC is one of the worst.”

May 11, 2025 — Martha Raddatz (ABC) — Truth Social: called her “old timer Martha Raditz” and said a topic was “on her Trump Deranged Mind.”

May 12, 2025 — George Stephanopoulos (ABC) — public remarks: called him “George Slopidopoulos” and “a bad guy.”

May 17, 2025 — George Stephanopoulos (ABC) — Truth Social: called him “Liddle’ George Slopadopolus” and referred to ABC figures as “SleazeBags.”

June 23, 2025 — Jonathan Karl (ABC) — Truth Social: referred to him as “Jonny Karl of ABC Fake News” and, in the same post, attacked “sleazebags in the Media.”

June 25, 2025 — unnamed reporters — Truth Social: said, “These reporters are just BAD AND SICK PEOPLE.”

June 26, 2025 — unnamed CNN and New York Times reporters — Truth Social: referred to “the reporters who made up the FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites” and said, “FAKE NEWS REPORTERS FROM CNN & THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD BE FIRED, IMMEDIATELY!!! BAD PEOPLE WITH EVIL INTENTIONS!!!”

June 27, 2025 — Abby Phillip (CNN) — Truth Social: said she had “absolutely no idea what she is talking about, strictly 3rd rate,” and ended with “LOSERS ALL!!!”

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June 30, 2025 — Dan Alexander (Forbes) — Truth Social: called him “a terribly untalented writer,” said he “probably can’t get a meaningful job in the business,” and grouped him with “bad reporters with evil intentions.”

Sept. 25, 2025 — Yamiche Alcindor (NBC News) — public remarks: “Be quiet, listen. You don't listen. You never listen. That's why you're second rate.”

Oct. 14, 2025 — unnamed ABC reporter — public remarks: “You’re ABC fake news” and “I don’t take questions from ABC fake news.”

Nov. 14, 2025 — Telegraph reporter — public remarks: mocked the questioner with “What a job you did” and “Are you proud of yourselves?” and “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”

Nov. 16, 2025 — Bloomberg reporter — public remarks: “You are the worst. I don’t know why they even have you.”

Nov. 18, 2025 — unnamed ABC reporter — public remarks: “your news is not credible and you’re not credible as a reporter.”

Nov. 26, 2025 — Katie Rogers (New York Times) — Truth Social: called her “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”

Dec. 6, 2025 — Kaitlan Collins (CNN) — Truth Social: called her “always Stupid and Nasty.”

Jan. 11, 2026 — CNN pool reporter — public remarks: “Why don’t you just say I’m with CNN?” followed by “You’re with fake news” and “’Cause CNN is fake news.”

Jan. 20, 2026 — unnamed CNN writer/reporter — public remarks: referred to “CNN fake news” and “a scam writer” who wrote “fake stories.”

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Jan. 20, 2026 — Don Lemon (independent) — public remarks: called him a “loser, lightweight.”

Jan. 22, 2026 — a New York Times writer — Truth Social: called the writer “corrupt,” “deranged,” and “sick.”

Jan. 27, 2026 — unnamed ABC reporter — public remarks: said, “this is ABC fake news, this one. She hasn’t asked me a good question in years,” and “I think a nice woman, but I don’t really like her too much.”

Jan. 29, 2026 — New York Times reporter — public remarks: after hearing the reporter’s outlet, said, “[Laughs] Oh. The fake, fake news, New York.”

Jan. 30, 2026 — Don Lemon — public remarks: called him “a sleazebag,” “a wash-up,” and “a failure,” adding that “he had no viewers” and was a “failed host.”

Feb. 3, 2026 — CNN reporter — public remarks: “You are so bad,” “You are the worst reporter,” and “you’re a very dishonest organization. And they should be ashamed of you.”

Feb. 6, 2026 — Natalie Allison (Washington Post) — public remarks: “You have a very bad attitude.”

Feb. 6, 2026 — unnamed reporter — public remarks: “I know what’s going on a hell of a lot better than you do. You don’t know what’s going on.”

March 15, 2026 — unnamed ABC reporter/reporters in the scrum — public remarks: said, “ABC fake news, your network is the worst,” and complained of “fake stories written by you people.”

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March 23, 2026 — unnamed reporter — public remarks: “Crazy question. We don’t talk about strategy.”

April 3, 2026 — Jonathan Karl — Truth Social: called him “Third rate news ‘anchor’ Jonathan Karl,” said “Karl is worse,” and dismissed his work as “A waste of time—Fictitious quotes.”

April 11, 2026 — NBC reporter — public remarks: “Why do you say that? You don’t know anything,” and, after learning the outlet, “Well, that’s fake news.”

April 26, 2026 — Norah O’Donnell (CBS) — interview: told her, “you paid me $38 million because you did something that was so horrible,” adding, “It was terrible. It was a terrible thing that you did.”

May 4, 2026 — Jonathan Karl — Truth Social: accused him of “very dishonest reporting” and said, “He’s trying to make himself look important.”

May 7, 2026 — unnamed ABC reporter — public remarks: “It’s such a, a stupid question that you asked,” “This is one of the worst reporters,” “she’s with ABC Fake News and she’s a horror show,” and “A question like that is a disgrace to our country.”

May 15, 2026 — David Sanger (New York Times) — public remarks: “I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write. And you should know better, David. You know better. Your editors tell you what to write, and you write it, and you should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason.”

June 2, 2026 — Kaitlan Collins — public remarks: “She's a young, beautiful woman, never smiles. I never see a smile off her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes.”

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July 11, 2026 — Maggie Haberman — Truth Social: called her “Maggot Hagerman,” said “Her book is a joke! 90% of it is Fake News,” and added, “Maggot is a loser!”

July 11, 2026 — Jonathan Swan (New York Times) — Truth Social: called him Haberman’s “flunky associate,” said of the pair, “I would be willing to bet they couldn’t get 50% of the questions right,” and called their book “garbage!”

July 13, 2026 — David Muir (ABC) — Truth Social: referred to “ABC Fake News and its shaky anchor, David Muir.”

July 21, 2026 — Mary Bruce (ABC) — public remarks: “How would you know there are no signs? Why, do you know something I don’t know?…You don’t get that when you listen to your fake station, but you don’t know, you don’t know anything.”

(Note: research into Trump’s rhetoric and Truth Social posts over the years was assisted by the “Ask Trump” collection of Sourcebase, where I am chief content officer. Readers are invited to get a free account and explore our extensive collections of documents.)

“The saga continues unabated as we defend the Persian Gulf, an area of only marginal significance to the United States for its oil supplies, but one upon which Japan and others are almost totally dependent. Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect thei…

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After more than three decades in the Washington, D.C. area, I sold my house, packed up my belongings and moved last week to New York City. In many ways, it was a return, as I had lived in Manhattan for a dozen years after college before becoming a reporter in the nation’s capital. But it was also an escape.

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New York is expensive, gritty, and noisy — I hear sirens in the distance as I type this — and quite different from the suburban lifestyle in Virginia I had enjoyed. Space is tight; I gave away 1,200 books I had collected over the years because there wouldn’t be enough room in a New York apartment. I left behind many friends and former colleagues in Washington — a professional lifetime of contacts. It wasn’t an easy decision, and it took me a long time to embrace it.

Now that I’m here, though, I don’t have any regrets. The Washington of 2026 is far different than the Washington of 1994.

***

Washington was always highly competitive, filled with ambition and ego. Unlike New York, home to so many different industries and professions, Washington is a one-company town. You worked for the government, lobbied the government, or covered the government.

That meant there was a certain esprit de corps. People who worked for the government generally could have made many times more in the private sector, but they were dedicated to public service. Of course, the lobbyists made a ton of money — and some were former public servants — but there was still a sense of doing good, shaping policy, trying to make America better.

Year by year, that spirit disappeared. Washington today is bitter, dysfunctional, and broken. Donald Trump’s assault on the city — with his grandiose monuments to himself, his firing of tens of thousands of federal employees, his dismantling of government agencies, his disdain of government expertise — is simply the final chapter of a process that started only a few months after I arrived in Washington in March of 1994.

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The Democrats at that point had held control of the House of Representatives for 40 straight years — far too long for any political party. In 1993, Bill Clinton pushed through Congress a massive budget bill designed to reduce the federal deficit, ostensibly a goal of fiscal conservatives. But Republicans — led by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) — relentlessly attacked Clinton’s budget and managed to convince many voters that Clinton boosted taxes on every American. In reality, while taxes went up on the rich, a big expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit reduced taxes for lower-income people. But those facts didn’t matter when control of Congress was at stake.

I knew Democrats were going to lose the House when, a few weeks before the 1994 election, I interviewed people shopping at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. They were convinced Clinton had raised their taxes. Yet when I learned what they earned, it turned out they would get a tax decrease. (Folks were skeptical when I told them that.) The Kentucky congressional seat had been held by a Democrat since the Civil War, but it flipped to the Republicans in 1994 and has stayed that way ever since.

Gingrich had managed to nationalize the congressional election, in part by touting a “Contract with America,” which promised floor votes on issues long stymied by Democratic control. Former House Speaker Tip O’Neil (D-Mass.) used to claim “all politics is local,” but Gingrich upended that and started the nation down the road of hyper-partisanship. In his telling, Democrats were always corrupt and always evil, making it increasingly difficult for the two parties to solve problems together.

It’s hard to believe now, but the Food Stamp Act of 1977 was the creation of a conservative Republican, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, and liberal Democrat, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, working together to establish a nutrition safety net. In today’s Washington, that sort of bipartisan cooperation is all but impossible.

***

Gingrich also eliminated a little-known congressional agency, the Office of Technological Assessment. The putative reason was to reduce costs, but OTA was staffed with brilliant scientists and other experts who objectively advised Congress on complex, technical issues. After all, most members of Congress have little scientific expertise. As a reporter, I used to speak to OTA staff all the time, as they could clearly explain complex scientific issues. But Gingrich apparently thought science, as expressed by OTA, had an anti-GOP bias, so OTA was shut down and its nearly 150 staff laid off just as the technological revolution would begin to change American society. Congress has been hampered ever since, as the lack of in-house expertise allowed lobbyists to gain the upper hand when crafting legislation.

Another Gingrich theme was that the federal government was inherently bad, with little to justify it, also planting the seeds for Trump’s presidency. This line was also remarkably effective — so much so that Clinton, always aware of the shifting political winds, was moved to declare in 1996 that “the era of big government is over.”

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Members of Congress traditionally moved their families to Washington, and Democrats and Republicans would socialize on the weekends. The political parties weren’t so rigid, either, with moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats (known as “blue dogs”) working together or crossing party lines. But the anti-government, anti-Washington currents convinced many lawmakers it was politically perilous to live in DC with their families. Votes were scheduled so lawmakers only had to be in Washington from Tuesday to Thursday, leaving little time for them to know each other — let alone mingle with members of the opposing party.

The liberal Republicans in the northeast and midwestern states were replaced by Democrats; the conservative Democrats were replaced by Republicans in the south. When lawmakers held party caucuses on either side of Capitol Hill, no longer did they hear contrary points of view, as everyone echoed the same talking points.

That meant serious legislation usually could not be passed under anything but a strict party-line vote. Because of Senate rules regarding the filibuster (which required 60 votes to start debate on a bill), only bills having to do with taxes or the budget could be considered because, under those rules, they could not be blocked by a filibuster.

Serious problems were never resolved. In 1995, I wrote that projections showed that Social Security would run out of money to pay full benefits in the mid-2030s unless Congress took action. At the time, that appeared far in the distance, but it seemed manageable. After all, in the early 1980s, Congress passed a compromise law that extended the life of the program. But that was a different era. Riven by partisan deadlock, Congress has been unable to craft a similar fix — and now full benefits are projected to lapse in just six years. The next president will face a serious crisis — which will only be harder to resolve because time is running out.

Indeed, the inability of Congress to pass significant laws has led presidents to try to fix problems through executive action. But that’s not the same thing as a permanent law — and such executive actions can be easily reversed by a president of a different party. The result is constant whiplash and no continuity in policy.

Meanwhile, reportage in Washington has declined significantly. I arrived as a reporter for Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, then part of the Times Mirror Company. The Newsday Washington Bureau had at least 20 staffers. Other Times Mirror newspapers had DC staffs —The Los Angeles Times had more than 60, the Baltimore Sun employed ten, even the Hartford Courant had a reporter. The newspapers aggressively covered Washington — the Times broke major stories about Iran-Contra, Newsday won a Pulitzer for exposing friendly fire deaths in the Persian Gulf war — and especially kept a close eye on local lawmakers.

Now, the Times has about five reporters, Newsday has two, and the Sun and Courant have zero. The same is true of other major newspaper chains. Knight-Ridder’s Washington bureau published prescient stories about the flaws in the intelligence used by George W. Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq; it no longer exists.

There’s still some great journalism produced in Washington — by the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic (largely staffed by refugees from the Post). But think of all the stories that are missed. In the old days, George Santos’s lies about his biography would have been exposed long before he was elected.

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Only a couple of weeks after I arrived in Washington, the Newsday bureau chief took me to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Ever since Baltimore Sun reporter Mike Kelly had brought Fawn Hall—then at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal—to the 1987 dinner, news organizations had engaged in an arms race over celebrity guests from Washington and Hollywood. I found the spectacle unsettling. As a matter of principle, I have tried to keep my distance from sources outside the reporting process. So I decided never to attend the dinner again—a vow that annoyed my editors when I later became one of Newsday’s White House correspondents.

Looking back, the dinner symbolized a Washington that prized insider access and proximity to power. Today’s Washington has the opposite problem: too many politicians no longer engage with independent journalists at all.

The decline of traditional news organizations has coincided with the rise of openly partisan outlets that cheerlead politicians from one party while attacking those of the other. Increasingly, lawmakers will only talk to partisan outlets, where their opinions won’t be challenged. Some press aides now refuse to even acknowledge queries from mainstream media — and even post queries on social media in an effort to embarrass a reporter or spoil a scoop. That happened with distressing frequency in my last years of helming The Washington Post Fact Checker. (In the 1990s, of course, reporters called sources; now, many communications are by email.)

***

These changes didn’t happen overnight. Each seemed incremental at the time — another bipartisan dinner abandoned, another reporter laid off, another problem deferred. Looking back over three decades, they add up to a city that no longer resembles the Washington I first came to know.

Washington taught me how government works. It also taught me, over time, how government can stop working. I arrived in a city where public service was still widely regarded as an honorable calling and political opponents occasionally became partners. I left a city where too many institutions have withered, too much expertise has been discarded, and too much energy is devoted to winning the next news cycle rather than solving the next problem.

I will still be writing about Washington politics — but from a distance. Sometimes you have to step back from a subject to see it more clearly. After more than three decades inside the Beltway, I’m looking forward to writing about Washington from the outside again.

On May 8, 2018, standing in the Diplomatic Reception Room, Donald Trump read out the indictment of the Iran nuclear deal he was killing at that very moment. The deal’s sunset clauses, he said, were “totally unacceptable.” The inspection provisions “lack adequate mechanisms to prev…

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Why do Americans keep falling for this scam?

On March 31, sitting at his desk to sign an executive order on elections, Donald Trump spoke about the new $400 million East Wing ballroom and made a familiar promise. “The taxpayers are not putting up a dime,” he said.

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But contractor records reviewed by The Washington Post s…

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Donald Trump can’t handle the truth — especially when it’s presented by a woman.

The president rarely ventures beyond a media environment populated by fawning advisers and friendly Fox News interviewers, so a furious president terminated a “Meet the Press” interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker after she pressed him to provide evidence for his false claims that California’s elections are rigged and that “dirty” FBI agents ushered rioters into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump doesn’t object merely to tough questions. He objects to questions that force him to answer for his own words, I wrote in an article for MS NOW. Please follow this link to read my analysis.

(Note: research into Trump’s rhetoric was assisted by the “Ask Trump” collection of Sourcebase, where I am chief content officer. Readers are invited to get a free account and explore our extensive collections of documents.)

The New York Times on May 18 published an interesting article titled “Abortion Pill Lawsuit Leaves Trump Silent, and in a Political Bind.” The report detailed how, in an unusual move, the Justice Department declined to su…

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During the Vietnam War, Sen. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas) popularized the phrase “credibility gap” to describe the difference between the optimistic reports on the war’s progress by the Lyndon Johnson administration and the reality on the ground. When the Pentagon Papers were published, showing U.S. officials knew they…

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On Feb. 28, Donald Trump launched a war against Iran — a conflict now mired in stalemate, with oil prices soaring, the U.S. military arsenal depleted, and few of his objectives achieved. Talks with Iran have sputtered. Yet that hasn’t stopped him from repeated…

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Take a look at the passport mock-up above. Fox News* reports that new passports inside will feature an image of Donald Trump, the sitting president, with a gold signature underneath.

Supposedly this is being designed for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in his grave.

The Decl…

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I was interviewed by Amy Kellogg for the YouTube program The Trump Report. The 25-minute discussion is above.

I first met Amy in Geneva, Switzerland 16 years ago when we covered the nascent talks held by then new-Obama administration and the Iranian government over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But real negotiations did not begin in earnest until after Obama was re-elected in 2012. It took another two years of hard negotiations before a deal was reached in 2015 — which Donald Trump abandoned after he was elected for his first term. Now, Trump is trying to end the war he started with a new agreement.

Amy is a skilled interviewer, so I hope you enjoy our discussion.

“We’re going to fight for American workers and American-made steel.”

—Donald Trump, signing an executive order on trade and U.S. steel, April 20, 2017

With the U.S.-Iran war mired in stalemate and the world economy in trouble, perhaps it seems off-topic to point out yet another wildly contradictory act by D…

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