Hopefully they'll wait till the plane lands . . . New York Times reporters should be thrown off the Trump plane. That's what Steve Schmidt and Joe Scarborough said on today's Morning Joe. Via a Gail Collins column in the Times and in conversations with BuzzFeed EIC Ben Smith, portions of Donald Trump's ostensibly off-the-record interview with the Times' editorial board in January were leaked.
Said Schmidt: "if I was running the Donald Trump campaign, every New York Times reporter on that plane would be off of it until and unless they clarify the attributional policies of the newspaper." Seconded Scarborough: "every single New York Times reporter should be kicked off the plane, should not be given press access--anything--until the editor of the New York Times editor explains to the candidate and explains to the readers exactly what happened here."
JOE SCARBOROUGH: This feeds into what I was saying before. The media, the establishment, could not separate their personal feelings from the story. And so they never saw Trump coming because they had so much contempt for Trump. And here you have the New York Times, supposedly the gold standard -- Having information from an off-the-record editorial board meeting leaked. They would never do that in a million years to Hillary Clinton. They'd never do it to Marco Rubio. They'd never even do it to Ted Cruz.
STEVE SCHMIDT: Not even in a billion years, Joe.JOE: Not in a billion years. But they're doing it to Donald Trump.
SCHMIDT: It's a great journalism story. From time to time the New York Times will make pronouncements about its policies and the handling of on-the-record co, background, off-the record, saying that we won't allow off-the-record dispensation to be granted to sources: you can talk on the record. So why was the New York Times having an off-the-record editorial session with a presidential candidate? Being that it's off-the-record, why is it leaking now? Who is leaking it at the New York Times? What's the policy with regard to attribution at the New York Times? I'll tell you: if I was running the Donald Trump campaign, every New York Times reporter on that plane would be off of it until and unless they clarify the attributional policies of the newspaper.
JOE: I agree with you. Every single New York Times reporter should be kicked off the plane, should not be given press access--anything--until the editor of the New York Times editor explains to the candidate and explains to the readers exactly what happened here.
