Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the liberal Buzzfeed website, is apparently of two minds when it comes to journalists reporting the news and being involved in actively generating their own headlines.
In an article posted on Monday, Smith stated that President Donald Trump “has adopted pretty much the worst possible strategy for someone trying to wield the power of the most powerful job in the world: He’s shooting the hostages.”
That’s an odd remark coming from someone who claimed in early May that “people don't get into the business of reporting, I never did, because we are political activists.”
Smith began his Monday article by asserting: “President Trump, cornered, weakened and apparently unable to get his hands on the usual levers of presidential powers … can’t seem to get the hard stuff associated with the presidency done.”
The editor-in-chief continued:
He hasn’t been able to mount a legislative agenda or give federal employees (besides ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents and the occasional EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] regulators) the foggiest idea of what he wants them to do.
Congress is beyond his control and doesn’t fear him: It slapped him in the face on Russia, and when his allies “burned the ships” to pass a health-care bill, his confused conquistadors didn’t make it out.
“His remaining political leverage has come largely from the policies left to him as hostages by President Barack Obama,” Smith noted: “The Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and, most of all, DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] and the nearly 800,000 sympathetic young Americans it allows to live normal and sometimes extraordinary lives.”
“Trump's decision to simply kill those Obama-era acts, rather than to even attempt to use them as political leverage, helps explain the surprising weakness of his presidency,” he noted.
“Now, if Trump kills DACA to please his base, he’ll be getting the worst of both political worlds,” Smith asserted. “He’ll inflict real pain on hundreds of thousands of people to reassure his 30-some percent that he’s with them.”
“And politically speaking, he’ll have given up a bargaining chip for nothing and spent away a bit more of his political capital,” the Buzzfeed editor asserted. “That's not strategy, it's a panicked move in a corner.”
“DACA recipients, their allies and Americans who see their sympathetic stories across media, will blame Trump for their suffering,” he claimed. “If Congress manages to restore their status, it will be a deal made on Capitol Hill, with the president a sulking bystander.”
Smith then stated:
Hostage-takers keep hostages alive in order to protect themselves, to get what they want out of a situation that has clearly gone rather wrong. They sometimes shoot them for the same reason Trump appears to be thinking about ending DACA: attention.
Again and again, he’s faced choices between attention and power, between the reality show narrative and the complex realities of governance. He’s chosen attention every time, and there’s little reason to think that’s about to change.
Those comments are rather odd coming from someone who, while a guest on the Tucker Carlson Tonight program on the Fox News Channel, defended his organization regarding an accusation from a former employee that his support of Trump, once known, made continuing to work there intolerable.
Not surprisingly, Smith denied that other employees attacked, shunned and ridiculed their former colleague.
Carlson then asked his guest if he obtained a concealed carry permit and protested at a Planned Parenthood facility “because Jesus wants me to,” would his colleagues say bad things behind his back?
“Maybe the question is whether I will be shunned for going on your show,” Smith replied. “I think I'll be all right.”
He then claimed that “people don’t get into the business of reporting, I never did, because we are political activists. This is not the first, second or things on our minds.”
“My first gig was at a conservative newspaper in New York,” Smith continued. “I also worked for a left-leaning New York newspaper. I worked for Politico," which he claimed "has no particular ideology.”
“But you know,” he noted, “I came into this because I wanted to report, to find stuff out, to tell stories. I think that's true of most reporters.”
“And I think political activists who in good faith accuse journalists of being activists are basically projecting,” Smith stated. “They say: ‘I'm primarily motivated by politics; these journalists must also be.’"
“I just don't think, that's not the newsroom conversation,” he asserted, “I don't think in any of these newsrooms, or not most of them.”
Of course, there’s a tremendous difference between deporting someone and shooting that person, a concept Smith apparently didn’t think through before hammering the GOP occupant of the White House in his obviously “politically active” article.
