It’s been less than two weeks since former President Donald Trump vanquished Vice President Kamala Harris, setting the stage for his return to the White House in January. Yet even though their preferred candidate lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College, the liberal media are already taking swipes at Trump’s initial Cabinet picks, an early indication that the press plans to hound the new President’s every move.
And if you’re feeling a little deja vu, it’s because we saw the exact same thing eight years ago, after Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. As NewsBusters carefully documented at the time, liberal reporters and commentators savaged Trump’s first group of appointees as “radical” and “racist” “ignoramuses” who “disdain the missions of their assigned agencies.”
One of Trump’s first selections in 2016 was campaign guru Steve Bannon as a top White House advisor. The media were displeased. On the November 14, 2016 World News Tonight, ABC’s Tom Llamas blasted Bannon as “a champion of the alt-right, a conservative movement many say is fueled by racism, sexism and anti-Semitism.” Over on NBC, anchor Lester Holt accused Trump of “lifting a man with ties to white nationalists into the heart of the White House.”
“There is nothing to laugh about when the President-elect has picked a white supremacist with ties to terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan to be his senior advisor,” The Root’s Jason Johnson seethed on CNN’s Newsroom. “People need to be concerned, and people need to push back against this kind of presidency.”
Liberal journalists didn’t much care for his choice for National Security Advisor either, branding Lt. General Michael Flynn as “divisive,” “controversial” and “ignorant.” On NBC’s Today, Steve Kornacki warned: “To call this divisive might be understating the case.”
“Look, Michael Flynn — General Flynn — has made fair criticisms of how this administration dealt with the rising threat that became ISIS,” former NBC host David Gregory allowed on CNN’s New Day. “But then, you jump the shark into this kind of Islamophobia — to indict — to say that Islam is a political ideology — what he has said — and not a religion; to indict four billion Muslims around the globe — I mean, that’s just short-sighted, ignorant thinking.”
The reception was just as chilly for Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, tapped to be Attorney General. “Trump Atty General Pick Dogged by Racism Allegations,” screamed CNN’s on-screen graphic on November 18.
“He referred to organizations like the NAACP and some other civil rights groups as being, quote, ‘un-American and Communist-inspired,’” NBC’s Peter Alexander fretted during a live update on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, November 18.
On NBC’s Sunday Today (November 20), Bloomberg’s John Heilemann complained: “There are millions and millions of non-white Americans, who are looking at the group, not because it’s so white, but also because if you take those people together — Bannon, Flynn and Sessions — all three of them have a history of being involved at a minimum racially insensitive endeavors. Having said racially insensitive things, and to some people worse than that....That’s a hardline group, on immigration, on foreign policy, on politics....that’s an ideological group and that’s a hardline group.”
Over on Fox News Sunday, liberal commentator Juan Williams took his own shot: “You have people who I would say don’t fit into exactly a team of rivals, but to many people a team of radicals.”
The next morning, Heilemann popped up on CBS This Morning to hit the race theme again: “It is a very monochromatic group....I think it would be a smart thing for the Trump team to move to get some diversity, in order to, kind of, reassure the many millions of Americans who are a little worried.”
After a Thanksgiving respite, Trump’s selections — and the media’s tart takes — resumed. On November 29, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell blasted the choice of Representative Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services: “Donald Trump makes more cabinet picks, including the man who intends to blow up ObamaCare.”
Millionaire reporters acted as if wealth was disqualifying. “Trump campaigned against Wall Street and he also said he was going to drain the swamp, yet he’s filling his cabinet with billionaires, millionaires, and some Washington insiders,” ABC correspondent Tom Llamas scoffed on Good Morning America, December 1.
“You know, before the election was over, before election night and right after, I described the Trump group as a pirate ship. Well, some of these nominees it looks like it’s a pirate yacht,” political analyst Matthew Dowd quipped on the same program.
“Mr. Trump’s choice of [Steve] Mnuchin for Treasury and billionaire businessman Wilbur Ross for Commerce signals a turning away from candidate Trump’s attacks on Wall Street corruption,” correspondent Major Garrett echoed on CBS This Morning.
Liberal reporters didn’t just resist Trump’s picks on television and in print; they also took their insults to Twitter. “Ben Carson may not know housing policy or how to run an agency but he's a world-class scammer,” New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait tweeted December 5, after the neurosurgeon and former GOP presidential candidate was picked to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Yet another calamity — contemptuous choice for critical dept. Wonder if Carson would like a housing expert to perform brain surgery on him,” sneered New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman in his own tweets the same day. “Trump choice of Carson will spell calamity for poor but not just poor. It betrays utter ignorance about cities and economic development.”
The media also had an icy reception for Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, tapped to head the Environmental Protection Agency. “The President-elect filled more administration posts today, putting a global warming skeptic in charge of protecting the environment,” CBS’s Scott Pelley fumed on December 7. Reporter Nancy Cordes offered her own slam: “The Sierra Club said today, ‘Having Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA is like putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires.’”
The next morning, Today co-host Matt Lauer teased the Pruitt story: “Environmental disaster? Controversy sparked by President-elect Trump’s pick to run the EPA....His position on climate change putting a dark cloud over his nomination.”
On CNN’s New Day, host Chris Cuomo launched the sleaziest attack: “He’s [Scott Pruitt] not accepting the science....Either you accept the science or you don’t....People thought the world was flat....People thought blacks and whites shouldn’t marry. People thought blacks shouldn’t be equal. That doesn’t mean you accept it as fact....”
“Fast-food billionaire Andrew Puzder is Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary, and another potentially problematic confirmation. The CEO of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s, Puzder said raising the federal minimum wage means cutting jobs,” NBC’s Katie Tur derided on that evening’s Nightly News. “Some Democrats called it a war on labor.”
On December 13, NBC found fault with Trump’s choice for Secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. On Today, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell derided Tillerson as “a Texas oil man with no government experience and deep ties to Vladimir Putin” and “the first person nominated for Secretary of State in modern history with no public sector experience.”
On Nightly News, correspondent Richard Engel reported from Moscow: “The Kremlin couldn’t be happier with the way Trump’s cabinet is shaping up, especially with Rex Tillerson as potential Secretary of State.”
“Objectively speaking, we’ve never had an administration that’s spewed this kind of open anti-Muslim rhetoric, starting at the top with Donald Trump,” The Daily Beast’s Dean Obeidallah worried on CNN’s New Day on December 9. “He’s building a dream team of anti-Muslim hate there.”
“I wish I could say that Ben Carson was the only person who didn’t have experience in his area,” the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin mocked on MSNBC’s AM Joy December 11. “What we have are ignoramuses, billionaires and a few generals....This is pretty frightful stuff. You have loads of people who have never been in government who don’t understand the difference between business and government.”
Slate’s Chief Political Correspondent and CBS contributor Jamelle Bouie wrote a scathing piece bashing Trump’s Cabinet selections. “To run the government, he has picked men and women who disdain the missions of their assigned agencies, oppose public goods, or conflate their own interests with that of the public,” Bouie opined.
“And as a cadre of tycoons, billionaires, and generals, Trump’s executive branch is a rebuke to the idea that government needs expertise in governing,” Bouie continued. “It’s the antimatter cabinet — an ungovernment brought forth by reactionary hostility to the idea of the public, a throwback to the industrial oligarchy that eventually brought American democracy to its knees....These appointments look like something beyond an expression of hostility to government: They look like a betrayal.”
The New York Times elevated that same hostile message to its front page on December 18. “Seven men and one woman named by Mr. Trump to run vast government agencies share a common trait: once they are confirmed, their presence is meant to unnerve — and maybe even outright undermine — the bureaucracies they are about to lead. Some of those chosen — 17 picks so far for federal agencies and five for the White House — are among the most radical selections in recent history,” asserted correspondent Michael Schear.
You can hear more than echoes of the media’s 2016 temper tantrums in their reactions to Trump’s 2024 Cabinet picks. It suggests we’re in for another four years of hyper-drama, with the media elite once again engaged in daily fistfights with a White House aiming to bust up the old establishment’s grip on power.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
