SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
What happens when the president of the United States goes to the media capital of the world amid a standoff with the major news outlets that cover him? You get moments like this today at the U.N.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It's an honor to be here. I'm surprised that CNN is here covering me. You...
KAITLAN COLLINS: The United Nations allowed us in, sir.
TRUMP: You should not be here covering me. You said you weren't going to cover me.
DETROW: That was President Trump interacting with CNN's Kaitlan Collins just days after he banned the outlet from the White House. Major news outlets have suspended their pool coverage in solidarity. NPR isn't airing audio from White House events until further notice. And in response, the White House has created Trump TV, an official YouTube channel streaming 24/7 content of the latest and greatest from the administration, as it puts it. To discuss, we have Mark McKinnon on the line. He has worked as a political consultant for former President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain and is a TV producer himself. Mark, welcome.
MARK MCKINNON: Hi. Glad to be with you.
DETROW: Mark, you know TV. You know politics. I figured you're a good person to talk to about this. And let's start with this. Just politically speaking, in this moment of so many different amateur media outlets, how much does this standoff affect how Trump's message is getting out?
MCKINNON: Well, first of all, I think you saw from the coverage at the U.N. that people are going to find lots of different ways to cover him, but it's not going to be the coverage that he wants, and that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to control this.
Back up just a little bit. I mean, all that Trump really cares about - people say he ran for the power. He ran for the money. No, no, no. At the end of the day, Donald Trump ran for president because that's the best way to get attention. He thrives on attention. That's the oxygen to his soul is just being the center of attention. And he knew running for president would be the hottest spotlight in the world. He didn't even think he was going to win. He thought he was going to run for a while and endorse Chris Christie.
So now he's got the spotlight, but he doesn't like the nature of it at times, and he thinks that he can control it. So he started this thing called, you know, Trump TV, which is just a YouTube channel, which I think is currently getting fewer views than The Muppets Go To Disneyland (ph).
DETROW: Let's not insult the Muppets here. Have you watched Trump TV at all?
MCKINNON: (Laughter).
DETROW: I mean, what do you make of this?
MCKINNON: Yeah. I just tuned into it to check it out. I mean, all it is is - first of all, it's just a rebranding of what was already there. They've been posting clips to the site. But the reality is the voters on either side of the aisle, they don't go to television or go to TV, any TV to get propaganda. They want it filtered by somebody. They don't just want raw propaganda from anybody on either side of the aisle. So it's going to be a failed experiment.
And I think that it, ultimately, it's just going to drive Donald Trump crazy 'cause you're going to have these situations where - like we saw yesterday, where there's going to be a situation that Trump wants out there, and the audience is getting no audio, and therefore, they're not going to carry it. And that is death for Donald Trump.
DETROW: I'm thinking about the counterpoint here, though. You know, Truth Social emerged after Trump is banned from Twitter and Facebook - a ban that was, of course, reversed when he won in 2024. But he creates this alternative landscape. A lot of people criticize it, say it looks junky, say it looks amateurish. And here we are all checking Truth Social day and night for the latest news from the president of the United States. Hasn't he had success creating his own lanes in the past?
MCKINNON: Well, he has in the past. And again, I think that's because people had a fascination, but I think that fascination is worn out. And they're looking for something new and different because what they were promised hasn't been delivered. So the last place they're going to go to find that is, I think, on Trump TV. I only give it a week or so before it runs out of oxygen.
DETROW: What do you think happens next, though, with this broader standoff between Trump and the outlets covering the White House?
MCKINNON: Well, I'm glad to see that the press is unified in their support for the outlets that have been barred from the White House. So the press is showing great solidarity. At the end of the day, I think that Trump needs the press more than the press needs him right now and - or at least he thinks he does. So I think at the end of the day, he's going to pull it down and realize that he's not getting what he wants, which is ultimate wall-to-wall coverage from everybody worldwide.
DETROW: Do you think the balance of that relationship has changed in the past year in terms of who needs what more?
MCKINNON: Yeah. I do. And, I mean, I think there's an exhaustion with Trump. I mean, I think that's true with voters. I think it's true with the media. I mean, that would go for anybody who's been a two-term president. I worked for one, and I saw it as his media guy. People just, you know, they get tired of you, and they want to change the channel. And then, again, it's just an irony that the guy who understands TV most of all, that he would be now at a point where he's so upset with the coverage that he wants to turn it off, which is - again, he's, like, turning off his own respirator.
DETROW: That is longtime political consultant and TV producer Mark McKinnon. Mark, thanks so much for talking to us.
MCKINNON: Keep kicking it. Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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