The first thing to say about the largest prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia since the Cold War is thank God that’s over. The second thing to say is the story about this historic event should be about the president, his administration, foreign allies and relations, and the still-critical role of American diplomacy around the world.
And that’s it.
Limited to that, there’s plenty for enterprising reporters to work with – the personal and dramatic stories of each of the 16 prisoners, including a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal jailed for doing journalism and a former Marine and head of a global security company arrested in 2018; the diplomatic backstory of how Joe Biden worked with foreign leaders, sometimes against their own interests; the tale of international intrigue between Washington, Moscow and others; and perhaps the president’s legacy, as he was conducting negotiations even as his own party was pressuring him to drop out of the running.
This and so much more – a cornucopia of copy! – but alas, the Washington press corps is so fixed on seeing everything about American politics through the lens of winning and losing that it couldn’t help but inject the GOP presidential nominee into a story where he didn’t belong. Here’s the Post with a representative sample: “Biden, Trump exchange jabs as Russia prisoner swap turns political.”
I’ll get to that headline in a minute, but first I have to say something so obvious as to be invisible, and it’s because it’s invisible that the press corps can get away with business-as-usual without suffering any loss of credibility by the public, to wit: Biden is no longer Trump’s opponent.
Think about it. Biden is out. Trump no longer faces him. But if you’re casually reading the Post headline above, you might have forgotten, and if you forgot, it stands to reason the editors who wrote it forget – and why would they seem to forget something as important as that? Because everything about American politics is seen through the lens of winning and losing, such that even an indisputable good news story about an American president’s successful negotiation for the release of 16 innocents, jailed unjustly by America’s enemy, can’t be left alone.
It gets worse.
By injecting Trump into a story where he doesn’t belong, the press corps minimizes Biden’s achievement while maximizing Trump’s, well, nothing. He did nothing. That’s the point. Trump bragged about how, after beating Biden in November, he would secure the release of every prisoner in Russia, even before he officially took office. He said Russian leader Vladimir Putin would do that for him, the implication being that only a high T-level bro as strong and tough and mighty as Trump could pull that off. But as he was talking, Biden was doing. He did what Trump said only he could do. And in the process, he exposed Trump.
That’s pretty embarrassing, or it would be if Trump had not gone on the offensive with a transparent, or what should be seen as transparent, bid to cover up for his humiliating weakness. It doesn’t matter what he said (you can click here to see a CNN panel discussion). The point for Trump isn’t the what, but the how and why: to degrade the achievements of people who really do have the power to make the world a better place. Worst of all, the press corps plays along.
Every single person in Washington, including the Republican Party, knows Trump is weak. They knew when he said only he could force Putin to release prisoners he was interfering with negotiations for their release. They knew Trump was, in effect, telling Putin to hold them until after the election, putting his own interests above theirs and the country’s. They know if Trump won the election, Russia would go on a kidnapping bender, safe in the knowledge of getting what it wants in exchange for Americans’ freedom. And they know, by making a liar out of him, Putin implied something Trump does not want to be heard widely. He thinks Trump is too weak to beat the Democratic nominee. There’s no longer an advantage to holding the prisoners.
Every single person in Washington knows Trump is weak, but he rarely comes off that way to the American public, and that’s thanks to the press corps. In a sense, the press corps is Trump’s “affirmative action program” (if we accept the illiberal definition of affirmative action). It doesn’t matter how much he fails. It doesn’t matter how weak he is. The press corps can be trusted to inject something – anything – he says into any story, even ones where he does not belong, and as a consequence, he will come off as stronger than he is. Case in point: “Biden, Trump exchange jabs as Russia prisoner swap turns political.”
(Trump’s “affirmative action program” was on display this week after he humiliated himself during a televised interview at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. The audience laughed at him when he doubted Kamala Harris’ Blackness. That was funny! But the press corps bailed him out, again, by framing the story as if Harris were responsible for his buffoonery, not him.)
And because Trump comes off as stronger than he is, Biden comes off as weaker than he is. Remember: Biden really did get those prisoners out. There’s no question about his strength on account of him flexing it so demonstrably. But Trump’s crybabying provided reporters with a pretext for questions, so when Biden responded with the obvious – if Trump is so tough, why didn’t he do what I did when he was president? – it doesn’t sound like a declaration of categorical and impervious fact.
It sounds like a “jab.”
Perhaps the worst consequence of this is people can’t see something else so obvious as to be invisible. Trump never stops trash-talking America. That’s his message. It’s the whole shebang. Everything about us sucks and the only way to unsuck us is voting for him. We know this is true, not only because sucky America is baked into the concept of maga, but also because he can’t give Biden even a little credit for doing what he could not do. He can’t spare enough generosity to celebrate 16 people tasting freedom for the first time in a long time. Everything about America sucks, he tells us, but he can’t admit when it doesn’t.
To me, the worst consequence of the Washington press corps acting like Donald Trump’s affirmative action program is truly good news, like the prisoner swap, can’t be heard by a democratic citizenry, and because it can’t be heard, the people responsible, in this case the Biden White House, are not properly rewarded by a democratic citizenry. The press corps turns incentives upside down so lying is preferable while truth-telling is punishable, and talking about doing things is more powerfully received than actually, literally doing them.
