THE PRESS NEEDS TO ACKNOWLEDGE SECOND-TERM TRUMP'S CORRUPTION THE WAY IT (MORE OR LESS) LEARNED TO ACKNOWLEDGE FIRST-TERM TRUMP'S DISHONESTY (updated)

In Donald Trump's first campaign and first term, the mainstream media resisted describing his falsehoods as lies. The press did point out dishonest statements -- The Washington Post, for instance, began tracking Trump's "false and misleading claims" at the beginning of his term and then catalogued 30,573 such claims by January 2021. But the Post didn't use the word lie in reference to a Trump assertion until the summer of 2018, when he'd been in office for a year and a half.

Nevertheless, the press got somewhat better at categorizing Trump's claims, and doing so in the opening paragraphs of stories. After he began insisting that he won the 2020 election, it became common for the press to describe this as a "false" claim. And the press also used forms of the word lie: Here's a campaign fact-check from CNN's Daniel Dale in October 2024 that appeared under the headline "Trump, on a Lying Spree, Made at Least 40 Separate False Claims in Two Pennsylvania Speeches."

In Trump's second term, the press needs to improve its coverage of Trump's corruption the way some news outlets improved their coverage of his honesty. The corruption needs to be made clear in headlines and in the opening paragraphs of stories.

Here's the headline of a New York Times story datelined today:

Trump Heads to the Middle East With a Single Goal: Deals, Deals, Deals

President Trump has always viewed the presidency as a worldwide hunt for deals. And there is no better place for that than the Gulf, where a few men wield absolute authority over vast wealth.

Apart from the fact that any use of the word "deal" in a headline about Trump is using his own branding, this tells us nothing about how shady Trump's plans are. Nor does the lede:

When American presidents visit the Middle East, they usually arrive with a strategic vision for the region, even if it seems a far reach.

Jimmy Carter pushed Egypt and Israel to a historic peace accord. Bill Clinton tried and failed with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. George W. Bush imagined his war on terrorism would ultimately lead to democratization in the region. Barack Obama went to Cairo “to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.”

President Trump will tour the Gulf this week in search of one thing above all else: business deals. Planes. Nuclear power. Artificial intelligence investments. Arms. Anything that puts a signature on the bottom of a page.

The point of the story is that this trip is oddly disengaged from American foreign policy. And sure, that's worth noting.

... as a strategic exercise, the trip’s purpose remains foggy. During his 2017 journey to the region, Mr. Trump made waves by rallying dozens of leaders from majority-Muslim countries to confront and denounce extremism. It is unclear what foreign policy goals, if any, will be advanced on this visit.

It's only in paragraph 12 that readers begin to get a glimmer of how corrupt this all is:

In place of grand strategy will be a series of financial transactions that Mr. Trump will promote as producing jobs for American workers.

The agenda conveniently aligns with Mr. Trump’s expanding business plans. His family has six pending deals with a majority Saudi-owned real estate firm, a cryptocurrency deal with an affiliate of the government of the United Arab Emirates and a new golf and luxury villa project backed by the government of Qatar.

The Qataris are going to great lengths to court Mr. Trump. The Trump administration is poised to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane as a donation from the Qatari royal family that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One, in possibly the biggest foreign gift ever received by the U.S. government, several American officials with knowledge of the matter said.

The plan under discussion raises substantial ethical issues....

So "ethical issues" get mentioned, but only in paragraph 15. It's only in paragraph 26 that we're told, "No part of the world has been more important to the rising financial well-being of the Trump family than the Middle East." Jared Kushner's ties to the Saudis are mentioned in paragraph 27. Some of Trump's business dealings are cited in subsequent paragraphs. So if you read this all the way to the end, you understand that Trump is using the office of the president for self-dealing, and that this isn't normal. But it's all reported subtly. This needs to be stated much more overtly.

There's a similar problem with the headline of a Times story about Trump's memecoin:

Auction to Dine With Trump Creates Foreign Influence Opportunity

(Imagine a similar headline: "Piles of White Powder and Rolled Hundred-Dollar Bills Create Drug Abuse Opportunity.")

The subhead is similarly bland:

When the bidding stops Monday, the top buyers of a Trump family crypto coin will win a tour of the White House.

But the lede at least conveys some sense of Trump's ethical bankruptcy, although it absurdly implies that the corruption might just happen:

The sale of face-to-face access to President Trump using the Trump family’s own cryptocurrency has done more than benefit him financially, though it has certainly done that.

Mr. Trump announced last month that leading buyers of a digital coin his family is marketing would be rewarded with a private dinner with him at one of his golf courses and that the very top bidders would win a tour of the White House.

The auction, which ends Monday, has set off a spectacle that has drawn bipartisan criticism, triggered a suspicious trading pattern, and left a sitting United States president wide open to attempts to corruptly influence him.

Trump isn't "wide open to attempts to corruptly influence him." He's actively encouraging coin buyers to corruptly influence him.

The Times story about the Qatari plane is better:

Trump Is Poised to Accept a Luxury 747 From Qatar for Use as Air Force One

The plan raises substantial ethical issues, given the immense value of the lavishly appointed plane and that Mr. Trump intends to take ownership of it after he leaves office.

All of these stories describe presidential acts that raise "substantial ethical issues," but at least we're told that right away in this story.

The third paragraph of the story refers to "a day of controversy in which even some Republicans privately questioned the wisdom of the plan." Then we get this in paragraphs 5 and 6:

While a Qatari official described the proposal as still under discussion and the White House said that gifts it accepted would be done in full compliance with the law, Democratic lawmakers and good government groups expressed outrage over the substantial ethical issues the plan presented. They cited the intersection of Mr. Trump’s official duties with his business interests in the Middle East, the immense value of the lavishly appointed plane and the assumption that Mr. Trump would have use of it after leaving office. Sold new, a commercial Boeing 747-8 costs in the range of $400 million.

“Even in a presidency defined by grift, this move is shocking,” said Robert Weissman, a co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization. “It makes clear that U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump is up for sale.”

That's much better. Trump is off-the-charts corrupt, and every story about his self-dealing should make that clear.

It's part of a larger media failing in Trump's second term: although nearly everything he's doing is in violation of the law, much of it is not described as illegal and potentially impeachable -- he's just doing stuff this way, and the law says it's supposed to be done that way, and the conclusion is often left unstated: What he's doing is illegal. But I don't expect the press to change.

*****

UPDATE: OMG.

Lipton is the lead author of the crypto story cited above. If this view of corruption is common among our elite journalists, no wonder Trump thinks he can get away with pretty much anything he wants to do.