Even Conservative Media Has Its Limits with the Trump Administration

One week after Doug Stamper cosplay aficionado Stephen Miller cheerfully recited nonsensical lies on live television, the Trump administration trotted out White House chief of staff Reince Priebus for his turn on the Sunday morning talk-show circuit. Priebus made the case for the president's war on the media, gamely arguing that the most alarming aspect of the reports of a murky, clandestine relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia is...the fact that people found out about it. As you might imagine, this resulted in Priebus quickly contorting himself into a logical pretzel. What was surprising, however, was who called him out on it.

Priebus started on CBS's Face the Nation by gamely lecturing host John Dickerson about the evils of relying on unnamed sources:

I think that we have gotten to a place, John, where the media is willing to run with unnamed sources, apparently false leaked documents, to create stories. I mean, we deal with one after the next. I think that the media should stop with this unnamed source stuff, put names on a piece of paper and print it. If people aren’t willing to put their name next to a quote, then the quote shouldn’t be listed, period.

This is delusional, of course, because it willfully ignores the risks taken by those who possess sensitive information when they share it anonymously, let alone on their own letterhead. As Priebus and fellow indignant White House water carriers Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway know perfectly well, anonymous sourcing is an entirely conventional practice that allows whistleblowers to come forward without risking termination or some other form of retaliation. Hell, politicians rely on information attributed to unnamed individuals, too, and when Priebus tried to do so on the Chris Wallace–hosted Fox News Sunday, the host was having none of it.

WALLACE: You say that the intelligence community says that there were no contacts between anyone in the Trump campaign, any associate of Mr. Trump and anybody involved as a Russian agent as to the campaign and collusion in the campaign with Russia? Is that what you're saying?

PRIEBUS: Yes, they’ve told me—absolutely. They have made it very clear that that story in The New York Times is complete garbage. And, quite frankly, they use different words than that, OK?

WALLACE: Who is it that said that?

PRIEBUS: And then when I read back—

WALLACE: Who is it that said that?

PRIEBUS: I’m not going to tell you. I can’t tell you that.

WALLACE: Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Reince. You just complained about unnamed sources, you are using an unnamed source.

PRIEBUS: Well, because I didn’t ask for approval to use their name. But I will tell you this, when I say top level people, I mean top level people, OK?

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To recap, Priebus believes that reporting potentially explosive stories of White House corruption using unnamed sources is an unconscionable affront to democracy, but feels no analogous responsibility to support the administration's denials of those stories using the same standard. Got it. When Wallace challenged his guest on the president's "enemy of the people" rhetoric, Priebus shifted his reasoning slightly, complaining that the problem is not the veracity of the Russia report in particular, but is instead the stories that the media chooses to cover. A visibly frustrated Wallace protested that the United States is not a "dictatorship" with a "state-run media," and when Priebus blithely insisted on ticking off particular gripes with the press's reporting, the host let him have it.

PRIEBUS: Here is the problem, Chris—the problem is you’re right. Some of these things were covered, but you get about 10 percent coverage on the fact that you get a very successful meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of the U.K., the prime minister of Canada—

WALLACE: We covered all of those news conference live. Everybody did.

PRIEBUS: Right. Sure, yes, for about—yes, right. But then as soon as it was over, the next 20 hours is all about Russian spies—

WALLACE: But you don’t get to tell us what to do, Reince.

Normally, Fox News Sunday would be friendlier territory for Priebus, but as Shepard Smith demonstrated last week, the White House's constant attacks on the media at large have left even staunch Trump boosters a little shook. By making this story about the press's conduct, the administration is no longer making a standard-fare conservative-ideology argument with which Fox News viewers might agree—instead, it is questioning the integrity and patriotism of Fox News itself, and it's hard to fault Wallace for wanting to clap back. Apparently, even with conservative media outlets, goodwill for President Trump has its limits.

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