Ever since the White House began banning the Associated Press from Oval Office press availabilities on Tuesday, there have been calls on social media and elsewhere for the White House press corps to start some kind of boycott.
The ban – in response to the AP’s decision to continue to call the Gulf of Mexico by its true name, rather than the one Trump made up — is outrageous. As AP executive editor Julie Pace has said, “it plainly violates the First Amendment.” The AP should sue. I don’t know why it hasn’t done so already. It will win.
But in the meantime, I don’t think a boycott is the right way forward.
For one, if the traditional members of the press corps withdrew, that would only further enable the lickspittles from propaganda outlets who have already edged their way into the press availabilities. Do we really need more questions like this one?
For another, you would never get many of the traditional members to agree. They are pathologically opposed to collective action and hooked on access. The best we can hope from the White House Correspondents Association is a stern statement.
Instead, you need to look at what the White House is trying to accomplish here, and make sure they fail.
The goal here is obvious: To intimidate the press corps into using Trump’s language and toeing Trump’s line.
So the press corps needs to respond not by ceding the floor to sycophants, but by asking vastly tougher, more confrontational questions, in unadulterated terms.
The first question they should ask Trump, for instance, would be about the First Amendment. But rather than simply ask a question, they should give him a little lecture first. And rather than stand down afterwards, they should follow up aggressively.
Specifically, they should explain to him that the First Amendment is universally interpreted as forbidding the government from punishing people or institutions based on their speech – especially their political speech. Then they should ask him: Does he disagree with that interpretation?
And if he responds with the White House’s stock answer – that no one has a right to be part of the Oval Office pool – they should ask him: Isn’t it true that the Associated Press has always been part of those pools in the past? Then they should ask him: Isn’t it true that you are punishing the AP in this way? They should note that his own deputy chief of staff — in a tweet on Friday that doubled down on the ban and extended it to Air Force One — explicitly linked the decision to AP’s policy on the Gulf of Mexico. They should then ask: Is that not a punishment? They should say: Clearly, you are punishing the AP on account of its speech. They should ask: How is that not a violation of the First Amendment? They should ask: Do you think the Bill of Rights is wrong here? They should ask: Do you consider the Bill of Rights inviolable, or not?
The next question after that should be whatever question the AP reporters say they would have asked if they were there.
And going forward, they should recognize that letting Trump lie with abandon – without any pushback – is not a service to the people of this country. (They should, of course, have realized this a long time ago.)
So they should point out his lies, and give him the opportunity to correct himself. They should ask him why anyone should believe him, considering some of the things he has said that are so wildly untrue.
And for good measure, they should often refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its real name.
They should, in short, dare Trump to ban them, too.