It’s time for all Americans — especially my Washington press corps colleagues — to take Donald Trump at his word.
So it’s time for our news media’s talking heads to rethink our craft’s default assumption — that Americans have grown numb to Trump’s outlandish name-calling and untruthful words and ways.
It’s time for us to stop assuming our role must be to somehow tell you what our president really intends to do to you. No more. Our real job is to make sure we all are focusing on what Trump’s words and deeds have actually been telling us — so the folks who elected him can decide if he really is giving you what you thought you’d be getting.
Let’s start by rewinding a bizarre series of recent exchanges between our president and the media folks who cover him about Trump’s war on what he says are Venezuela boat drug runners.
On Dec. 3, ABC News correspondent Selina Wang asked: “Mr. President, you released video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, but not the second video. Will you release a video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves what happened?”