It’s been called the podcast era, where so-called influencers rule the digital landscape. Television has been dismissed as part of the dinosaur media. Not so fast. When President Donald Trump wanted to extol his record after the first 100 days, he turned to the likes of ABC News’ Terry Moran, NBC News’ Kristen Welker, and NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, who put together a town hall for the president. Even former Fox host Bill O’Reilly, along with sports mega-commentator Stephen A. Smith, got in on that one.
Turns out all of those obituaries about television news may be a bit premature.
By making the television rounds, Trump reached millions and millions of viewers across the ideological spectrum, not just playing to his conservative supporters.
Cuomo saw 750,000 viewers, about triple the usual amount of his prime-time show. Moran, 65, who is a senior national correspondent and anchor for ABC News’ streaming service, pulled in four million viewers.
Kristen Welker, who began hosting Meet the Press in 2023, drew three million viewers and 2.2 million viewers on YouTube. It was the highest-rated show of her tenure. Plus, clips were replayed by other networks, and elsewhere across the web.
Donald Trump, who got his TV start on a reality show, knew full well that everybody and his brother would be doing coverage of his first 100 days. So, it was a shrewd move to get into the television mix with such frequency, and make sure his views were represented by the person he trusts to do that the most: himself.
And he knew television would have the greatest impact. It enabled him to play defense against criticism over his trade war, immigration policies, and sinking poll numbers. This was a smart maneuver, which also extends to his constant availability to reporters in the Oval Office and elsewhere, where he routinely battles even hostile journalists.
Moran’s exclusive interview on the actual 100-day mark turned into a showcase for the president’s combative style. Moran dismissed Trump’s claim that a wrongly deported illegal immigrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had tattoos on his fingers of the initials of the gang MS-13, saying it had been photoshopped. Trump punched back.
Trump: “Wait a minute. Hey, Terry. Terry. Terry. Don’t do that.”
Moran: “He did not have the letters ‘MS-13.’
Trump: “It says ‘MS-13.’”
Moran: “That was photoshopped.”
Trump: “That was photoshopped? Terry, you can’t do that. They’ve given you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I had never heard of you, but that’s okay. But I picked you, Terry, but you’re not being very nice.”
The president’s condescension is a hallmark technique he often employs when he is unhappy with a question. And that inevitably makes news. It’s unfair to the reporter — there’s a widespread consensus that the finger tattoos were digitally inserted — and Moran, who co-anchored Nightline for eight years, was right to stand his ground. When a journalist is up against the president of the United States, however, it’s inherently a mismatch. Trump is the leader of the free world, and Moran is, well, some TV guy.
But Trump didn’t let up.
When Terry Moran tried to ask whether the president had “100 percent confidence” in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump said, “Ok, anything, do I have a hundred percent? It’s a stupid question.”
Moran said, “It’s a pretty important position.”
Trump shot back, “I don’t 100% have confidence that we’re gonna finish this interview.”
That kind of language pleases the MAGA base while, fairly or not, the insult makes the interviewer look less than intelligent.
Welker, whose interview was done at Mar-a-Lago, complete with a walk and talk around the glittering property, lacked any dramatic confrontations. But, Donald Trump did definitively rule out seeking a third term, and she pressed him on immigration, tariffs, and foreign policy. Most headlines quoted Trump as saying about upholding the Constitution: “I don’t know.” This was blatantly unfair because in the next breath, he said his lawyers “are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
Trump’s mastery of the media is in sharp contrast to the determined avoidance of the press by former President Joe Biden, who even turned down the traditionally soft Super Bowl interview. Now we know his mental decline prompted his staff to wall him off from media questioning.
It’s true that many television audiences are shrinking and getting older, and that the technology dates to the early 1950s, but it’s a mass medium designed for mass consumption. Television news has plenty of flaws, and so do journalists, but it still has more impact than all but a few podcasters.
Especially in the hands of a president.
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