Brian Stelter Gives His ‘Cynical’ Theory For Why Lesley Stahl Kept Trump Anecdote Quiet
On her HLN show Unfiltered Wednesday, host S.E. Cupp brought up the anecdote shared by CBS’s 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl recently regarding President Donald Trump‘s attitude toward the press and questioned why we are only just hearing it.
Cupp first pointed out that the gist of Stahl’s story, which is that Trump manipulatively set out to discredit the press in order to short-circuit criticism of him or his administration, is something Stahl’s been saying for some time.
Which is true, she was just saying that yesterday in fact.
“So what I’ve been saying for 18 months is confirmed,” Cupp said on Wednesday. “President Trump’s war on the media is intentional and the goal is to create confusion and sow distrust. Earlier this week 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl revealed that during a meeting with President Trump, he told her point blank.”
She then played the clip of Stahl’s story, which has made the rounds over the last few days.
“I said, you know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this, you’re doing it over and over and it’s boring and it’s time to end that. You’ve won the nomination. And why do you keep hammering at this? And he said, you know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”
The big question, S.E. says, is why we haven’t heard this before now. “Why did she hold on to this nugget for the better part of two years?” she asked, before answering, “Beats me.”
She then brought in her guest, CNN’s Brian Stelter, to discuss.
There were some good lines in the discussion. Cupp said “Trump isn’t manipulating people because he thinks the news is biased. He’s manipulating people because he thinks the news is true.”
“That’s dangerous,” she added.
“There’s a lot of people who benefit from confusion, whoever is in power, they always benefit from confusion, not just Trump,” Stelter observed. “Refuse to be confused.”
But the question of the day was where they really hit on something.
Cupp: Why do you think Lesley Stahl held onto that?
Stelter: I have a theory. It’s kind of cynical. So let me tell you. Lesley Stahl has the first interview, post-election. Then 60 Minutes doesn’t get an interview for over a year. They were in negotiations with the White House trying to get Trump to sit down. Obama did a 60 Minutes interview every year. They thought Trump would agree to an interview last fall. I think now it’s 18 months, they’ve given up and maybe they think, so what, we’ll tell what happened.
Cupp: You think they were hoping to get more access to him?
Stelter: It’s only a guess but it’s an educated guess, having covered 60 Minutes and covered this would for a while. It’s possible she felt there was no reason not to share what happened in that meeting.
The oddly direct anecdote has been met with doubt on the right, but there should be no doubt that there are those in the press who trade silence for access. We’ve seen it far too many times. Yet, just as there can be no doubt at all that, story or not, Trump has been in a deliberate war with the press since he first came down the escalator.
[image via screengrab]
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