Nixon Dreamed of Breaking the Media. Trump Is Doing It.

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As President Trump set out to systematically eliminate or intimidate those who stood in his way — inspectors general, judges, law firms — the news media loomed as one of his most stubborn obstacles. Or so it seemed. Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The New York Times, explains how Mr. Trump is circumventing and undermining the fourth estate in a way no president before him ever has.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow. This is the Daily.
0:09.1	As President Trump set out to systematically eliminate or intimidate those who stand in his way,
0:17.9	from inspectors general to judges to law firms. The news media loomed as one of his
0:24.4	most stubborn obstacles, or so it seemed. Today, my colleague Jim Routenberg on how Trump is both
0:34.7	circumventing and undermining the fourth estate, in a way no president before him ever has.
0:47.6	It's Tuesday, March 25th.
0:55.1	Jim, we are talking today about the state of the news media under President Trump in his second term.
1:02.4	And when we brought this subject to you, a student of the media for...
1:07.0	Many... I'm not going to say how many...
1:09.0	We don't talk in decades.
1:10.9	We don't talk in my household.
1:12.1	Many years.
1:12.9	Yep.
1:13.7	Former media columnist here at the Times,
1:16.2	you're writing a book about the news media.
1:19.9	When we brought this subject to you,
1:22.0	you kept pointing us to Richard Nixon.
1:26.0	I did.
1:26.4	Former President Nixon.
1:27.4	Why?
1:28.7	Well, in many ways, we would not be where we are in the media sphere, were it not for
1:37.0	Richard Nixon.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 2 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.