In Defense of Joe and Mika

Journalists are going to be talking to Donald Trump. Get used to it. It's their job.

In 1931 the pioneering columnist Dorothy Thompson interviewed this handsome fella. She did not tell him Mein Kampf was despicable, which it was, and she submitted her questions in advance because that was the only way the fuhrer would agree to talk to an American journalist. (She was the first to do so.) I wouldn’t be surprised if Thompson buttered him up a little bit too to make him feel comfortable. Who gives a crap? The result was a book (in those days people published interviews in books!) that told the world he was a monster. Thompson erred only in thinking he was so obviously a monster that he could never come to power. The book got her thrown out of Germany.

Now Morning Joe’s hosts are in trouble for meeting in private with Trump in hopes that they might coax him onto their show. This is being condemned widely as a sell-out. Don’t people understand that talking to despicable people is what political journalists get paid to do? Especially these days, when there are so goddamned many of them in Washington. Judge journalists for their work product, not their bedside manner. That’s the topic of my latest New Republic piece. You can read it here.