What are the unintended consequences of Trump's 'fake news' war?
Exploiting discontent that has been brewing for a long time, Trump's relentless attack on the media has "method in the madness".
Ongoing battle between Donald Trump and mainstream media
Let's begin with a fact. Not an alternative fact. Just a plain fact.There has never been a president quite like Donald Trump.
Trump is a president with a different message and a different way of getting his message across. And it doesn't involve the essentially liberal, mainstream media.Trump's team knew they wouldn't have a sympathetic media so they went it alone.Now, let's say from the outset that Trump does have a point. For years, the mainstream media have essentially been liberal/progressive in their political bent.They tend to be dismissive of the kind of politics and the kind of policies that Donald Trump represents.So Trump made a calculation: he would try not only to sidetrack the mainstream media but he would, at every opportunity, seek to discredit it.It is the reason why 'fake news' has become his most oft-repeated mantra - and not only in the campaign but since he entered the White House too.
Thumbs up on Trump's first year?
Major Garrett, the White House correspondent for CBS News, believes Trump is simply exploiting a disillusionment with the traditional media that set in long before he became president."The mainstream media has had a credibility problem for some time now. Politicians and ordinary people have ceased to believe it in the same way that they used to," he explains."Donald Trump is driving that through more powerfully than any other president in recent American history."Trump's weapon of choice is Twitter.It has become my morning wake-up call in Washington. You can rely on it. Pretty much every day at around 7am the Trump stream of consciousness starts flowing.He uses Twitter to rage, to vent his obsessions, to insult people, to hint at policy announcements, foreign and domestic, that he may or may not follow through with.Make no mistake, there is method in the madness. He and his team are clever in the way they use social media.Trump uses it to test an idea, to distract from an issue that is not playing well for him and to set his own narrative for the news day ahead.
A year on: Has President Trump followed through on his promises?
The President delivered his tax cut pledge and jobs have been created - but he's struggled over Obamacare and immigration.
He took power off the back of some controversial and populist policies that hit home with tens of millions of voters - but has President Trump delivered a year on from his inauguration?
President Trump made significant political capital of his plans to curb immigration during his campaign and inauguration speech, promising to ban Muslims from entering the US.Since taking office, he has introduced three travel bans, but faced significant challenges from the courts in enforcing them.Just before Christmas, the Supreme Court ruled the third of those could take effect, pending legal challenges a belated success for the President after 11 months of setbacks.
The ban on people from some Muslim countries has been held up in the courts
Building a wall along the southern border, paid for by Mexico, was another of his headline policies - but so far there has been little progress, with tussles over funding between the political parties.Prototypes are being built in California, but so far no ground has been broken. The President's clearest strategy in his first year in office was to put American economic interests before those of foreign nations.
In this he has been partially successful - he withdrew from the the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement immediately after taking office, claiming it was a bad deal for America.He is attempting to rewrite other deals with Mexico, Canada and South Korea, but has yet to make much progress with America's trade imbalance with China.