Trump's Move to Middle on Unions, Abortion Is A Stunt. The Media Should Ignore It | Opinion

NBC's interview of former President Donald Trump on Meet the Press generated ample media criticism for platforming him in spite of his disregard of the truth. But less discussed—and more problematic—was the decision by many outlets to report on the sudden policy shifts Trump made during the interview as if they amounted to legitimate news.

On both abortion and the auto worker strike, Trump tried to newly cast himself as a moderate. Too much of the media fell for it, and instantly began analyzing how Trump's dash to the middle on these issues could scramble the presidential contest. The episode was another reminder of how much the media continues to struggle with the challenge of covering Trump.

To be fair, the media has learned many lessons since 2016. Cable networks no longer routinely carry his events live, and outlets make a clear effort to fact check Trump in real-time. But the past week has shown that the media will still indulge Trump when it comes to his strategy of gesturing at policy positions that seem to defy his party affiliation. We both watched him do this to great success during the campaign in 2016—on prescription drugs (promising to negotiate lower prices), on taxes (promising to raise them on the wealthy), and on wages (promising to increase the minimum wage), to name a few examples. He kept none of these promises as president.

Now Trump is at it again. Lacking a serious primary challenge, there is little risk in him flirting with more moderate positions, and it allows him to muddy the waters on policy vulnerabilities that could otherwise hurt him in the general election. Perhaps most useful of all, this tactic helps shift at least some of the political conversation about Trump off the multiple indictments he's facing.

It's time to start ignoring, rather than rewarding, this tactic. There are three reasons why it is fair for the political media to once and for all discount these policy shifts by Trump as insincere and non-newsworthy.

First, Trump is a known, congenital liar. Anything he says on abortion, taxes, or foreign policy should be distrusted as much as his ongoing assertion that he won the 2020 election. Second, unlike in 2016, he now has a four-year record as president that should be the acid test of his true policy positions. For Trump to try to distance himself from state abortion bans as he did on NBC, when his own Supreme Court appointments are what made those bans possible, does not pass the laugh test. Finally, Trump doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt that his new positions are genuine because he himself refuses to explain them. Why credulously report that Trump would seek a middle ground on abortion when he can't specify what such a proposal would look like? On unions, Trump won't so much as say that auto workers should get a raise, yet his NBC interview yielded stories pondering whether he was outfoxing President Biden to win over organized labor.

What might improved coverage of Trump on policy matters look like? For starters, media outlets could simply opt not to cover Trump whenever he stakes out new positions that are contradicted by his record as president or are too unspecific to take seriously. When the press must report on these assertions and statements, they should be reported in the appropriate context—meaning, with comparison to his past record as president, as some outlets have admirably done in recent days. One of the things that makes this election particularly unique is that Trump served for four years in office, and his past record in the White House must be reported on when he makes new policy statements. It's malpractice to do otherwise.

Even when a new Trump policy position may inspire some measure of news attention, it is the job of reporters to keep this coverage proportional. Trump's policy head fakes should not allow anyone to lose sight of the big picture: Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. He stands by his efforts to overturn the last election and continues to maintain that he will only accept the outcome of elections that he wins. In the coming months, if we find the political conversation centering around relatively normal presidential topics such as taxes and immigration, it likely means we are missing the heart of what the 2024 election is really about. And that is ultimately the point of Trump's strategy.

Navin Nayak served as the director of opinion research on Secretary Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

Brian Fallon served as national press secretary on that campaign.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.