Chris Cillizza

[Commentary] The message — if you are really bad at reading the signs — is that President Donald Trump and the people who support him believe they are at war with the media, plain and simple.

It's beyond an adversarial relationship. It's a desire on their part to extinguish what they believe to be the corporate-controlled, liberal media once and for all. From a political perspective, it makes sense for Trump to villainize the press, since the media is a stand-in for virtually everything that Trump supporters dislike about Washington specifically and “elites” more generally. But from a healthy democracy perspective, the attempts to change the rules — or turn the daily interactions between the president and the media into a game of favorites — is a very dangerous thing.

It's no secret that Stephen K. Bannon, the past chairman of Breitbart News and now a senior strategist to the president, is behind much of Trump's anti-media rhetoric. The idea of the media as the “opposition party” or the “enemy" — two phrases Trump has used of late to describe those who cover him — is pure Bannon. So, there was no reason to think that Bannon was going to be anything but confrontational with the media during a joint appearance with Trump White House chief of staff Reince Priebus at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. But, even by Bannon's standards, he seemed to ramp up his attacks on the media and offer a very clear message to political journalists: You think this is bad? Just wait.

“It's going to get worse every day for the media,” Bannon said, insisting that the “corporatist” media would continue to see Trump pursue exactly the sort of economic nationalism that journalism allegedly despises. Then he added this call to arms: “If you think they are giving you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.”

President Donald Trump entered the East Room reeling from a week filled with resignations, withdrawals and continued questions surrounding his campaign's contacts with Russia. What followed was an hour-long, full-throated attack on Trump's favorite foil: the media. “Many of our nation's reporters will not tell you the truth,” President Trump said. “The press honestly is out of control,” President Trump said. “The level of dishonesty is out of control,” President Trump said. And that was before he even took a single question!

It was a return for President Trump to what worked for him during the course of the 2016 campaign: A circuslike atmosphere in which he uses the media — and his supporters' distrust of the media — as a sort of tackling dummy to re-center the narrative on ground more favorable to him. Trump didn't just run down the media — although he did a lot of that — but he also mocked various outlets, reviewed shows on cable TV that he likes (and doesn't), told reporters to sit down and be quiet, and critiqued the quality of the questions he was being asked. There was a rawness to his attacks, a personal invective that seemed well beyond the typically antagonistic relationship that exists between the media and the president they cover. Why do it? Because Trump understands something very important: For his supporters, the media represent everything they dislike about American society. The media is composed, to their mind, of Ivy-League educated coastal elites who look down their noses at the average person, dismissing them and their views as stupid and ill-informed. For people who feel like their voices weren't and aren't heard in politics — or culture more broadly — the media is the perfect scapegoat.

[Commentary] Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, criticized the chief executive's attacks on the federal judge who put his travel ban on hold. Judge Gorsuch reportedly called those attacks “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” On its face, this is a remarkable story. But dig a little deeper and the conspiracy theories begin to seem, well, not so conspiratorial.

Judge Gorsuch approved of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) publicizing the comments; Gorsuch spokesman Ron Bonjean, an old Washington communications pro, confirmed quickly that Judge Gorsuch had used the words; and Kelly Ayotte, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire who is shepherding Gorsuch's nomination, confirmed the truth of the leak. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway seemed to suggest that the episode was an example of Trump's hands-off approach to his court and Cabinet picks. You can see why people might raise an eyebrow. After all, what better way for Judge Gorsuch to overcome Democratic senators' skepticism about him than to show some independence from President Trump? What better signal that he recognizes the clear separation between the executive branch and the judicial branch? Even if you don't believe in conspiracy theories, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better scenario to help establish Judge Gorsuch as his own man, not beholden to the President.

[Commentary] News organizations should commit to opening at least five bureaus in midsize and smallish cities somewhere in the middle of America in 2017. I don't have any set list of what those cities should be, but just for kicks, here are five: Omaha (NE), Knoxville (TN), Dallas (TX), Missoula (MT), Columbus (OH). President-elect Donald Trump carried all five states. The states represent significant geographic diversity. They range from tiny (Missoula) to pretty darned big (Dallas).

In the modern age of reporting, the relative costs for an effort like this are low. You need to hire one person in each of these places. They can work from home. You pay for their salary, their Wi-Fi, their cellphone and their gas for reporting trips. Given what is expended on, say, covering a presidential campaign, we are talking about peanuts. Technology allows a reporter to work from anywhere, at a low cost. The times demand different coverage. Why not this? And why not now?

President Barack Obama didn't get terribly animated during his annual year-end news conference Dec 16. Except, that is, when talking about how the media covered the 2016 election.

Asked about the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and some top operatives in Hillary Clinton's campaign, President Obama offered up a media critique: "This was an obsession that dominated the news coverage. So I do think it is worth us reflecting how it is that a presidential election of such importance, of such moment, with so many big issues at stake and such a contrast between the candidates came to be dominated by a bunch of these leaks." President Obama was then asked about Clinton and whether her loss could be laid at the feet of the Russian hack. Again, he turned to a media-focused answer: "I couldn't be prouder of Secretary Clinton, her outstanding service, and she's worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people, and I don't think she was treated fairly during the election. I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling."

Donald Trump ran one of the most unorthodox -- and successful -- political campaigns in modern history. One aspect of the campaign that hasn't received much attention is the Trump ad strategy: How did the Trump media team sell one of the best known and least traditional candidates in history to a skeptical public? GOP media consultant Larry Weitzner was at the center of that effort. The CEO of GOP ad firm Jamestown Associates, Weitzner crafted the Trump TV message.