James Warren

[Commentary] So when President Donald Trump raised the white flag on Obamacare March 24, did he pick up the phone and gave the exclusive to Breitbart, The Daily Caller or LifeZette? Nope. He called reporters at The Washington Post and The New York Times. But you'd have thought that reaching out to ideological sympathizers was inevitable, given the journalistic sturm und drang about the incursions of right-leaning media in these early days of a new Washington era. Well, any chronicle of access will need to include the capital's longtime home teams, with March 24's carefully served bulletins from the Trump News Service suggesting how a mix of old media clout, old-fashioned journalistic quality and Trump's own Queens-bred craving to be accepted by various establishments may be more enduring than many assume. As Bill Kristol, founder of The Weekly Standard, put it about Trump: "He's always understood the power of and craved acceptance by the mainstream media." Adds Rich Lowry, editor of National Review: "He hates the mainstream media — and loves the mainstream media. No president has ever followed his news coverage so closely or cared about it so much."