The Trump White House simply does not care about having a good relationship with the media

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway likes to say that the Trump administration and the media share “joint custody” of the country, as if the president and the press are a divorced couple. That might be an apt comparison (Jon Stewart also has likened Trump and the media to ex-lovers), but the White House seems totally uninterested in an amicable split. Witness White House press secretary Sean Spicer's reprimand of American Urban Radio correspondent April Ryan on Tuesday (“please stop shaking your head"), which offended many reporters, and his characterization over the weekend of Politico's Tara Palmeri as “an idiot with no real sources,” which offended even Breitbart News.

. Spicer's characterization of Palmeri as an “idiot” is particularly telling because he wrote it in an email to Breitbart. He didn't just blurt it out, in other words; he typed it, had a chance to reconsider — before anyone else would have read the insult — yet decided to leave it in his message and hit “send” anyway. Credit the White House with being authentic in this department, but remember that President Trump has bragged about being able to fake cordiality. His go-to explanation, when asked about his history of hobnobbing with — and donating money to — Democratic politicians is that he was not always genuine. President Trump is not playing the same game with the media, and voters have noticed. In a Monmouth University poll, 81 percent of respondents said President Trump has a worse relationship with the press than previous presidents did. Here's the survey result that President Trump should worry about: 58 percent said his bad relationship with the media has hurt his image.