Trump Picks Fight with "Hamilton" Cast and SNL; Fate of "The New York Observer"
BRIAN STELTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hey. I'm Brian Stelter and it's time for RELIABLE SOURCES, our weekly look at the story behind the story, of how the media really works, how the news gets made. A special welcome to our viewers in the U.S. and all around the world on CNN International. Ahead this hour, will President-elect Donald Trump respect First Amendment rights? And will he provide the same level of press access as past presidents have? We will have fresh reporting and experts standing by to discuss it. Plus, the plague of fake news and it really is a plague. I have some thoughts to share about how to separate fact from fiction. And later, FOX News star Megyn Kelly speaking out about alleged sexual harassment by Roger Ailes and exposing a growing rift between her and Bill O'Reilly. What does it say about the future of FOX News? But, first, journalists standing by for more appointments by President-elect Trump as he continues to hold meetings with possible cabinet choices. Today on the agenda, New York Governor Chris Christie, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- sorry, I meant New Jersey there. And, of course, Robert Johnson, the founder of BET. Also intriguingly, according to "Politico", Ari Emanuel, the super agent, also meeting with Trump today. And the president-elect is doing all this publicly, at his resort in New Jersey, putting on a show for the cameras. But even as his administration starts to take shape, Trump cannot resist lashing out on Twitter. His latest targets, the cast of "Hamilton" after the cast had a message for Vice President-elect Mike Pence during Friday night's program. Trump tweeted on Saturday and again this morning. Here's his most recent message, saying, "The cast and producers of 'Hamilton' which I hear is highly overrated should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior." I'm speechless. And then he turned his sights on "SNL" after Alec Baldwin played Trump as someone who is a little or a lot in over his head. Trump tweeted, "I watched parts of 'SNL' last night. It is a totally one-sided biased show, nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?" We'll get into what he means by equal time a little later. The big question now is, is President-elect Trump going to continue to make the media a real issue or is this all just a big distraction? Would he rather have people talking about his tweets than the various controversies he is facing and his conflicts of interest involving his businesses? Joining me now to discuss all of this, Charles Blow, CNN political commentator and columnist for "The New York Times," Salena Zito, CNN contributor and national political reporter, and Ben Shapiro, editor- in-chief of the dailywire.com. Welcome to all three of you. Charles, do you believe this a strategy by President-elect Trump, does he purposely post these sorts of things, get people all riled up in order to distract people from real controversies?</s>CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I just think it's a compulsion he really -- I mean, he is -- he is consumed. What you will have to remember is this is a guy from Queens who wanted to be in New York City, his whole kind of social orbit is the New York City orbit, right? So, that's why he's still kind of positions himself in New York City media. That's why he attacks "The New York Times," that's why he attacks "SNL," that's why he is attacking a Broadway show. "The New York Times" put together an amazing list of all the people he had attacked. Take a look at that list and see how many of those personalities are people who are right here in New York City. It's almost as if he's not completely moved into the realm of being president of the entire United States, he's still obsessed about New York City, and in that includes New York City media.</s>STELTER: Well, Salena, you have been talking about this, actually asked them "Hamilton" this weekend. Do voters where you are in Pennsylvania and Ohio, do they care about this "Hamilton" controversy?</s>SALENA ZITO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I went out into Youngstown, Ohio, yesterday and talked to a number of voters, and I specifically talked to Democrats who voted for Clinton and asked them how they felt about it. And while they had no problem with the speech that was given afterwards, they did have a problem with the booing. They thought it was disrespectful and they think that more respect should have been shown to him as a guy just going to see a play.</s>STELTER: So booing by the audience members when Pence walked into the room.</s>ZITO: Right.</s>STELTER: Let me bring up, of course, Trump's famous Twitter feed here, and let's pull up one of his tweets from yesterday about this. We can put it on screen, one of his first comments about this controversy. He said the following, he said, "Our wonderful future VP Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of 'Hamilton', cameras blazing." And then he said, "This should not happen." He is not talking about the booing there, he's talking about the cast members' message.</s>ZITO: Right.</s>STELTER: Ben, I read something like that, Donald Trump saying, "This should not happen", and I think that has a chilling effect for artistic expression. After all, these performers were up on stage, they were performing art, even when they were speaking to the vice president-elect. Do you agree?</s>BEN SHAPIRO, EDITOR IN CHIEF, DAILYWIRE.COM: I mean, it isn't my favorite thing.</s>STELTER: Sorry, Ben. Go ahead.</s>SHAPIRO: It isn't my favorite thing. I would recommend that conservatives who look at President-elect Trump doing this and saying, well, it seems OK to me, just imagine if the shoe were on the other foot for a second, and it were Barack Obama lecturing NASCAR fans if he got booed at some sort of NASCAR event. You know, it doesn't seem totally appropriate for the president-elect to the United States to be doing this. On the other hand, you know, I would recommend that the media sort of take a second look at how much focus they put on things like this because the fact is if you're going to turn it up to 11 on a "Hamilton" tweet, yes, this is going to be a long president for all of you.</s>STELTER: Is that what you think happened on Saturday and again today? We've turned it up to 11?</s>SHAPIRO: Yes, I think that you guys have been -- I think the mainstream media has been at 11 since the election and I think that that means that there is no place to turn it from there. I mean, this is sort of the problem in the 2016 election. I think there are a lot of aspersions cast to Mitt Romney and then when he came back in 2016 and cast the same aspersion at Donald Trump who was a very different candidate, a lot of people just tuned it out. I really think that your -- that the media is in danger of blowing it's credibility if they're going to be so exuberant about covering every aspects of Trump's foibles, because there are going to be things he does that are actually probably not very good and you're going to want people to pay attention to it. If you pay the same amount of attention to a "Hamilton" tweet that you do, for example, something I think is significantly more troubling, President-elect Trump meeting with business partners from India while he is the president-elect, you know, that seems something where you ought to be putting more focus if you're going to actually point out problems here.</s>STELTER: Charles, do you agree?</s>BLOW: I think -- no, I think you have to just constantly call out everything.</s>STELTER: But doesn't that raise -- Ben is saying, you raise the volume to 11 at all times.</s>BLOW: Yes, I am so personally offended by so much of what he does, you know, you make a really strong point about, you know, artistic expression and allowing that to live and breathe and not try to put your thumb on the scale of that as the president of the United States. That's a real point. That is not a small thing, right? And as a person who lives here in New York City, who goes to Broadway, who has gone to see "Hamilton" and it is not overrated, it is actually a great show --</s>STELTER: I do think Donald Trump needs to go and see "Hamilton", by the way. I'm serous here.</s>BLOW: I think he needs to see it. Absolutely.</s>STELTER: I think he needs to go and see "Hamilton".</s>BLOW: But I think there is a real need for all of us to put constant pressure on this man to make him live up to the ideals of the presidency itself. And, you know, I am, you know, obviously an opinion journalist, I'm not a straight news reporter and they have a different mission, a straight news reporter. But people like me there is a real -- the country needs us right now to put pressure on him because we have to make him be the president. He is going to be president for four years and he has to conform to that in some way. He can't do things like this and not have it called out. It just can't happen.</s>STELTER: So, Salena, let me ask you do you buy that? I mean, one of the reasons why you are here with us, one of CNN's newest contributors, is you had a much better understanding of what was going on in voters' minds during the election season. You were speaking with voters in the Rust Belt on a daily basis. I'm really thankful CNN has brought on board as a contributor, because we need to hear much more from voices outside D.C. and New York and the Acela corridor. So, let me ask you, do you think -- do you think folks out there outside the New York/D.C. bubble do believe that they need journalists right now? Do they believe in what we think here on CNN?</s>ZITO: Well, I think that -- and thank you for that nice introduction. But I do think that that's important and that was sort of missed in this election cycle. That they didn't think that people -- not just were talking to them, because plenty of reporters went into events in Ohio, in Pennsylvania and Michigan, but being there and living there and listening to them, I think that was the most important component that we need to learn from this election is listening to everyone, and I think this is a good start.</s>STELTER: Well, they want to be heard, but do those voters, do ordinary voters who probably haven't seen "Hamilton", do they care about journalists trying to stand up and be more adversarial in this moment, and hold the president-elect accountable or does all of that come across as media bias?</s>ZITO: Well, it's not just media bias. I think when you look at Trump's most recent tweets, it's not just really about media, but it's about pop culture and culture's perception of America outside of New York City, right? So, they like that tension. I think that even though -- and back to your thing about standing up to Trump. We -- I think viewers and voters always expect reporters even if they don't like what we do, to challenge the status quo and to challenge power because our job is to bring them the news and have them understand what is happening.</s>STELTER: To challenge power indeed. Well, Salena, thank you for being here. Charles, Ben, please stick around. We're going to take a quick break here on RELIABLE SOURCES. When we come back, we're talking about Trump ditching the press pool, how accessible is he being with journalists? We have new information from the head of the White House Correspondents Association right after this quick break.