I was curious to see whether there was any renewed attention to the Trump/Bondi story this morning. Alas, the answer appears to be: not really. There are some passing references to it. But it mainly seems limited to ‘This came up. Trump says it’s all good.’ And on to the next story.
For instance, it comes up in passing in a campaign wrap story in the Times. But it’s raised. Trump says nothing’s wrong. And then he goes on to insist that he never spoke to her about the contribution. And that’s it.
Of course, Trump’s claim never to have spoken to Bondi about the contribution is flatly contradicted Bondi’s own representatives who told the AP last month that she personally reached out to Trump solicit the campaign contribution.
In other words, Trump’s apparently flatly contradicted claim is allowed to stand un-contradicted and basically left at that.
A brief perusal of other reportage – with the exception of the Post – seems pretty much in the same vein. Perfunctory question, accept denial and move on. The Post does leave open the possibility that Trump was only referring to not speaking to Bondi about the Trump University allegations. That strikes me as a generous interpretation, but not unreasonable.
The logical next step would seem to be to press Trump on whether he’s really denying that there was a conversation that triggered the contribution and to follow up with Bondi on whether she sticks by her reps claim that she spoke to Trump personally.
More generally, these two articles are a good example of the different kinds of coverage the Post and the Times do in general, one much more granular and focused, the other broader and less specific, seemingly aimed at a different kind of audience.
[ed.note: There’s a deeper critique of the Times, which I’m alluding to here and which I’ve written about before. I’ve been doing this TPM racket for years. Particularly in the site’s early history this made me perforce a voracious reader and miner or reporting in the big dailies. Back during the Iraq War era, quite apart from the Judy Miller stuff, the character of the Times and Post reporting were dramatically different. The Times tended to be broad overviews; the Post’s reporting was much more detailed and granular. For obvious reasons, that made the Post’s reporting much more valuable to be as a miner for new information. Of course, the Post’s oped page was awful; the Times was great. The news pages were the precise opposite.]
