{"id":139094,"date":"2025-04-16T21:21:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T21:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/16\/how-a-no-scalps-policy-is-shaping-trumps-consequence-free-second-term\/"},"modified":"2025-04-16T21:21:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T21:21:59","slug":"how-a-no-scalps-policy-is-shaping-trumps-consequence-free-second-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/16\/how-a-no-scalps-policy-is-shaping-trumps-consequence-free-second-term\/","title":{"rendered":"How a \u201cNo-Scalps Policy\u201d Is Shaping Trump\u2019s Consequence-Free Second Term"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"has-dropcap\">Since the nation\u2019s founding, the nationwide press has performed a significant position within the system of checks and balances that undergirds American democracy. John F. Kennedy famously extolled the significance of journalism as a corrective to dangerous policymaking after he approved the disastrous CIA mission to invade Cuba in 1961. \u201cMaybe if you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a colossal mistake,\u201d Kennedy later advised <em>New York Times<\/em> managing editor Turner Catledge.<\/p>\n<p>Then got here the <strong>Donald Trump<\/strong> period.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Call it Trump\u2019s legislation of political antigravity. In his second time period, unfavorable information reviews are motivating Trump to double down moderately than reasonable. This dynamic had its most outstanding show but when Trump hosted El Salvador\u2019s strongman president, <strong>Nayib Bukele,<\/strong> within the Oval Office on Monday. For weeks the media has reported on the case of <strong>Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia,<\/strong> the Maryland man whom the administration admitted to having mistakenly deported to El Salvador\u2019s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center. The Supreme Court dominated final week that the administration wanted to \u201cfacilitate\u201d Abrego Garcia\u2019s return to the United States. Trump, with Bukele at his facet, mocked a CNN reporter who requested if he was planning to adjust to that order. Microphones later <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/fact-check-yes-trump-said-213200023.html\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/fact-check-yes-trump-said-213200023.html&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/fact-check-yes-trump-said-213200023.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">captured<\/a> Trump telling Bukele he wanted to construct 5 extra prisons in order that El Salvador might lock up American residents convicted of violent crimes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Trump appears to be utilizing Abrego Garcia\u2019s case to ship a much bigger message: The mainstream media won&#8217;t ever affect what he does. (Whether the courts can compel him is one other, even perhaps darker query.) Or moderately: The depth of reporting on Trump\u2019s breaking of a rule or norm dictates his intuition to proceed doing so. This technique is a part of the MAGA motion\u2019s authoritarian challenge to delegitimize the media\u2014a truth these in its sway aren&#8217;t notably shy about.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cNo one cares what <em>The New York Times<\/em> says. Or any of you guys. None of this bullshit and none of the lies are going to make a difference,\u201d a outstanding Republican near the White House advised me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">One of the principal objectives of Trump\u2019s second time period is to right what the president views because the errors of his first. Trump has <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2025\/03\/trump-hegseth-waltz-signal\/682220\/?utm_medium=offsite&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_campaign=newstand-politics\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2025\/03\/trump-hegseth-waltz-signal\/682220\/?utm_medium=offsite&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_campaign=newstand-politics&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2025\/03\/trump-hegseth-waltz-signal\/682220\/?utm_medium=offsite&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_campaign=newstand-politics\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reportedly advised<\/a> those who one in every of his first-term regrets was forcing his first nationwide safety adviser, <strong>Michael Flynn,<\/strong> to resign after it was revealed that Flynn had lied about conversations with Russia\u2019s ambassador to the United States. This might assist to clarify why Trump stood by <strong>Pete Hegseth,<\/strong> his embattled protection secretary, even after reviews detailed episodes of alleged extreme ingesting and that he had paid a $50,000 settlement to a girl who had accused him of sexual assault. (Hegseth has denied the allegations.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Trump\u2019s ignore-the-media technique additionally influenced his choice to publicly assist his present nationwide safety adviser, <strong>Michael Waltz,<\/strong> after Waltz mistakenly added <em>Atlantic<\/em> editor in chief <strong>Jeffrey Goldberg<\/strong> to a Signal group by which administration officers have been texting about navy strikes in Yemen. Another Republican near the White House advised me Waltz was saved as a result of Trump has a post-Flynn \u201cno-scalps policy,\u201d because the supply described it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The dynamic has confirmed outstanding for even seasoned presidential reporters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cThis is a president who doesn\u2019t believe in admitting mistakes\u2014period. And that trickles down to the people who work for him,\u201d <em>New York Times<\/em> chief White House correspondent <strong>Peter Baker<\/strong> advised me this week. \u201cSo when a news outlet points out something that went wrong or corrects inaccurate statements, the default setting is not to fix the error, as other presidents might do, but to double down. Taking action in response to a news report would be seen as an admission of weakness, and nothing is a bigger cardinal sin in Trump\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">It quantities to a poisonous cycle of escalation that doesn\u2019t present a lot signal of abating anytime quickly. Authoritarian regimes typically fail as a result of their leaders refuse to course-correct when introduced with exterior info. In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.presidency.ucsb.edu\/documents\/television-and-radio-interview-after-two-years-conversation-with-the-president\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an interview<\/a> greater than a yr after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy lauded the position journalism might play in stopping future crises.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cIt is never pleasant to be reading things that are not agreeable news, but I would say that it is an invaluable arm of the presidency, as a check, really, on what is going on in the administration,\u201d he mentioned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] Since the nation\u2019s founding, the nationwide press has performed a significant position within the system of checks and balances that undergirds American democracy. John F. Kennedy famously extolled the significance of journalism as a corrective to dangerous policymaking after he approved the disastrous CIA mission to invade Cuba in 1961. \u201cMaybe if you had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[9236,9233,9234,9235,6372,656],"class_list":{"0":"post-139094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity-gossip","8":"tag-consequencefree","9":"tag-noscalps","10":"tag-policy","11":"tag-shaping","12":"tag-term","13":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}