Foreign policy analyst and author brandon weikert talks about his latest book on the importance of american dominance in space. Zer,n historian harold hol we were talking that this was book number 54 few, president s versus the press. Explore thented to relationship between chief executives and the journalists who have covered them, praise them, cap their secrets, and generally antagonized them. I wanted to trace the origins of on ourationships we see Television Screens almost every day. It as aso wanted to do followup to a book i put out five years ago about lincoln and the press, and see how it all fit in as a possible continuum of difficult relations, strained relations between the president and the press from the beginning. Susan how did you select which president s were included . Harold i dreamed of doing everybody but i realized it was impractical and might be tedious. Dying to know about james polk and the press or benjamin harrison, but i decided to cover the founding era, with washington, adams and jefferson, skip to andrew jackson, who really was a major precedent setter on relationships with press, take a deep dive into lincoln, and then go to the 20th century president s and a course into the 21st. Harding,t coolidge, hoover. And after kennedy, he was everybody. ,t was really a personal choice the president s that interested me. I thought readers would certainly want to know about everyone whom they might remember from their own lived experience, and thats why i included president s who served only briefly like jerry ford. Susan did you have the opportunity to talk to any president s in your research . Two. D well, i only asked i guess this is a back story. I asked george w. Bush and bill clinton. I did not want to overload it with the spin that residents might give on their experience with the press and i also wanted to stay away from living press secretaries, there are an abundance of them. I just wanted to dwell on the records of briefings, press conferences and immediately published memoirs. But president clinton was generous enough and thoughtful enough to provide answers to some of the questions i wanted to raise with him. These may be the first comments he has made about one of those years. Eight susan i feel the obligation to tell people that we have known each other a long time. We will spend two hours together on this subject matter. Since 1994, when cspan did its first lincoln project, the lincolndouglas debate, and we have worked on many things sense. Since. It is delightful to have you in this context. I wanted to jump to the punchline. Im guessing you were inspired to the subject matter by the current president , incumbent president , and all of the sparring he has been doing and the big criticism he has for the fake news media. What is the punchline . Is Donald Trumps relationship with the press the worst ever . Harold no. As much as i thought i would confirm my own suspicions as a citizen watching all of the chaotic briefings and press conferences and tweets that it disputations, that i think its a long tradition starting with adams and jefferson, until lincoln. Certainly a complicated relationship with fdr. And nixon certainly had a worse relationship with the press, he just did not harp on a daily and did not have the technological means to harp on it without going out and confronting the press. This is president ial tradition. Several president s emerged from my research saying almost identical things fake news or false news. That is not a new construct. Also reminding their own staff periodically that the press are not your friend. We are at odds. That is the classic relationship. Dont get too chummy with journalists. The president s have to be told that, but clever president s told staff that. Access to theore complaints than we have ever had, and that is because of technological innovation. Susan is the relationship between the president and the press in this country different because of the First Amendment . 1 oh yes. Harold oh yes. We are freer here than in any country that has democratic rule or unelectedip president s. The reason, as you mentioned, is the First Amendment, and the great fighters for the First Amendment, one of whom, floyd abrams, figures in the book, an interview and i used some of his published writings. He has pushed back against quite a few president s who have pushed against the edge of the First Amendment. That is not to say that president s have always respected the constitutional provision that Congress Shall not interfere with freedom of the press. They have gone around it in several different ways. They have passed and signed legislation, they have simply said the are in a war so we can Pay Attention to it. Will employ secrecy to eavesdrop and later to punish. Thererst amendment is out as an ideal, but more than one president has done his best to push back and push the limits. Susan your book was originally scheduled to come out in the springtime, delayed by the pandemic. What has it been like publishing this year . Harold it is frightening. And i dont know whether there will be an audience for this book or really any book in this period. I am heartened by the fact that it is appearing between convention time. Than well more tuned were several weeks ago to the countdown to election day, and to president ss relationships to duringists and the media their campaign and white house occupancy. The thing that makes me saddest i missing all of the events am used to having when a new book comes out. Live, life talks and talks and book signings. I think i will miss book signings very much because you get to talk to readers and chat about their interests. Friendly, you never know who you will meet on a line. I have met descendents of people i wrote about, longlost relatives. I have met people who have an idea i have not thought of that i like to pocket and use the next time i write. So that will be tough. But again, we are all here and doing well and thats about the most we can ask for. Susan i think all readers look canard to the day they again stand and book lines for sure. Im going to start our survey conversation with john adams because it is an interesting history. Is there anything people should know about George Washington setting precedents in relationship with the press . Harold i think so. Washington i have two beginnings in my book, the introduction and chapter one, and he is the first president. , i haverprised to learn ,one the research, washington the universally revered figure, became less so in the final year of his first term, and all through his second term was subject to the First Episodes of deeply partisan journalism. Horrified, was annoyed, hurt, angry. I found several episodes where threw newspapers to the ground, jumped up and down on the newspapers, ripping them up with his boots, yelling about getting subscriptions he did not want. Meanwhile, the antifederalist press which, by the way we, was imported into the capital of philadelphia by washingtons own secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who not only created the opposition newspaper but funded the editor, give him a job in the state department so he could afford to be the newspaper editor of a lushly enterprise. Of a fledgling enterprise. Washington found himself accused of stealing money from the treasury, indiscretions during the french and indian war, a lack of patriotism. Charges that were unimaginable against the early washington. His farewell address, he drafted a paragraph, later cut by his editor, alexander hamilton, that made it clear that one of the reasons he was not standing for a third term is he could not take the implications, as he put it, of newspapers any longer. He thought they were displaying to the world that our union was fragile, and he had enough. Susan john adams is described in your book as cranky, never got over hurt and resentment, and lacked charm. How did this impact his relationship with the press . Harold as you can imagine, he did not charm reporters or editors. At the beginning, he had the first, if you dont count washingtons adoration at the beginning, he had the first press honeymoon, a phrase that came into the vernacular much later. Hisas shocked after making inaugural address in 1797 that republican newspapers, that is the antifederalist newspapers, applauded him. The federalist newspapers from his own party were not as excited. The reason is they wanted to to bedams a chance perceived better than washington, who was perceived to be probritish. By theas not deceived early flattery and quickly became partisan. The Republican Press went after pressand the federalist was tepid about him and that doomed his reelection in the famous race against jefferson. Susan you write that the prescription for his frustration with the press was always regulation. What did he do . Harold he signed one of the most illadvised, antidemocratic, unconstitutional measures in American History. The sedition act, part of a package of suppressive bills to limit immigration and crackdown on journalistic criticism. It actually made it a federal offense for a newspaper to hope to ridicule the president of the united states. ,here were large monetary fines there were prison terms threatened, and it was not just a tubeless warning. The adams a ministration went after republican journalists, fined them, imprisoned them. A projefferson editor was imprisoned in the richmond jail for five or six months and find about 500 for criticizing john adams. This was a horrific time in American History, at least American Press history. Of worst abuse constitutional guarantees. Susan what was the rationale for signing the law legally . Harold i dont know if he had a legal rationale, he had a political rationale. The political rationale was that criticism that was libelous did not fall under First Amendment protection. He found a stark opposition from the other party. Thomas jefferson denounced the sedition act and frankly one of the reasons he prevailed in the next election was the bitter taste left by the sedition act. Jefferson did oppose the sedition act because he did not believe the federal government could overreach on anything legislatively. When he became president , libel actions continued, they were just bumped to the state level. Adams you write that john conducted 17 show trials during the election year, 12 against publishers and printers. Why were they show trials . Harold i think that he was i think the purpose of the trial was not simply to silence the accused, but to silence the Broader Group of antifederalist newspaper editors who he hoped be chilled from further criticism that he deemed to be personal, by these trials. Keep in mind, one of the big jeffersonian objections to the sedition act, beside that he felt it was federal overreach, the fact that all of the judges that were in place were federalist. All of them had been appointed by George Washington in john adams. Thats the Appeals Court and supreme court. Thinkicans argued, and i with strength on their side, that the courts were stacked against them. But adams definitely wanted the show trial to demonstrate the government was indeed going to crackdown mercilessly. They were sending a message. Susan how did it work out for them . Harold well, he goes down in history as perhaps the most antipress freedom president we will beugh surprised as we go on chronologically to find out who joins him in that category. He also called for he was the first call for a state run news agency, which has an autocratic air to it. He was not the last. I guess adams left with a repressing,f being thinskinned because again, this was all about criticism and how he reacted to it. Somesedition act said when jefferson became would never again rekindle. But the measures it legislated were later revised by lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and others. Susan Abigail Adams was one of the first outspoken first ladies. Did she support john adams in this effort . Harold absolutely. She was 100 his advocate and writingned with him in really angry letters about press critics. Can i go ahead to jefferson to give an example . Susan sure. srold one of adams chief critics was james calendar , who later turned against jefferson after criticizing adams and going to prison, turned against jefferson. Abigail had a wonderful series of letters with jefferson in which she basically said i told you soap youd he was no good i told you so. He was no good. You paid the penalty. Sowed the world wind whirlwind. Susan under the system jefferson helped create, newspapers became participants and, not just observers of government. What did you mean by that . Harold the First Episode goes back to the washington era, he was funded a fellow french, James Madisons roommate in college. To move to philadelphia, start a newspaper, to oppose the federalist newspaper pretty much praising everything washington did. He encouraged him. To operate. Anlater encouraged , theesting newspaperman grandson of benjamin franklin, who started his own newspaper in philadelphia and quickly turned against George Washington viciously. Calendar for aes while. Ascends to the presidency, he decides since he is now in washington, d. C. Emme he leaves the infrastructure in washington, d. C. , he leaves the newspaper infrastructure in philadelphia as it is. He creates a new jeffersonian newspaper in washington. It is pledged to support jeffersons policies, and in return they get access to news, they get to be the first news acrossdistributing news the country, which grew jeffersonsy in administration, and was rewarded financially. Had begun a policy where newspapers will be given government contracts for printing handbills and circulars, government advertisements, and the newspapers would also be hired to record the proceedings of congress. There was no congressional record until the lincoln e ra. So newspapers lined up for the rewards of printing the proceedings of the house and senate. They made a lot of money and theres nothing like money to see a loyalty seal loyalty. Susan what was the readership like during this time . Did people only read the press that aligned with their thinking and where they only reading regionally . Harold readership is one of the rate mysteries of the time. Newspapers were not daily additions, they were weekly and moved to twice daily. They moved to daily when print presses became more mechanical. Newspapers expanded into more territory but readership was small. In the thousands at the beginning. There is no way to determine with any accuracy the reader was. Readership. Iteracy was not high truncated. E was the largest ever population was under 18 in the new country and we dont know if they read. Newspaperon of a might be shared by his many as 25 or 30 people in a nuclear family. It is hard to determine readership. To your other question, my own instincts are and visitors from other countries make note of this through the 1840s and 1850s when they visited the united states, and that is that people were given totally different reports about individual news events according to the Political Party affiliated with the paper they read. European visitors often could not recognize the event they themselves had witnessed when they read about in the Different Party papers the next morning. Read the party paper for which they were affiliated and nothing else. I think it is comparable to the viewers whohave on are glued often to msnbc or fox but dont flip the dial between to get different perspectives. Was reallypress about a trajectory of partisan and moving into coverage that was supposed to be fair to whomever was in office, and now we are again in an age where at least on television, people are moving to partisan outlets. Harold absolutely. I wouldnt even say are moving. Susan have moved. Harold they have unloaded the moving van and are in the house. Susan getting back to Thomas Jefferson, you referenced thomas calendar, his greatest enemy. To jeffersonse reputation. What do we know about calendar . Harold he was a jefferson ally, he had been writing for a paper in philadelphia and really destroyed washington, practically criminalizing him, haunting him all the way back to mount vernon. Then he established a newspaper and richmond aligned with Thomas Jefferson and he went to jefferson or communicated with jefferson and asked if he could become the poster monster postmaster of richmond. It was not an outrageous request, editors were given federal jobs all the time and they were rewarded. Jefferson did not like the insistence with which calendar asked him for this reward and he said no. That was not a smart move by jefferson. Jefferson would always write beautifully about freedom but did not always practice what he preached, as we know about slavery and freedom of the press. Calendar immediately switched to a federalist newspaper, and this is after he had done prison time for criticizing the federalists. He jumped to a federalist newspaper and he writes a pamphlet in which he says thomas , orerson is living in sin whatever the right word is, with an enslaved woman who he owns and is the halfsister of his late wife. This, of course, is the celli hemmings story that has now been hemmings story that has now been proven through dna. This story was put in circulation by calendar and deeply disruptive of jeffersons reputation at the time. One might argue deservedly so. That was calendars revenge. If there was a lesson to be learned, it was to hold your press allies close to you, especially the ones who are a little bit unstable. Calendar later dragged himself drank himself into a stupor and jumped into or fell into a river and died. By which time jefferson had paid some of his fine for the sedition act, and then broken with him and suffered reputational consequences. Susan you write about jefferson that despite his activity toward the press, he came to revile the opposition press, that he never abandon the core belief that under no circumstances could the federal government prevent newspapers from printing opinions. Harold exactly. But he did encourage the prosecution of newspapers understate libel laws. There was a famous case that was adjudicated in albany, new york himselfander hamilton was brought into be the appeals lawyer and was so p