Inside Trump’s Pre-Midterm Media Blitzkrieg

Daily Beast: “In the middle of September, Donald Trump wanted to make something very clear to his senior staff: He didn’t feel like he was talking to enough reporters, and he needed to talk to as many as humanly possible in the coming weeks.”

“According to two knowledgeable sources, the president told some of his top lieutenants, including White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Bill Shine, that he was frustrated and believed he wasn’t getting his message out enough on mainstream channels in the weeks leading up to the critical midterm elections.”

“Trump then directed his top comms brass to make sure he would get on the phone and facetime with more journalists from various outlets (not simply Fox), to supplement his increasingly busy 2018 campaign-trail schedule. He wanted a media strategy for “flood[ing] the zone,” as one senior administration official put it, and to make himself an even grander presence on the TV shows and print publications he so addictively consumes.”