Veteran news editor expects Trump 'to go after the press in every conceivable way'

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Donald Trump has called the media enemies of the people and threatened retribution, including jailing reporters who refused to reveal their sources and suggesting NBC, CBS and ABC should have their licenses revoked for reasons relating to their coverage of him. Many journalists who report on him in ways he's found unfavorable have faced threats on social media and in real life, and some have gotten doxxed, which is to say their addresses and other private information were revealed on social media.

At a campaign rally months after a failed assassination attempt, Trump said, to shoot me, they'd have to shoot through the media, and frankly, I wouldn't mind. We're going to talk about Trump's threats to the media, what it was like to cover him in his first term and the challenges journalists will likely face in his second term. My guests are Marty Baron and David Remnick. Marty Baron was the editor-in-chief of The Washington Post from 2013 until his retirement in 2021. Seven months after starting the job, the paper was bought by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the aerospace company Blue Origin. During Banure's (ph) tenure at the Post, the paper started printing its motto - democracy dies in darkness. Baron previously was the editor of The Boston Globe. In the movie "Spotlight," a drama based on the Globe's investigation that revealed sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, Baron was portrayed by Liev Schreiber. His memoir, "Collison Of Power: Trump, Bezos, And The Washington Post," was recently published in paperback.

David Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998. Before joining the magazine as a staff writer in 1992, he was a Washington Post reporter, including a four-year assignment as the Post's Moscow correspondent. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, "Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days Of The Soviet Empire." Remnick also hosts the public radio program and podcast "The New Yorker Radio Hour."

David Remnick, Marty Baron, welcome back to FRESH AIR. You know, Kash Patel, who seems to be under consideration for FBI director and as an adviser to Trump on national security issues and a board member of Trump's social media company, Truth Social, he was a guest on Steve Bannon's podcast. And he said, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But, yeah, we're putting you all on notice. What are some of your biggest concerns about the type of retribution Trump will carry out against the news media? David, do you want to start?

DAVID REMNICK: Well, it's always been my thinking, ever since Trump appeared on the scene in the political sense a decade ago really, that we should take seriously what he says. There's a habit, a reflex because he says so much - and sometimes it's - and often it's so outlandish - that it should be considered performance art or insult comic work or wildly exaggerated. But I've always felt that, in fact, he means what he says in one form or another or sooner or later.

So I think when he says that the press is an enemy of the people, whether he's consciously or unconsciously quoting Joseph Stalin, which is where that phrase came from most recently - it goes all the way back even to the Jacobins in the aftermath of the French Revolution - the enemies of the people, I think we should take it seriously. Whether he will (laughter) put people in jail or have his Justice Department, possibly run by Matt Gaetz, or his FBI, possibly run by Kash Patel, really go after people and put them in prison, prosecute them or go after their taxes or whatever it might be, I think it should be taken deadly seriously.

GROSS: Marty Baron, what's your reaction to what Trump has threatened? And what are your biggest concerns about the type of retribution he might carry out against the news media?

MARTY BARON: Sure. Well, I do think he will use every tool in his toolbox, and there are a lot of tools. But first, I would say that there was no rigged election, and secondly, that we didn't conspire with the Democratic Party to rig any election. And the second thing I would say is that any attack on the free press is not - it's not just an attack on the free press. The intent is to suppress free expression overall.

In terms of what he's likely to do, I think they are looking at absolutely everything because they've talked about pretty much everything. And as David said, I think we should take what he says seriously and what his allies are saying quite seriously. And his most recent appointment to head of Federal Communications Commission has already talked about what he intends to do. He's salivating for the opportunity to prosecute and imprison journalists for leaks of national security information, or what they would call national security information. Trump has spoken at his rallies about - that journalists who are imprisoned will, as he puts it, meet their bride, which means that they will be raped. And he has celebrated that idea to applause and cheers.

I think they're probably looking at increased classification of documents. This is from the guy who took documents with him to Mar-a-Lago. But I think he'll classify more and scale back things like the Freedom of Information Act. I think he'll put pressure on owners, as he already has, who have other business interests, who are dependent on federal regulators for mergers, acquisitions and the like. I think that he will encourage his allies to bring libel suits, as he already has during his first administration and since, and that he will attempt to challenge New York Times v. Sullivan, sort of the key Supreme Court case, which provides protection for coverage of politicians and other public figures.

I think he'll try to put pressure on advertisers. I think he'll - as his nominee for the FCC, I think he will try to expand the jurisdiction of the FCC over technology platforms and other areas where it has historically not had any jurisdiction, which would require some legislation. And I would expect that he would deny funding to public radio, such as this, and TV and that he will seek to exercise control over the Voice of America and its parent company, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, as he did in his previous administration, trying to turn it into a propaganda outlet.

GROSS: That was a remarkably long list.

BARON: Well, I think they have a long list, and I think that's likely what they're going to do. So it does seem that based on the appointments that he's made and the things he's said and the things his allies have said that they intend to go after the press in every conceivable way. And press protection groups, in fact, are preparing for that and have prepared lists that are quite similar to that.

REMNICK: It's such a long list that it would seem to be - would consume the entire administration for four years. But again and again, Donald Trump has said this will be an administration - first, a campaign and then an administration of retribution. And his fever, his anger has been never so intense as it's been against the press. And so I think all the tools that Marty has described are really on the table. And they've made no secret of it.

GROSS: Marty, you mentioned that journalistic organizations are preparing with lawyers. How are they preparing? What have you heard? I'm sure you know a lot of journalists around the country. What have you heard about what publications, what broadcast outlets are doing to prepare for the attacks that they're expecting?

BARON: Well, I think the most notable is that the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which is a nonprofit that specializes in protection of journalists and allowing journalists to have access, has actually put out its own list of the areas where it intends to focus its efforts. And I would expect that - I haven't heard from within legal departments at news organizations, but if they are astute, and I think they are, they are anticipating these kinds of - these very same sorts of efforts.

REMNICK: It's interesting to me that the Committee to Protect Journalists - I'm on the board there - until Donald Trump came along, the focus of what the Committee to Protect Journalists was on was on the imprisonment of journalists abroad, whether it used to be in - you know, in the Communist world or under various authoritarians all around the world or trying to get somebody out of jail or, you know, focusing on the attack on the press in one country or another. Very quickly after Trump came into office and made it known that this was a focus of his anger, of his resentments, of his uneasiness, our attention at the Committee to Protect Journalists had to be refocused. But, you know, when Marty lays out all those tools that are, to put it mildly, possibilities for the Trump administration, it will be very difficult. It will be very expensive, and it will be very dangerous to have battles like this, considering the fact that we're not really accustomed to it in such volume and with such fervor.

GROSS: Well, it's kind of sad that the kind of work the Committee to Protect Journalists had to do in dictatorships and authoritarian governments, they're starting to have to do here in the U.S.

BARON: Yeah, well, this is a playbook. I mean, anybody who's studied authoritarianism elsewhere - I've paid a lot of attention to it in Latin America - sees that these are the kinds of measures that are put into place in order to consolidate power. And as I said before, the objective here is not just to go after the press. The reason they go after the institutional press is because they actually have some sway and have some resources and can do their job in a systematic and deep way. But the objective here is to suppress free expression by anyone. So look, we don't have special rights as journalists in this country. We have the same rights as any other individual. So this is just a first step, and I think people should keep that in mind.

GROSS: Do you see it as an attempt to suppress negative information?

BARON: Yeah. Well, look, I mean, during his first transition effort after he was elected in 2016, he said to - he told Lesley Stahl. And she asked him, well, why do you keep attacking the press? And he said, I do it so that when you have something negative to say about me, people won't believe you. And he's quite open about that.

REMNICK: And he's been quite successful, don't you think, Marty? I mean, the - if you look at the waning influence of what's called the mainstream press, and if you look at statistics about trust in the press and the ecology of the press, the combination of economic pressures combined with Trump's pressures has been of immense concern to all of us who are involved in this activity. And we are not without fault. No newspaper, no magazine, no broadcast outlet is without error or weakness or things that they could vastly improve. We talk about this all the time at The New Yorker, and I'm sure it was subject of conversation all the time at The Washington Post. But these pressures are immense, and Trump knows it. He knows it. And he knows how it's affected his political fortunes in the most positive way.

BARON: Absolutely. In fact, he has spoken quite openly when he talks about his triumphs during his first term. He's cited the - undermining confidence in the mainstream press. He's called it one of his greatest successes. And one could say that it has been a success for him, in fact. It's not the only reason that confidence in the press has declined. There are a variety of reasons, some of our own making, by the way, in my view. But the big factors have been market fragmentation, the fact that people can find any site that affirms their preexisting point of view. And any conspiracy theory, no matter how crazy it is, they can find somebody who says that's true.

And secondly, sort of as a consequence of that, increased polarization in our society. And with increased polarization, there's increased polarization in news consumption. And while people may have confidence and trust in the media outlet that they go to - so people on the right have great confidence in Fox News, for example - they don't have confidence in the media overall. And that's where we are today, and I think Trump will endeavor to continue trying to undermine confidence in the press overall but, going beyond that, try to undermine further their economic sustainability, which is already highly challenged.

GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you both 'cause we need to take a break. My guests are Marty Baron, who was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 2013 to 2021, and David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JERRY GRANELLI, ET AL.'S "NEVER GONNA BREAK MY FAITH")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. We're talking about Trump's threats to the media and the challenges that lay ahead for reporters covering Trump's second term. My guests are Marty Baron, who was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 2013 to 2021, and David Remnick, who's been the editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998.

Marty, I want to pick up on something you just said. You said some of the lack of confidence in the media, some of the distrust is a function of our own doing. What do you think the press has done to undermine confidence?

BARON: Well, I don't think that we've accurately and adequately reflected the concerns of a lot of Americans in this country. You know, I've often been asked whether we had failures in our coverage of Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016. And I say that the greatest failure was that - came well before that and that we did not anticipate that this country could produce a candidate like Donald Trump. We did not understand the level of grievance and anger toward the so-called elites, including and maybe especially the press. Although, if you look at the salaries of most journalists, they don't qualify as elite. And so I think we didn't really do our - a good enough job of getting out in the country and really understanding the concerns of ordinary Americans. And I think that's true as well in 2024. Clearly, many people were surprised by this result that Trump was elected again and certainly elected with the kind of - you know, to the degree that he was winning the popular vote, winning both houses of Congress, et cetera. And so - and I think that's because they were disconnected from much of America, and I think that we have a lot of work to do to get out there in the country and really understand it.

And I also have been quite outspoken, that I'm concerned that a portion of the journalistic community, if you can call it that, has been - I mean, they've engaged in what I would consider to be advocacy and activism of a sort. That's not true of everybody, by any means, not even true of the majority of the journalists. But there's a segment out there that believes in that. And I think that that has hurt us. And, you know, we aim - we should aim to be an independent - and I would emphasize the word independent - independent arbiter of the facts, try to put them in context in an effort to get at the truth over time. And we should be more focused on the kinds of questions we want to ask and the - trying to get answers to those questions than thinking that we have the answers to those questions before we embark on reporting. Otherwise, the so-called reporting is merely an exercise in confirmation bias. And I think it's really important that we be truly independent and also that we get out in the country and really understand the concerns of so many Americans who are really struggling.

GROSS: But David, I'm wondering how much you think the problem is with the press that people aren't paying as much attention to the mainstream press and to its investigative reporting, the kind of reporting that happens at the New Yorker and the Washington Post, and that they're listening to influencers and social media and Fox News.

REMNICK: I agree with what Marty said. I want to add this, and it maybe goes to your question. The New York Times, for example, has been considered, in a very troubled media environment, extremely successful. And they were - maybe a decade ago, they were on the brink of being sold. They were in real trouble for all kinds of reasons that we could discuss. They've turned it around. They've gone from - they've multiplied their number of subscribers, and now they have 10 million subscribers, 11 million subscribers. This is a country of over 300 million people, and we live in the world of the internet and social media. And I am the first to say that the old world of three networks, some central newspapers and radio was far from perfect (laughter). But this media ecology is radically different than in the past.

And one of the things that's shriveled, one of the things that's disappeared is local newspapers have not been replaced by strong local websites. And so that - for example, in West Virginia, there's no one covering the coal industry day to day. There are all kinds of news deserts all over the country that have been created by this new news ecology so that small newspapers and medium-sized newspapers have either shriveled to the point of disappearance or they've closed their doors completely. Newsrooms, you know, across the river here in New Jersey, for example, that used to have a couple hundred people in them have a couple dozen. At best, they're hanging on by their fingernails. If that had been replaced by websites with equally aggressive or even better news gatherers, reporters and editors, that would be one thing, but they haven't. So as a result, the importance of social media - and what I think we can agree is highly unreliable where fact is concerned, news outlets are concerned - that has had a really deleterious effect on the country, in my view.

BARON: No question that the disappearance of local news outlets has had a severe impact, not only for communities but for our profession. There's so many people in this country now who've never seen a reporter. I mean, we know - we talk about the media as if we were all one. We're not all one. We're all very different. Nobody talks about all politicians or all dentists or all plumbers or all...

REMNICK: (Laughter).

BARON: ...Or, you know, lawyers or things like that. But for some reason, they feel free to talk about the media as if we all do the same thing. We don't. We all make our independent judgments, and we often differ quite - you know, quite a lot on important issues and how we should approach coverage. But, you know, covering local news, not just doing sort of the accountability work but also covering the kinds of issues that bind us together, whether it's the local sports or the cultural activities in the community, you know, coverage of the parks and the local environment, and you name it - all of the things that - many of the things that bring people together, we need to do that as well. And so much of that is missing now.

And most - many people in communities, they've never even seen a reporter. They've never met a reporter. Their impressions of what journalists are is formed by sort of arguments that they see on cable news - partisan arguments, what they see on cable news. And that is really unfortunate because that is not the way that most journalists carry themselves.

GROSS: Well, let me introduce you both again. If you're just joining us, my guests are Marty Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post, and David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker magazine. We'll talk more about Trump's threats against the media after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID NEWMAN AND RAY CHARLES' "HARD TIMES")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're talking about the threats Trump has made to journalists, including how he's described them as enemies of the people, and the challenges journalists face in covering his second term. My guests are David Remnick and Marty Baron. Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998. He also hosts the public radio program and podcast, "The New Yorker Radio Hour." Marty Baron was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 2013 to 2021. Seven months after assuming that position, the paper was bought by Jeff Bezos. His memoir, "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post, " was recently published in paperback.

Marty, you describe yourself as a traditionalist when it comes to media. What do you mean by that?

BARON: Well, a traditionalist when it comes to our values. I'm not a traditionalist when it comes to how we disseminate information, because that whole world is changing. The way that people are consuming news is being radically altered - has been - and we need to rethink how we communicate with the public as well. But in terms of traditional values, yes. I mean, I'd certainly agree with David on, you know, being factual and being fair. I believe in being open-minded, not thinking that you have all the answers before you embark on your reporting. I do believe in objectivity, as I think it would be correctly defined. It is not false equivalence. It is not false balance. It's not on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand journalism. And the idea is to try to get of the truth, which is elusive, right? I mean, it's a process, but to work at that and then to tell people what you've actually discovered.

REMNICK: Here's what I'd add too, Marty, and maybe we disagree in this, Marty. I don't know. Lying was not invented by Donald Trump. Lying has come from White Houses for decades and decades. But Donald Trump has changed the game. And here, my experience of living in the last years of the Soviet Union and then constantly visiting Russia thereafter might be influential. What I'm seeing here for the last decade from Donald Trump and where I think part of his admiration for Vladimir Putin is rooted - that the Putin regime shows us when there is no truth, everything is possible. When you say that everything is hypocritical and you say that everything is up for grabs, including truth, everything is possible, politically speaking.

The malevolent brilliance of Vladimir Putin, I think, particularly in the last 15 years, has been he's changed the game where authoritarianism or totalitarianism - whatever you would like to call it - is. In the old-style Soviet Union, if you said anything contrary or were suspected of saying anything contrary, off you went to the Gulag, and this was a very expensive system to have. There were camps all across the country, all across the empire. There was censorship from top to bottom in every outlet. You know the old system.

The Putin system is something quite different. And here, I think, Trump is alert to this on one level or another. He sees - Putin does - that by putting one person in jail and publicizing it, or if you see one politician murdered on the street or in an elevator and you publicize it, it warns the entire system about what the price of speaking the truth or speaking contrary words to power is. And if we go back to what Marty was describing as the tools in the toolbox for Donald Trump, these are the tools of an authoritarian regime. And that seems to me - and we've lived through Nixon, and we've lived through much else - that seems to me the uniqueness in its matter of degree.

GROSS: I want to get back to the idea of you can publish all the investigative reporting that you want to, but it's not going to have an impact unless people read it. And a lot of people apparently have either not been reading investigative reporting or not believing it and believing influencers and social media, including conspiracy theorists and, you know, lies, deceptions, distortions that you can frequently find on social media. How do you combat that? How do you get the message out in a way that people will find it?

BARON: Well, first of all, I mean, we're - I think in journalism, we've become accustomed to just telling people the facts, and I think we have to do more to show them where we got these facts. We have to be much more transparent about our reporting process and allow people to essentially check our work. The message should be check our work. You have a right to do so, and you - now we're going to give you the opportunity to do so. So if we're citing a court document, we should not just quote the court document. We should take people to the court document. We can annotate it. We can show them the entire court document, and people can see for themselves whether we took it out of context or not.

REMNICK: I think what Marty's referring to is the ability, for example, to link to a court document. You have the technology, obviously, for quite a while now to do that and be more generous in what you're providing the reader. But another difficulty is this - you know, the three of us in this conversation are - spend a lot of our day thinking about the news, reading the news, watching it, reading books - not everybody does that. People have different lives, and they have different amounts of time they spend on the affairs of the republic and the world. So I think it's also incumbent upon us to try to find new ways to reach people. One of them is through the medium that we're exercising now. We've discovered that more and more people listen to news or audio versions of the newspaper or the magazine or books and so on, and we have to reach them in that way.

But in the end, this is imperfect. The notion that somehow everybody is going to spend as much time as Marty Baron does in the course of his day on either discovering or reading about the affairs of state, that's a delusion. And if you're asking me how to combat that in an absolutely effective way, I don't think I have the answer for that, quite frankly. All I can do and all The Washington Post can do and any other outlet can do is be a rigorous as possible, as honest as possible and as transparent as it's possible to be. But there are stories where you cannot name every source. And that's just a reality.

GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you both 'cause we need to take a break. My guests are Marty Baron, who was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 2013 to 2021, and David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. We're talking about Trump's threats to the media and the challenges that lay ahead for reporters covering Trump's second term. My guests are Marty Baron, who was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 2013 to 2021, and David Remnick, who's been the editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998. Trump is promising retribution in his second term, including retribution against the press. What kind of retribution did you experience at The Post the first time around?

BARON: Well, he started during his campaign in 2015 and 2016, and he excluded The Post, as well as some other media outlets, from receiving credentials to cover his events. And so we had to go into his rallies like anybody else, stand in line forever to get in. He had large numbers of people who were attending his rallies. We couldn't fly with him on the plane, you name it. All that sort of stuff that is typically what journalists have been entitled to do with presidential candidates. So he ultimately revoked that decision - rescinded that decision at the end just in the last few weeks of the campaign because I think he felt he needed us to cover the campaign and needed the other media outlets to cover the campaign. During his administration, I mean, one of the things that he did - well, certainly, he would cut people off. He didn't exclude us from press conferences or anything like that, although he certainly tried with CNN to do that with Jim Acosta. But what he would do is he would - if he didn't like a story, he would name check these reporters on social media, meaning he would identify these reporters by name, call them names, often in a juvenile manner, but in a vicious manner, inviting his followers to harass them and to threaten them. He knew full well that by mentioning their names, citing them, that he was calling upon them to make life miserable for these individuals. And that's exactly what happened.

REMNICK: One added peculiarity is that Trump is obsessed with the press. I don't think Maggie Haberman of The New York Times thinks of herself - or is - an editorialist. But he seems obsessed with her coverage and her presence. And I think she's - you know, she's a very aggressive - and in the best sense - reporter and has been covering him since the day she was in New York tabloids, and she's extremely familiar with everybody around him. She's not the only one. I'm just taking one example. So there's this desire to both crush and seduce at the same time. He thinks about this subject in - takes up a big part of his brain.

BARON: I mean, it's interesting that at a time where he and his allies like to say the traditional press is irrelevant, that he pays so much attention to us and his allies pay so much attention to us. That's because we're not irrelevant. That's because the traditional media is doing the yeoman's job of actually unearthing the facts that are relevant to what's happening, what will be happening in his new government, what happened in his previous government. So they are deeply concerned about us, and they do not consider us to be irrelevant, even though they say we are.

GROSS: Marty Baron, you were at The Washington Post when Jeff Bezos bought - personally bought The Post. And you write in your memoir that he kind of rescued The Post 'cause it was losing a lot of money, and Bezos didn't interfere with coverage and initially invested money in The Post. Sounds like you had a very decent relationship with him. But more recently, The Washington Post was blocked from publishing an editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris. My understanding is that that order came from Bezos - that it originated with Bezos. Can you explain your understanding of how the editorial was suppressed?

BARON: Right. Well, I don't have inside knowledge of it. But first of all, you're right that I had a very good relationship with him, and I'm incredibly grateful for the independence that he gave us when I was there and that I've seen since in terms of the news coverage, which is entirely separate from the opinion pages. There's sort of a wall of separation between us. He never interfered in any of the coverage, whether it had anything to do with Amazon or him personally or anything like that. And he endured an enormous amount of pressure from Trump who tried to disrupt Amazon's business in multiple ways. But it's clear that he did decide to not make an endorsement. I think I was very concerned, first of all, that the initial statements coming out of The Washington Post were deceptive. They tried to leave the impression that he had nothing to do with this decision. They had put out at least two statements along those lines. But it was clear from the piece that he wrote for The Post, his note to readers, that he was deeply involved in that decision - if he did not even initiate that decision. I think he did. So I think if you're trying to earn readers confidence, the first thing you need to do is be honest with them, and I don't believe they were. Secondly, I don't think there's any great explanation for this decision 11 days before the election then that he was yielding to pressure from Donald Trump on his other interests, which are substantially larger than The Post, particularly Amazon, which has many contracts with the federal government, particularly in terms of Cloud computing and Blue Origin, a commercial space enterprise that is essentially wholly dependent upon the federal government for its contracts. So I think that, you know, if they had been serious about this being an effort to sort of regain trust of readers, number one, there would have been an initiative at The Post to look at the very complicated issue of trust. It would have started before. It would have been started since this decision. There was no such initiative before from what I can tell. They never mentioned it. They haven't mentioned it since. There has been no announcement of any such initiative. It was a singular act regarding an editorial, even as they made political endorsements of other types. But I don't think there's any logical explanation for this decision other than don't poke the bear. And I think it was notably unsuccessful because nobody can reasonably argue that trust in The Washington Post today is higher than it was prior to this decision. It is substantially lower. I've never seen a reputation for a company so severely damaged in such a short period of time. And I think it was a regrettable and deeply wrong decision on his part.

GROSS: The Post lost a lot of subscribers, too, and Marty, you've objected to that as a form of protest, 'cause it's just weakening The Post if people don't subscribe.

BARON: Absolutely.

GROSS: And...

BARON: Absolutely. I don't think that's a good measure to take. I mean, as we've talked about, a lot of what people know about the - about Trump and about government generally - including the Biden administration - comes from The New York Times and The Washington Post. We did do a lot of investigations during his first term in office. I think a lot of what people know about Trump comes from the Post. And so to take that off the table, to say that there's going to be one less major news organization to look - to examine what's happening in this administration I think is an egregious mistake. I'm always appalled when people go onto Twitter of all places - or X, whatever you want to call it - to announce that they're canceling their subscription to the Post. And they're hurting an organization that has done an enormous amount of work in terms of holding Trump accountable. And they're giving their traffic to someone who has enabled Trump, given him $200 million in contributions and has abused his position as the owner of Twitter/X to spread falsehoods, to be the world's biggest disseminator of baseless conspiracy theories and absolute falsehoods in service of the election of Donald Trump.

GROSS: Elon Musk has expressed his commitment to the First Amendment. And I wonder how you each interpret that and whether it's - that includes the press, including The New Yorker and The Washington Post, or whether that is intended as protection for social media companies, like Musk's company, X, to post lies and conspiracy theories without any kind of larger oversight.

REMNICK: Well, I - we shouldn't forget that our system - our political system is rotten in its relationship to money. And it's gotten only worse because of the Supreme Court's decision that money is speech. And so our campaign financing system is rotten and far more rotten than it ever was with the influence of big money. There's a long history of this, but it's just gotten worse and worse and worse. I should also say that a billion dollars was spent to elect the Democrat, too. There are things innately wrong with this.

It's interesting to me that we criticize - and rightly criticize - the Russian system of oligarchy as it came out of the Soviet times. And there came that moment when Putin basically said to the oligarchs, as long as you keep out of politics, you can keep your fortunes. I know how you made them - all the dirty ways you made them. And he's created a system of new oligarchs that are completely and utterly obedient to him. So again, we see these two systems in intention and in their similarity. But the influence of money in our system is getting worse and worse. And so the spectacle of a billionaire or faux billionaire or whatever Donald Trump's position is working hand in glove with Elon Musk, the richest person ever to exist on this planet, to force Jeff Bezos into thinking that he has to bend his knee and then send an incredibly treacly congratulatory text 5 1/2 seconds after Trump's election, complimenting him on his unprecedented political victory - this is a rotten spectacle.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, and Marty Baron, who was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 2013 to 2021. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. We're talking about Trump's threats against the media and the challenges that lay ahead for reporters covering Trump's second term. My guests are Marty Baron, who was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 2013 to 2021, and David Remnick, who's been the editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998.

Marty, during the first administration, early on in the administration, I think it was the publisher of The Washington Post who suggested that you meet with Trump. And so there was a dinner at the White House with you, the executive editor of the Post, the publisher and the editorial editor. You were very uncomfortable about having this dinner. Tell us something about what the dinner was about. And did Trump - I know it was the Post that asked for the meeting, but did Trump make any demands or suggestions about the Post's coverage?

BARON: Well, he didn't make any explicit demands during that meeting. It's true. I was very uncomfortable with the idea of the meeting primarily for a variety of reasons. One is a very - Trump is a very transactional person. And if he did us the favor of giving us a dinner at the White House, he would expect something in return. No. 2, Jeff Bezos was going to be there. We had said publicly and repeatedly and accurately that Bezos was not involved in our news coverage at all. But if word got out, that would leave the impression that he was involved in our news coverage. And certainly, Trump would interpret his presence as meaning that he was involved in our news coverage.

During the meeting itself, you know, mostly Trump boasted about his achievements, many of them imaginary. At that point, he made clear, to me, at least - at least based on what he was saying - that he was going to govern for his base, not for the country overall. He held up poll results at 47%, and he said, I can win again with that. And that was his approval rating at the time. During the meeting, he was sitting across the table from Jeff Bezos. Trump did almost all of the talking during the meeting. He was talking to Bezos. He did make some critical remarks about the Post. He said we were the worst of all media outlets. And every time that he criticized the Post, I was sitting at his left, and he would poke me with his elbow.

REMNICK: (Laughter).

BARON: And it was annoying. But of course, I couldn't poke him back, which I would have done with any other individual. But the next day, he did - he did call Bezos the next day at about 8 o'clock in the morning - called him on his cellphone. He said, I don't know if you get involved in news coverage or not, but I'm sure you do to some extent, saying something that's totally contradictory. But - and he said, I hope you can do something to make the coverage more fair to me. And Bezos said - and I appreciate this - he said, I don't get involved in the news coverage. He said, if I did, I would regret it for the rest of my life. And that ended it. Trump later told him at a meeting that our dinner was a total waste of time. And then he called me afterwards to criticize us for a couple of - twice to criticize us for stories, one after the - after he had met with Modi (ph) at the White House. So what was he thinking about? How he was portrayed in a Washington Post" story, of all things. And he called me at about 9 o'clock at night, and he said that our coverage of a meeting involving health care portrayed him as acting like a child, like a little boy. And then he said these words that I never expected the president of the United States to ever say. He said, I am not a little boy. And I was just, like, stunned that a president of the United States would say something like that.

Next time he called me, he criticized another piece by our reporters. He said it was all because of Amazon, all because of Bezos. And I was, at that point, just completely frustrated with his repetition of what was completely untrue, since Amazon and Bezos had nothing to do with our coverage. And I said, well, that's not true, and you know it's not true. And I think he's not accustomed to that. And he broke out in profanities. He called us nothing but a big fat lie, a big hate machine, that it was all Bezos, all that sort of stuff. And ultimately, we ended the conversation, and I never heard from him again. But Jared Kushner later tried to get me fired and said there should be a reckoning for our coverage of Russia's intervention in the 2016 election. And so, you know, that was - those were my encounters with him.

GROSS: Do you think that that White House dinner with you, Bezos, the editorial editor of the Post and the publisher - that that opened up a channel for Trump to call you and bawl you out?

BARON: Probably, but it's fine. I mean, he's free to call me anytime. I don't think it's a problem to meet with him, either, and I know that that has become an issue of late. But I think we should be meeting with news - people - the most powerful person on Earth. I think we should be meeting with the leaders of countries and powerful business executives, whether we agree with them or don't agree with them. You name it.

REMNICK: It depends what you do with it. It depends what you do with those meetings. If the purpose of the meeting is to ingratiate and access for the sake of access, that's one thing. If it's - if you take those meetings and it adds to your knowledge or sense of the person or the administration or what's ahead, that's an entirely different matter.

BARON: Yeah, I agree.

GROSS: Marty, you were the executive editor of The Washington Post during the first Trump administration. Then you retired from that position. Is there a part of you that wishes you were back in the game for the second administration?

BARON: Not really. I mean, I was exhausted by the time that I retired. And I've decided that I should try to make a contribution in different ways, speaking about what I think about the role of journalism in our society, and I'm trying to do that. But I was 66 when I retired. I'd been leading news organizations - three of them - over the course of 20 years. I'd been in the profession for over 45 years. I was pretty wiped out. There's a lot of work to be done. It can be done well by the people who are at The Washington Post, at The New York Times, at The New Yorker and many, many other news organizations. So I would like to make a contribution in a different way.

GROSS: Marty Baron, David Remnick, thank you both so much for talking with us and sharing your thoughts.

REMNICK: Thank you, Terry.

BARON: Thank you.

GROSS: Marty Baron is the former executive editor of The Washington Post and author of the memoir "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos, And The Washington Post," which is now out in paperback. David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker magazine and hosts the public radio program and podcast "The New Yorker Radio Hour."

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR my guest will be Michael Schur. He wrote for "The Office," co-created "Parks And Recreation" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and created "The Good Place." His new comedy series, "A Man On The Inside," stars Ted Danson as a widower who takes a job going undercover in an assisted living facility to investigate who stole a resident's necklace. I hope you'll join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Sam Briger. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly Seavy-Nesper and Sabrina Seiwert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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