To understand the frustration the White House has with news coverage, officials are pointing to CNN’s whipsawed description of Vice President Mike Pence’s relationship with President Trump over a 24-hour period this week.
CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza, who on Tuesday took down a tweet showing Trump in the crosshairs of a rifle scope, in two successive columns wrote first that Pence was plotting for control of the GOP and angering Trump, then that Pence was Trump’s biggest fan, never missing a chance for “kissing up.”
Exhibit A: “Mike Pence’s 2024 campaign is ON,” was the first headline.
In his “The Point,” the analyst highlighted a Monday New York Times report on Pence’s midterm election operation. “a) Vice President Mike Pence and his advisers are operating as a sort of de facto political unit within the White House and b) allies of President Donald Trump are none too happy about that fact,” said the column.
Pence is described as a power-grabbing rival. “The Point: Politics abhors a vacuum. Trump’s lack of ties to the GOP campaign establishment and his seeming disinterest in anyone’s politics other than his own create an opening for Pence. The question is whether he can take advantage without seeming like he is taking advantage,” wrote Cillizza.
Then, in the very next “The Point,” was this headline: “Mike Pence’s Mount Rushmore: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.”
That column describes Pence as an embarrassing suck up.
“Trump likes to surround himself with people who adore him — and don’t mind speaking, sometimes at length, of their admiration and respect for the boss man. But, no one does it quite like Pence. He is the Picasso of the platitude, the Kandinsky of kissing up. And the praise is always delivered with the same knowing smile and this-really-comes-from-the-heart tone,” said the CNN editor.
He referred to Pence’s praise Monday night of Trump for opening the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and even suggested it was because of the New York Times story.
But then he wrote that kissing up has always been Pence’s approach to Trump and that his future is tied to Trump.
Cillizza wrote:
“Does Pence etching Trump into Israel’s Mount Rushmore on Monday night have anything to do with the fact that The New York Times published a story just hours before the vice president spoke detailing the rising tensions in the White House over Pence’s aggressive political operation? Many people are saying that.
“Regardless of Pence’s reason for Monday’s encomium to Trump, it is far from an isolated incident. Pence lauds Trump at every turn for a simple reason: His political future — AKA being president — is inextricably linked to being seen by Trump and Trump’s supporters as the natural heir to the movement the president built in 2016. And Pence knows that the best way to ensure he’s regarded that way is to say nice things about Trump. And then say some more nice things. And then even a few more nice things.”
An administration official, citing the two columns, said they highlight “the impossible position the media corners us into.”
