Most media use is passive. Sitting and watching TV all the time, for example, does not help your child acquire the most important skills and experiences she needs at this age, such as communication, creativity, fantasy, judgment, and experimentation.
American Academy of Pediatrics, Caring for Your Baby and Young Child
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of two not be exposed to any television at all, and that children older than two be exposed only to limited amounts of quality television.1 The World Health Organization has reached similar conclusions about all screens.2 The reasons proffered are straightforward.3 Young children with heavy exposure to screens are more at risk for delayed language development. Television reduces a child’s focused attention by approximately 75 percent and leads to a decrease in classroom engagement.4 Ample amounts of screen time are positively correlated with obesity. Too much screen time in the evening can interfere with the body’s natural release of melatonin, which facilitates sleep. A lot of television programs that are marketed as “educational” or useful for a child’s cognitive development are actually devoid of such value. Most important in terms of cognitive development, there are far better activities for a toddler to pursue than watching television. As the American Academy of Pediatrics warns, “passive screen time is not a substitute for reading, playing, or problem solving.”5 Despite these warnings, most parents in the United States let their toddlers watch television or play with tablets. Most parents also acknowledge that this is not the greatest mode of parenting.
The Toddler in Chief watches a lot of television. Trump himself has denied this, claiming at one press gaggle, “People that don’t know me, they like to say I watch television—people with fake sources.” He went on: “But I don’t get to watch much television. Primarily because of documents. I’m reading documents. A lot.”6 People close to Trump have flatly contradicted that claim, estimating that he spends between four to eight hours a day in front of a television.7 That would be an above average amount of screen time for an ordinary American. For a President tasked with far more responsibility and authority, it is an extraordinary amount of time. As Trump’s “Executive Time” has increased over the course of his presidency, so has his television viewing. It has spread to his business hours as well. In meetings with Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and other GOP allies, Trump has been repeatedly distracted by whatever is on television.8
We do not need to rely on insider accounts of Trump’s television watching to have it confirmed. Trump’s Twitter feed offers an excellent real-time data source of the President’s heavy television diet. Since the fall of 2017, Media Matters for America’s Matthew Gertz has monitored the correlation between Trump’s tweets and what is on cable news.9 He has demonstrated that most of Trump’s early morning and evening tweets correlate directly to Fox News and Fox Business Channel programming. Trump’s early morning tweets are usually about whatever Fox & Friends has covered; his evening tweets correspond to content on Hannity and Lou Dobbs Tonight. The Art of the Deal ghostwriter Tony Schwartz claims that television is Trump’s primary information source.10 The examples cited in this chapter back up that claim. According to Time, “Nothing anyone on the National Security Council staff, in the counsel’s office or from across government can outweigh what the President hears from conservatives on cable television.”11
Much as some parents defend certain kinds of screen time as “educational,” however, Trump defenders have developed justifications for his copious cable news consumption. If television is the best way for Trump to process information, why not let him watch it? Perhaps fair and balanced content from Fox News can provide sources of information superior to a stodgy intelligence briefing from the Deep State?
The flaws in this argument are legion. First and foremost, watching television during the day compromises an individual’s ability to focus. Among children, media multitasking is negatively correlated with academic performance, emotional regulation, and cognitive control.12 Even adults who attempt to multitask usually find themselves doing poorly on maintaining focus and attention.13 In Trump’s case, his short attention span compounds the problem. Having a television on in the background dramatically reduces the 45th President’s ability to focus on whatever is happening in the foreground. At times this has caused Trump to misinterpret what he saw on the screen. Early in his administration, he was meeting with some advisors on North Korea when he saw footage of North Korean missiles being fired. Trump thought this was happening in real time. Lindsey Graham had to reassure the President that he was watching was old footage and therefore did not in fact need to respond to an imminent missile strike.14
Second, Trump is not really watching the news part of Fox News, but rather the opinion programs: Fox & Friends and Hannity. The former show can be described as a Trump-friendly program in which, in the words of one Washington Post columnist, “opposing viewpoints are piped in infrequently, and usually in discrete sound bites . . . that can then be dismissed without having to delve too deeply into unpleasant arguing.”15 In many instances, Fox & Friends or Hannity have broadcast uninformed speculation on breaking news, causing in turn the Toddler in Chief to tweet out unsubstantiated rumors rather than rely on his own intelligence officials for information.16 One Trump White House official admitted, “Sometimes on Fox, a lot of stories are embellished, and they don’t necessarily cover the big news stories of the day. When they cover the smaller stories, if that gets the President riled up, then that becomes an issue. Whenever he tweets, all of us do a mad dash or mad scramble to find out as much information about that random topic as possible.”17 Like many toddlers, Trump has difficult distinguishing between reality and fantasy when watching television.
Third, because Fox News and Fox Business Channel cater to conservative viewers, Trump uses it to gauge what his base is thinking. This can cause him to alter his positions in response to criticism aired on those channels. Keeping in touch with political constituencies is a traditional task of a politician. Because Trump relies on television so heavily, however, it allows activists to skew the President’s perceptions by scheduling constant appearances. In early 2017 House Freedom Caucus leader Jim Jordan instructed his congressional staff to put him on television more “because you’re talking to the president” when on television.18 Trump nearly vetoed a March 2018 omnibus spending bill after seeing negative coverage of it on Fox News. In December 2018 he flip-flopped on signing another spending bill because Fox News aired criticisms from Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.19 That led to a government shutdown that accomplished none of Trump’s stated aims.
Fourth, and finally, in watching so much television, Trump is ceding his agenda-setting powers to producers at Fox News. While this might please Trump’s conservative base, it can also lead to imbroglios that distract from administration priorities. For example, in the summer of 2019 President Trump decided to attack US Representative Elijah Cummings after watching a Saturday morning Fox and Friends segment that characterized Cummings’ district as trash-ridden. Over the next week, the Trump White House was forced to defend the president against accusations of racism and bipartisan criticism of Trump’s comments. As Axios’s Jonathan Swan noted as the controversy died down, “Nobody knew it was coming, nobody knew how to handle it, and a week later, senior White House officials have their fingers crossed that the president won’t turn their week upside-down once again with another tweet about a “Fox and Friends” segment. . . . Baltimore Week illuminates how things often work inside the Trump White House: The president watches TV, he tweets, and the machinery of government scrambles into action to deal with an emergency of the president’s own creation.”20 A senior administration official acknowledged, “I’ve seen him go from Point A to Point B in minutes. . . . Usually what does it is something on TV like a [Democratic] politician or commentator saying he’s the one to blame that sets him off.”21
Despite this, Trump has not dialed down his television consumption. If anything, it has increased during his time in office. He enjoys the feedback loop between his tweets/statements and their being reported on the news. He judges his subordinates based on how well they perform on television. He also likes to appoint people he believes fit “central casting,” which often means prior experience on television. Matthew Whitaker was a CNN commentator before being hired to be Chief of Staff and then Acting Attorney General at the Justice Department. Heather Nauert migrated from Fox News anchor to spokesperson for the State Department. Trump fired Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan during the first few weeks of his presidency, but after Morgan appeared on Fox News and voiced vociferous support for the President’s hardline policies, he was rehired at the Department of Homeland Security.22 At total of 19 people have migrated from working at Fox News to serve in the Trump administration.23 The President has regularly looped Lou Dobbs into White House policy debates on immigration, and he listens to Tucker Carlson on Iran policy.24 Trump talks regularly with Sean Hannity and invited him to speak at one of his campaign rallies. According to one source close to the White House press office, Trump hired Anthony Scaramucci to be the White House Communications Advisor because he “wanted to give Scaramucci something to do because he likes him on TV.”25 Trump initially wanted John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence without a full vetting because of his television appearances.26
President Trump’s reliance on television as his primary source of information has had a profound effect on how staffers, advisors, and other politicians attempt to influence him. Like most exasperated parents, their first instinct was to limit his screen time. His staffers tried to limit his access to television programs that they believed would set him off. White House staff dreaded rainy Sundays, because that meant the Toddler in Chief would be watching television and tweeting rather than playing golf.27 Trump’s first Chief of Staff Reince Priebus described rainy Sunday afternoons as “the devil’s play shop,” and Sunday evenings—when Trump was likely to watch CNN or MSNBC—as “the witching hour.” He began to schedule Trump’s return from weekend golf trips later in the day, so Trump would not be able to watch the more political programs.28
That tactic largely failed, so in response the staff has tried to shape the content that Trump watches on television. Even those advisors who have considerable “face time” with Trump will also attempt to deploy allies onto television programs that they know the President will watch. The Washington Post reported that “aides sometimes plot to have guests make points on Fox that they have been unable to get the president to agree to in person. ‘He will listen more when it is on TV,’ a senior administration official said.”29 This is also true of ambitious politicians. In December 2017, Trump waded into the GOP primary for Florida governor to endorse Ron DeSantis over several other potential candidates. He did this without much knowledge of state party dynamics; rather, it was because he saw DeSantis on Fox News.30
According to one White House advisor, the influence of White House officials and other administration personnel on Trump was “exactly equal” to what emanated from Fox News.31 It is unsurprising that so many observers have labeled the Trump administration as a “reality show presidency.” Trump’s television addiction permits him to weigh in on breaking news. Unfortunately, it also exacerbates almost every other toddler trait discussed in this book.