Michael Beschloss Quotes

In the media's eyes Bannon made Trump. Trump is too dumb to have made himself. Trump is too rough around the edges. Trump is not a deep enough thinker, and he's not nearly a brilliant strategist. Trump couldn't have gotten himself elected. That's what they all think. Bannon did that.

Through his mastery of storytelling techniques, he has managed to separate his character, in the public mind, from his actions as president. He has, in short, mesmerized us with that steady gaze.

What's different now is that while political leaders used to give talking points to talk radio, now talk-radio hosts are giving talking points to political leaders. It's all part of the suffocating spin cycle we're in. In media, politics and publishing, the conventional wisdom is to play to this base.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

Theodore Roosevelt owes more to newspapers than any other man of his time, or possibly of any other time.

Once you have some sort of reputation in the outside world, they will try to woo you. They will say, "Won't you come and be on a talk program about books? That's not political." Then they can say to the outside world, "See how free it is, she appears on television. See how free it is." So I refused to have anything of mine read or dramatized on South African television.

The media is terribly worried that Donald Trump is going to influence people. The media will tell you, I mean, crazy Mika, Ms. Brzezinski, actually said that she worries that Trump may actually end up controlling what people think on jobs and the economy. And it's not the president's job, it's the media's job to tell people, to determine people exactly what they think.

...the liberty of the Press is called the Palladium of Freedom, which means, in these days, the liberty of being deceived, swindled, and humbugged by the Press and paying hugely for the deception.

A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press agents trying to impart a favorable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates

Since the rise of television in the 1950s, the media have become the central forum for American politicking, and increasingly today that role is being played by the blogosphere. With the blogger and the viewer replacing the pamphleteer and the parader, politicians focus on marketing themselves and their causes to passive consumers rather than mobilizing passionate soldiers. The new language of politics sounds like this: Spin doctors stage photo ops as pollsters survey voter preferences, spawning celebrity candidates.

The First Lady has a lot of power. I hope Hillary Clinton realizes that.

Nixon knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish in his four interviews with David Frost, quite apart from having his agent Irving Paul Lazar negotiate a terrific deal for him, with cash up front.

Honestly, everybody gets talked about. Some people control their press a little more than others. Some people feed the press and move it the way they want to. I don't do that.

I think it's really tough being in Donald Trump's shoes, when you've got the media looking to put the worst possible spin to everything that you say.

You might say presidents are drafting the first chapter of their memoirs in these seventh-year State of the Union addresses. They're trying to get the public and the media to think about their presidencies in the way that they would like to have them thought of.

Presidents have to decide what their popularity is for. Lyndon Johnson probably understood best that political popularity is a wasting asset. You had to use it when you had it.

I have found, in my life experience with President Trump, when he's out there himself and he's being his fresh, authentic self, it's very appealing to the people of the United States.

My image is the creation of media.

Trump is somebody who sees the media as basically his main constituency. So much of his self-worth and his image and his view of what the presidency should be about is the media and how he is reflected in the media.

Obscenity, who really cares. Propaganda, all is phony.

A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit.

What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.

People have a good image of me. It's not these tramps who are going to tarnish my image. They should stop lying to the French people. It annoys me that people talk about 'your image'. My image is great in France. When I'm abroad, I don't even talk about it. But in France it's just these people, these parasites.

A lot of my reputation is a product of exaggeration and ignorance.

We don't think well of our presidents when they are serving. Even Kennedy, with such a short presidency, was beginning to lose his remarkable appeal to the American people when he was suddenly sainted by death.