'It's not on the level': Steve Schmidt buries Maggie Haberman for holding back info on Trump for her book
Appearing very early Saturday morning on MSNBC with host Medhi Hasan, former Republican Party campaign strategist Steve Schmidt scorched high-profile journalists who withheld information about misdeeds in Donald Trump's administration so they could publish them later after getting book deals.
Claiming the too-late revelations is one additional reason why the public mistrusts the media, Schmidt focused on the New York Times' Maggie Haberman whose book "Confidence Man" came out this week.
With Schmidt declaring "It's not on the level," the two discussed the revelation in Haberman's book that the former president admitted to her that he took items from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago resort should have been reported earlier -- particularly in light of the DOJ's current investigation of Trump for possible violations of the Espionage Act.
Claiming we are living in a "media-ocracy," Schmidt explained to the MSNBC host, "Now, the New York Times is specifically in this case, calls itself the 'paper of record.' Now, the New York Times as an institution, judged against the collapse of trust, faith and belief in the news in the media companies."
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"And the fact that it is a powerful billion dollar company and that Haberman is a celebrity, million dollar a year journalist reporter," he continued. "Are these people immunized from any public criticism? I see an inherent conflict of interest. I also see a conflict when you have a reporter who is referred to by the president that she is covering as his psychiatrist."
"What she did on a daily basis, what happens every day, is the bestowment of anonymous sourcing on people that she knows to be not credible in the White House," he continued. "Everybody knew the president read the New York Times about him. And what the White House officials did was jockey for favor with Haberman in a broad trading of misinformation and tidbits that are, as I just said, later commoditized."
"I think that all that adds to a collapse of trust and faith and belief in media which fuels the political instability in the country," he added.
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