Peter Baker has been a White House reporter for The Washington Post and The New York Times for twenty years. The first President he covered in that capacity was Bill Clinton.
Which means that now, he is covering Donald Trump, a man who has broken all the protocols, all the rules, in presidential politics.
A main feature of Trump’s pathology is his constant need for adulation, which he knows he will receive if he holds MAGA rallies, such as the one he held in Tulsa — a poorly attended event — and, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, guess what, after that debacle, there was a spike in the number of people in Oklahoma testing positive for COVID-19, including Republican governor Kevin Stitt.
On Tuesday, Trump swaggered himself to the podium in the Rose Garden and meandered for a total of 64 minutes, flitting incoherently from topic to topic, and, as Baker reported, taking a minimal number of questions (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-news-conference.html?referringSource=articleShare).
Notable during his monologue was his attack on Joe Biden, as he accused the former Vice President of wanting “to abolish the suburbs” and — get this — wanting to eliminate windows through climate policies (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/15.trumps-rose-garden-strategy-white-house-maga-rallies-364991).
This online apocryphal newspaper has a distinct advantage over other news outlets, because only here can you read about associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones, a 25 year old African American journalist who never leaves Trump’s side. Jones has the unique ability to be invisible whenever it suits her needs to come up with a scoop on whatever Trump does or says.
Naturally, Jones was at Tuesday’s mini-MAGA event in the Rose Garden.
Also attending, but never invisible, was associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman, a seasoned Washington political reporter who is also our Chief Investigative Reporter. Sherman can interview Chief Justice John Roberts whenever the need arises.
The nation’s most prominent Polls Pundit, Nate Cohn of FiveThirtyEight, tells us that Biden has a nearly unsurmountable lead in the polls in 2020 ("Even if the Polls Are Really Off, Trump Is Still in Trouble,” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/upshot/polls-biden-trump-how-accurate.html?referringSource=articleShare).
So, when Trump said that Biden wants to do away with windows in the suburbs, Sherman jumped up, without being recognized by our Bully-in-Chief, and said, “Donny, are you saying that Uncle Joe thinks everybody in the suburbs should just stay inside all day, unable to look outside, as though they’re in a jail cell?”
“Yes, Sherman, anybody who isn’t three hundred percent for me should be put in jail and the jailers should just throw away the key."