For fans of BBC interviewers where the two BBC presenter-reporters decide to talk about themselves (sometimes cruelly but accurately described as 'navel-gazing'), here's a transcription from tonight's 100 Days, co-starring Christian Fraser and the famous Jon Sopel:
CHRISTIAN FRASER: Stay with us, because I want to discuss strategy with Jon. We really should talk about his attitude to the press, Jon. The media is, according to the tweet, "the enemy of the American people". That came last week. Now, you were on the receiving end of it last Thursday. I was sitting in the chair watching you. Let's just remind our viewers of of how that went.
Trump: Where are you from? Sopel: BBC. Trump: Here's another beauty. Sopel: It's a good line. Impartial, free and fair. Trump: Yeah, sure. Sopel: Mr President... Trump: Just like CNN, right? Sopel: On the travel ban... We could banter back and forth. On the travel ban, would you accept that that was a good example of the smooth running of government? Trump: Yeah, I do, let me tell you... Sopel: Were there any mistakes in that? Trump: Wait! Wait! I know who you are, just wait. Let me tell you about the travel ban. We had a very smooth roll-out of the travel ban...
I love that! "I know who you are". What do you make of the strategy, Jon?
JON SOPEL: I think that, if you look down the ages, every president has tried to communicate directly with the electorate without the mediation of newspaper journalists or people like us. You go back to the Second World War, it was Roosevelt with his fireside chats. Today, Donald Trump has 25 million followers on Twitter. He wants to go to rallies where he can address the crowds, like we saw over the weekend. I think that part of the strategy absolutely makes sense. I think the other thing about Donald Trump is he loves to have an enemy. If you think about when he was running for the Republican nomination, it was "lying Ted", "low-energy Jeb", "little Marco". And then it was onto the election itself and it was "crooked Hillary" and "Lock her up!". And I think he needs an enemy now, and he's determined to make the enemy us, and we must resist the temptation to fall into the trap of thinking that we are the opposition. We're journalists holding him to account.
CHRISTIAN FRASER: But there are people on both sides of the House...I mean, John McCain was saying this weekend, if you want to have a free democracy, you have to have an adversarial press, and there are people on both sides of the House that are concerned about the tone.
JON SOPEL: Yeah, I think there are, and I think there are people who would want him to dial it back. I mean, the idea of saying that journalists are "the enemy of the people", I think that went too far for some people, but broadly speaking, I think an awful lot of Trump supporters believe that we are the bad guys in all of this, they think that Donald Trump is the purveyor of truth, and sometimes it will be our job to say, "You know what? What he just said is not as truthful as first appears". But it's going to be contentious, I think it is fair to say.
