Mentalist Oz Pearlman was featured this past weekend at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. The choice of a “mentalist” for the entertainment portion of the program was apt. Performers in that category combine psychology, suggestion, observation, misdirection and showmanship to create the illusion of mind reading. “The Amazing Kreskin,” aka George Joseph Kresge Jr., entertained television audiences for years with the same repertoire of illusions and stunts, appearing upward of 80 times with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” during their parallel heydays in the 1970s.
Pearlman was an appropriate choice to display his talents for reporters on the White House beat. That could even be categorized as continuing education. Increasingly, members of the legacy media stationed at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue are relying on the practices employed by Pearlman and Kreskin to draw conclusions about President Donald Trump and, more recently, Vice President JD Vance.
Keep your eyes and ears open for reporting in print or on broadcasts that relays what the president or vice president is “thinking” or “feeling,” as opposed to what they have said or done. There is no shortage of the former. Sometimes, these opinions and predictions dressed up as reporting are preceded by “sources close to Mr. Trump” or “White House aides who were granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the record say Mr. Vance believes. …” A favorite construction is “sources with knowledge of his position.”
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Increasingly rare is the story that simply provides direct quotes or descriptions of actions taken. Though President Trump is by far the most accessible of presidents, reporters looking for scoops and clicks still retreat into the shadows of the “sources say” genre.
Between 1,500 and 2,000 people work in the Executive Office of the President, about half of whom are political employees. There are another 3,000 political appointees across the executive branch. There are between 150 and 200 generals and admirals in the Pentagon’s E-ring, and each has a staff. There is a roughly similar number of civilians in Senior Executive Service billets.
Of the 535 members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, only a handful of Republicans can be trusted to have regular conversations with the president. The 8,000 to 9,000 staff members employed by members of Congress may hear or surmise things from their bosses or their friends in other offices, just as the political staff members of the 15 Cabinet secretaries may hear or surmise things. But only a handful actually speak to the president or the vice president.
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President Trump and Vice President Vance also have friends and advisers who aren’t on the payroll but with whom they talk and from whom they might solicit advice or opinions.
Add up all those numbers, and you can see how many people might offer themselves as “sources” to a reporter who has to file something on most workdays.
Why “sources” want to pass along alleged conversations or arguments is easy enough to tease out. Everyone has preferred outcomes they would like to see advanced or supported through media narratives. Most people have career paths that track the rise and fall of the various officials they serve. And it isn’t unheard of for reporters to put a shiv into a handy target for the benefit of a storyline.
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These are just some of the categories of sources for stories about what President Trump and Vice President Vance think or intend to do. The wholly speculative 10-paragraph print story or the predictive podcast is a feature, not a bug, of Beltway journalism. Both can be based on “sources close to the president,” patterns of past behavior or opinions pulled from longtime observers with decent records of past performance.
But as investment advisers are always careful to note in their pitches, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
That goes double or triple with President Trump, and given that Vice President Vance works for President Trump, it applies to the vice president as well.
The best “mentalists” are superb performers. While the best reporters reject the techniques of prediction, projection and speculation — especially when mixed with political bias or personal prejudice — there are 900 members of the White House Correspondents’ Association and thousands more journalists inside the Beltway with careers to advance and families to feed. It is an extremely competitive business. The temptation to step out of the reporter’s role and into the mentalist’s — or even the fabulist’s — is ever-present.
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Ever get irritated by someone who tells you, “I know what you are thinking” or “I can guess your reaction”? Those are verbal tricks used to preempt conversation or sidestep objections and reasoned argument. No one can read minds, so anyone who deploys those constructions is doing so to score a point or avoid an actual response. To pull from the “You are going to say” bag of tricks is to concede insecurity about the direction of a discussion. It’s an escape hatch or an ejection seat, and often a sign of arrogance, insecurity or both.
Applied to political figures by journalists, speculation about their “state of mind” represents an especially absurd departure from the highest and best standards of the craft, which are supposed to include the careful collection and arrangement of substantiated facts. It’s perfectly acceptable for anyone to relay an opinion about any subject, especially a controversial one, but that is not “reporting.”
But the legacy media and online influencers are overflowing with speculation dressed up as reporting. It’s not “reporting,” of course. It is guessing.
The appearance of a mind-reader among the Beltway’s news business elites on Saturday night was just so “on the nose.” Did any of the assembled reporters even notice the mirror in the room?
