photo: courtesy AXIOS ON HBO

The Trump Interviews – What Went Wrong?

From a media training perspective, the recent President Trump interviews with Axios and Fox News raise some fundamental issues. Before any newsmaker goes before the media, they are given a document with the key messages they should focus on, along with data points to back up their arguments. But most importantly, they are also given an analysis from their PR people on what the reporter is going to focus on. The PR people should fully brief the interviewee on how to answer negative follow-up questions that are likely to be asked. 

In these two interviews, something clearly went wrong. In the Jonathan Swan interview for Axios, Mr. Trump seems to have no idea how to pivot from the data he does not want to discuss (the COVID death rate by population) to go back to his key message (the death rate among those infected). It appears he was not even ready for the question, which would have been an obvious point any reporter would make. In the case of the previous Chris Wallace Fox News interview he was caught out by having a chart of global comparisons that seemed to suggest the U.S. had the lowest fatality rate, which it did by leaving out many of the key countries. Presumably these were prepared for the President to avoid giving him negative news, but it backfired. In Japan, we often coach companies that bad news will travel up slowly (if at all) and that you need to encourage staff to come forward in the knowledge that silence will only worsen a situation.

Given these mistakes, it seems there are three possible reasons:

1. Lack of Experience – The staff are not professional enough and are not thinking ahead. Given that this is one of the most important PR positions anywhere in the world, this seems unlikely.

2. Learned Behaviors — The staff believe that it is better to avoid angering the boss than to protect him in a difficult situation, possibly through having been criticized/abused in previous similar situations. Asking the hard questions before the reporters do is a part of the job.

3. “If That’s What You Want…” — The staff knew that it would be a disaster and just figured they would do what the President told them to do, leaving him to pay the price.

Assuming that the numerous insider news stories from the White House are true, what is happening may not be a surprise. But given the very basic nature of these errors, something deeper seems to be going on in terms of the workings of the communications team within the White House. With the campaign not yet officially started, this could create serious challenges ahead.