Cont:

It would have been a journalistic service to explain how this worked. Instead, a legend was created that Trump was inept and his wins were losses. The biggest head-scratcher was the New York Times describing the debate that was clearly fatal to Jeb Bush — when he said his mother was the “strongest woman I know,” and Trump retorted, “She should be running” — as a “slashing attack” by Bush, whose “most forceful performance” left Trump “roundly pummeled.”

Zucker’s private assessment of Trump’s debating was noteworthy for that reason. Cohen went on to joke about what would likely happen in the debate, wondering how many times “Cruz” would call Trump a con man. Zucker corrected him, noting it would be Marco Rubio making such attacks, and offered advice:

    You know what you should do? Whoever's around him today should just be calling him a conman all day so he's used to it, so that when he hears it from [Marco] Rubio, it doesn't matter… “Hey conman, hey conman, hey conman, hey conman, hey conman.” So He thinks that's his name, you know?   

Remember, this was a CNN-hosted debate, with Jake Tapper emceeing the festivities:

Typically, any suggestion that a candidate has been prepped in advance about debate questions, or given other aid, is considered a scandal. It was a big deal when two Fox sources told the New Yorker that Trump might have been given questions in advance of the infamous Megyn Kelly debate. Similarly, it was a mini-scandal when Donna Brazile was forced by Wikileaks disclosures to admit she shared topics with Hillary Clinton ahead of a CNN town hall.

In this case, we have the president of the network set to host a debate giving a candidate advice on how to handle a Republican challenger, and the response has mostly been to wonder if Carlson released this story as part of a “long-running… war with the network that once employed him.”

It got worse. Zucker promised Cohen, “I’m going to give him a call right now and I’m going to wish him luck in the debate tonight.”

Why Zucker said he would call, and not email, was the real punchline.

“I’m very conscious of not putting too much on email, as you’re a lawyer, as you understand,” Zucker said, adding:

    And, you know, as fond as I am of the boss, he also has a tendency, like, you know, if I call him or I email him, he then is capable of going out at his next rally and saying that we just talked and I can't have that, if you know what I'm saying.

    It’s not that I don’t want to talk to him every day. I’ve just got to be careful.

Zucker added:

    I have all these proposals for him, like… I want to do a weekly show with him and all this stuff… is he back in New York tomorrow, do you know?

What these recordings reveal is that CNN’s cartoonish role as a determined and vituperative “fake news media” foil to Trump — while perhaps real for some of the reporters and broadcasters involved — is at least to some degree kabuki theater for executives. Even as president, Trump to network leaders is first and foremost a commodity, and an extraordinarily valuable one at that. Were he not president, Zucker might very well be offering him that weekly show.

As the creator of The Apprentice, Zucker surely understands both the nature of Trump’s ratings appeal, and the Reality TV value of having CNN reporters play gesticulating heckler to Trump’s Bill Hicks act:

In late 2015 and early 2016 especially, journalists and network executives began to discuss how to deal with the “threat” of Trump. Columns like Nicholas Kristof’s “My Shared Shame: The Media Helped Make Trump” led to awesome amounts of public navel-gazing, at the end of which the coverage strategy really did shift.

The Columbia Journalism Review did a study after the election confirming what most of us could feel on the ground: that coverage of Trump increased as the campaign went on, and became more negative as time went on, with particular attention paid to his personal failings. As the CJR explained:

    While early in the race Trump won some favorable descriptions as a straight-shooter, depictions of him as a truth-bender became increasingly frequent as Election Day neared, and negative descriptions of his personal character outnumbered positive ones by about six to one overall.

In Hate Inc. I described the formula as shifting from One Million Hours of Trump! to One Million Hours of Trump (is bad)! It was laughable, the way some outlets went from giving Trump regular foot massages, to adopting the furious public posture of democracy’s last defender against the Evil One. Who could forget Mika Brzezinski gushing off air to Trump about what a “real wow moment” his South Carolina rally had been, then just months later denouncing the “Trump train” that would “drive America into the ground”?

When Zucker tells Cohen he’d love to talk to Trump “every day” but can’t, because “I just can’t have that,” he’s explaining exactly what the coverage “change” was about. Going more negative while increasing the raw amount of attention — “copious coverage and aggressive coverage” — allowed networks to retain or even increase the monster ratings Trump offered, without earning the social opprobrium that came with giving him softball coverage.

Interesting read, Gordon, but a crazier story than tapes of a US president describing his collusion with the leader of the Chinese Communist Party to hush up a pandemic that's killed over 190,000 Americans?

Your article describes stuff we already know. CNN was behind Trump as a celebrity candidate in the Republican primaries. Even MSNBC's Joe and Mika were Trump enthusiasts. They changed their tune when they found out what he was like.

You?