Look! Over There! It's the Art of the Deal!
So far, the reaction of the elite political press to the apparent intervention of the incoming executive branch with the Carrier folks in Indiana has not boded entirely well for how it will cover the various schemes and misdirection that are the hallmarks of the incoming administration, and the lifelong hobby of the president-elect. Here's The New York Times:
Mr. Trump will be hard-pressed to alter the economic forces that have hammered the Rust Belt for decades, but forcing Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to reverse course is a powerful tactical strike that will hearten his followers even before he takes office. "I'm ready for him to come," said Robin Maynard, a 24-year veteran of Carrier who builds high-efficiency furnaces and earns almost $24 an hour. "Now I can put my daughter through college without having to look for another job." It also signals that Mr. Trump is a different kind of Republican, willing to take on big business, at least in individual cases.
And, in case you thought the Times account was lacking in bad historical analogies, here's one that you knew was coming, along with an implicit bit of undoubtedly inadvertent press criticism.
And just as only a confirmed anti-Communist like Richard Nixon could go to China, so only a businessman like Mr. Trump could take on corporate America without being called a Bernie Sanders-style socialist. If Barack Obama had tried the same maneuver, he'd probably have drawn criticism for intervening in the free market.
(As he did, in fact, from one Donald Trump, during the campaign just passed, on the topic of how he saved the American auto industry and 1.2 million jobs during his first year in office.)
And NPR, one eye on its funding as always, also was bullish on the deal, saving the actual news for deep in its account.
But the deal came about because of concessions from Trump, too.
What was your first clue there?
Look, it's a good thing that Carrier agreed to accept a big bag full of tax break money in exchange for shipping only a little more than half its jobs to Mexico. (If nothing else, it explains why Mike Pence insists on remaining governor of Indiana, which plainly would rather he be gone.) You should ignore any account that concentrates solely on the tactical PR success, and any reporter who uses the phrase "art of the deal" to describe this very ordinary example of corporate pork-barrel bribery is a reporter you should not trust for the next four years.
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