♪ >> and that is it for us tonight. thanks for watching this special edition of "the factor." and please remember that the spin stops right here. we're definitely looking out for you. breaking to night, new attention on an issue dominating the discussion since election day. with america about to see the start of donald trump's presidency, an administration that seems ready and willing to rewrite the rules for dealing with the press. the question now, what does this mean for the media and for the country. welcome to "the kelly file," everyone. i'm megyn kel lip. since announcing his candidacy in june of 2015, donald trump morphed into a national phenomenon, captivating the country, dominating news cycles day in and day out and creating a white hot debate about our national media like nothing we have seen in a long long time. tonight we have a candid conversation with some of best

reporter es and media critics in the country. beginning to night with media buzz host howie kurtz. hi, howie. >> hey, megyn. you know, from the moment donald trump ascended down the escalator, most of the media wrote after his candidacy. >> we better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the republican ticket. >> i know you don't believe that but i want to go on. >> and the cycle kept repeating itself as when trump criticized former p.o.w. john mccain who said he preferred military men who weren't captured. >> i don't know the fitness that donald trump possesses to be commenting on other people's heroism. the most lethal foe he's ever faced a rosie o'donnell. >> he's not a legitimate candidate. >> and again when he proposed a temporary ban on muslim immigrants. >> are you a bigot? >> not at all. probably the least of anybody

you've ever met. >> you're increasingly be compared to hitler. does that give you any pauds at all? >> no because what i'm doing is no different than fdr -- fdr's solution for germans, italians, japanese -- >> some pundits said that trump self dedestructed when he attacked a mexican judge and some said he was toast of the access hollywood tape when he talked about his celebrity status enabling him to kiss and grope women. >> if you font know who the republican candidate >> this will just kill his campaign. >> i think this could be it. >> and after the third debate when he wouldn't promise to accept the election outcome -- >> he may as well have laid down in his own coffin with the hammer and nail and pounded it in himself. that was a lights out moment in american politics. >> two days before the election

with virtually all of the media saying all signs pointed to a hillary clinton victory i had to ask this question. a number of pundits came out saying this race was over, done, hillary is going to win, who's going to be in her cabinet, was that in retrospect reckless? >> it was in a way. throughout the primary the media kept saying donald trump couldn't win the primary and he kept winning state after state and state and became the nominee. >> and now the media are calling him president-elect. >> question for you, howie. when you go through the controversy, you know, were people, like all of these media reporters, were they writing him off as a group or were they asking the question is this the end of trump? because there's a difference between the two. >> it's a mixture. some were saying wow he seems to be seriously wounded. he's never going to survive this. all of that that we've talked

about over and over again. they never grasped the nature of his appeal to working class voters and now scrambling for other answers, it's the media's fault, still not fully grasping or accepting donald trump won this election. >> howie, good to see you. so as howie mentioned, the media not only discounted drurch's chances of rining the white house but many openly laughed at the possibility. here on "the kelly file" we kept a close eye on the poll which suggested he was going to trend but also the trends which wound up serving our audience quite well. some context in the polling 37 even when hillary clinton's leads seemed to be getting to the point of unsurmountable, donald trump has repeatedly been able to drop back np many may he was down 6.5 points only to move ahead just two weeks later. it happened again over the summer. in late june he was trailing t

former secretary of state by 7 points. four weeks later he was back in the lead. and it was a similar story at the end of august. he trailed by nearly 6 points. he had attacked the khan family. just over two weeks later it was a dead heat. today hillary clinton is ahead but just over 6% in the real clear politics average of all polls. and the question now is whether trump can once again be the new comeback kid as we approach election day. and now we know the answer. even after election day many reporters have continued to treat mr. trump as though he's still campaigning and could somehow possibly lose. some say it's as if they're refusing to come to grips with the death of the trump support. joining me now, molly hemingway, jim rudenburg and david zeer

wick. great to have you here. an esteemed panel. if you don't follow media circles, you can do no better than this panel right here. this is great. let's pick up, jim, on where that left off, about the fact that you had people openly laughing at him, yes he created a lot of controversy but was there an unwillingness in much of the media to entertain the notion he could win? >> i think it was. and it became self fulfilling. and some of it was republican politics. most are establishment for mainstream reporters with saying this couldn't happen. they were looking at the polls. it was a bubbleitis. even when it led them astray within they didn't learn the lesson. >> why didn't they understand what was happening? >> i think they would figure it out after the primaries, like

okay, they got the nomination. we missed this. somehow, maybe it was the polling, maybe it was the all mighty data that took over. sure there's some bias in the mix. okay, he can't win the general election. it is the failure to learn from mistakes which has to stop now, yesterday. >> in defense of the press, holly, we've never seen controversy like this with a modern day presidential candidate. so when you go after a gold star family as he did and when you talk about the miss universe contestant which was obviously a trap for him, needing to lose weight, she was too big, criticizing john mccain, those were actual controversies that you could see it would be peopled based on a couple hundred years of experience to say how could he possibly. no? are we being too tough on the

media? >> at the same time, in addition to the controversy there were a lot of poll issues. he spoke to krnts about how we fight wars, how we handle immigration, national security, whether our economic system is benefitting who we want it to benefit. he talked about these things at the same time he was talking about the other shinier distractions. and it would have been good for the media to realize those issues were rez flating note just because trump was doing a good job communicating but that hillary clinton was not. >> what about the fact that the media, they rely on polls. i think about four years ago when mitt romney was running. it was a neck in neck. and there were some people saying he could win. the polls showed it tight but not him ahead. then election night obama wins easily.

the l.a. times poll was and unusual experiment. all of them were showing that trump was going to lose. so what responsibility did the media have to con t contextuali polls or question the polls in their reporting? >> i think we should have questioned the poll repeatedly. but the polls fit the stereotypes in the head of the national media. when howie said there's a bunch of yahoo racists out there, the media is characterizing, the people in wisconsin where i came from, that's how they voted. no other explanation. the mistake was made that we did not go out into america and get to know who those people were. we relied on somebody in new york or washington or wherever giving us poll data telling us what they were in a statistical

profile instead of really old-fashioned legacy journalism. and god knows as stripped down as the media is today, we have enough resource to go to wisconsin and talk to people. and by the way, we can do better than going to a diner and talking about how much pancakes they eat and how silly their sweatshirts book. really engage the people in this country in a conversation. if we had done even a little of that, megyn, we would not have missed this colossal cultural shift. the story of donald trump's victory is one of the greatest stories in decades and we missed it cold. everybody missed it. >> yeah. >> i take that back. i don't want to get carried away. everybody didn't miss it. some of us were saying, just what you did, the segment you ran, he caught up. >> don't write him off. >> exactly, not everybody hissed it but you know that the major

players were saying it was impossible. the irony, god p-- punishing th clintons. >> there are many trump supporters now, public trump supporters who are like i told you so, i told you so. but the truth is most trump supporters, except those on the inner circle, also thought he was going to lose. i know a lot of them very well and they were -- they didn't want him to lose but they were completely convinced he was going to lose. even trump suggested that he believed based on the polls. so it's fine for them now to turn around and say we knew, we had our finger on the polls but everybody else was an idiot. the data was wrong. >> you asked the question should reporters have been more skeptical of the polls. skepticism of the polls could lead people astray. >> the hidden romney vote that

people were talking about didn't show up and the hidden trump vote did. >> it didn't serve romney's campaign for people to think he had it in the bag. supporters aren't going to get out in the same way. it's in nobody's interest. goes back to what david said. i've noticed over the years the political reports has gotten much more poll focused, it's taken over and less than on the street interviews. it became passe in the business. not entirely. i'm not in the place where i want to say be skeptical of the polls. >> i think people are going to be. >> that ship has sailed. >> we shouldn't ignore that the media had a part to play in the file your of t failure of the polls. one of the poll severs that did a good job of this, he asked who they were voting for and who their neighbors were voting for. they were much more forth right

talking about who their neighbors were voting for. >> i remember talking with people, is there a hidden trump vote out there. you've got an expert things that comes off of the pundit class, no no, that doesn't exist. >> hence the word hidden. that was not the best question you've ever asked. stay tuned. we have a lot more to cover. ahead, some of the administration's closest advisers recently raised questions about how the incoming trump administration will deal with reporters during his four or eight years in office. what that means for you next.

almost from the start of his campaign, mr. trump made it clear he would run against the media. while he's softened the message the tiniest bit since election day, some of his closest advisers are saying things need to change. house speaker newt gingrich suggested that president trump could do away with presidential news conferences. telling usa today quote, tif i were trump i would say no. and if the white house correspondents associate doesn't like it, fine, disband. back with us now, howie kurtz. how about that.

just disband. >> but donald trump won the presidency by doing hundreds of interviews and hold raucous news conferences. >> there's great dishonesty in the media and i didn't see tight the same extent with the final media. i've only been a politician now for three months but they don't want to kor cover me accurately. they have a couple of sites like politico, so dishonest. >> he's used twit tore attack news journalists by name. having 17,000 followers. the president-elect recently fired of these tweets. has anybody look at the numbers of vanity fair, way down. dead. just watched nbc nightly news, so biassed, inaccurate, bad, point after point, just can't get much worse although cnn is right up there. some key trump advisers are

suggesting he may rely on social media as a way of circumstance sum venting and doissing the press corps. >> i don't know if it's 850 but a substantial number of the white house correspondents association. maybe you rotate the seats among all of them. >> interesting academic exercise but we know you're not a big fan of the media. so it sounds to some people, u you're trying to take some revenge or marginalize -- >> i am trying to marginalize. >> rinse priebus said the trump team is reconsidering the daily opportunity for the reporters to question the white house spokesman. >> many things have to change. you know, even looking at things like the daily, you know, the daily white house briefing from the press secretary, i mean, it's a lot of different ways that things can be done.

>> abolishing or curtailing nose briefings would result to a frontal assault by limiting the access to the person whose job it is to speak to the american people. >> i don't know if the average american is probably not shaking in his boots over the thought of the white house press corps having a seating arrangement upended or not having as much access to the president. does the matter? >> it does matter. the media put their entire credibility on the line open willing campaigning for hillary clinton, disdaining donald trump, writing they should throw out the textbook manual that says to be objective. >> some literally argued that. >> some here at that table. >> that is not accurate. but you finish your point and i will get to that. >> so they put that credibility on the line and then they lost.

it's very difficult to know where things go forward. it's important to have a press that can be trusted to hold people accountable and ask questions. tho the credibility of the media is at an all-time low. only 6% of the americans have a great deal of trust with. immedia the media. if we don't have the trust, that's a problem for us. >> jim, give it to her. >> the column that you referred to actually had -- >> jim is a media critic for the "the new york times." go ahead. >> the column you referred toed a a beginning, a middle and an end. the idea was that donald trump was challenging the norm and it raised a lot of questions up top including where does the old rule book fit in. and where that column concluded is journalism shouldn't measure definition of fairness. it's journism's job to be true

to the viewers and readers and true to the fact. that stands. as for the briefing room, the american public will not care if we lose or seats. i get that. i used to sit in the briefing room. the seat were left in the press's control so it wouldn't seem that the white house is -- >> that's right. >> mr. gingrich talked about rotating reporters around. maybe that's something they consider. >> that's not going to have a whole lot of an effect. but if there aren't tailly briefings and the unwillingness to provide access to reporters and going direct to consumer as donald trump like to do, eliminating the questioner, the media, what effect does that have? >> first of all -- >> you want to mediate? >> yes, exactly. >> mediator. >> jim's point is fair about getting all of the way through. but in the media world we live in, i think a lot of people didn't get through and athink a lot of people on the left took

that as a license to say i have a moral obligation as a citizen to bring this man down >> i would love to have that much influence. >> no. i'm not saying it was righteous that they took that but they did. i saw that license and they ran with it and they became advocacy journalists. and what was so upsetting to me was to see the legacy values of fairness, proportionality, equal treatment thrown out the window because this guy was considered such a hideous and dangerous guy. even if you consider him that, even if you believe that, the traditional values that i've been socialized to in journalism says you go out of your way to be fair to him. you know, you say to your editor, listen, i find this guy really offensive. will you push back whenever i write this and you know that's in my head because i can't get it out of my head. we're not only tif. we're human beings. that's our job. i'm not saying the times. a lot of people took it as license because of the times.

>> molly, you have an issue talking about how -- no one at this table. but you feel some of the hand wringing that we're seeing in some in the press about how we need to be truth tellers and we need to batton down the hatches, slow and steady straight ahead, you find it basically hypocritical because you didn't see that same determination under the obama years. >> it's very important that we do our jobs, that we do tell the truth and hold people accountable but that has to be in the context of being what we've done forever. and in the last eight years we saw a media that was pretty on see kwee yous to the president. they liked him. most media outlets were not in an oppositional stance, no matter the obama care or the iran deal. this call to arms to be brave truth tellers in the face of trump. >> take benghazi.

can you imagine in benghazi happened on the watch of a trump? do you think the mainstream media would be willing to dismiss it? >> that was an excuse to put our first amendment values on the table. we had them questioning the first amendment, whether you should be tree to say what wu want about a religion. videos going out saying we don't disparage other religions. >> we do all of the time. >> you make it a point of pride that you're able to do that. and there wasn't a hand wringing about the dangerous freedom of spooch. when you hear that trump was a danger to free speech, where are with you for the last eight years. >> some of this is valid, but there's an element of where you stand is where you sit. is that the cliche? you have a certain outlook, you're not hard enough on trump, you're not hard enough on hillary. the same standards have to apply

all of the time. in terms of president obama, he was a threat at times. >> we'll get to him in a minute. >> but one thing is that you had mr. trump who had a blacklist against reporters. >> may i submit to you that barack obama had a blacklist about reporters who happened to work at this news channel as we. >> i'm on the list. >> take hillary clinton, all of her time out there saying what a fantastic journalist i am, which was using because she knew trump had attacked me. she was using to try to curry favor with certain voting blocks. i asked her 50 ways from sunday to come on the program. she wouldn't do it. and the reason i think is she was scared. but also her team didn't want to legitimize fox news. and yet people who didn't call her out at all are shocked and horrified that donald trump minot sit with certain news organizations. >> i love that you called her out. can i say one thing about trump

and dealing with the press? it's not going to be pretty. >> he said the "the new york times" are going to be happy. no they're not. >> he has a model between television and social media. he found this sweet spot in this era of transition. he can use tv great when he does live tv and he has a voice, a 70-year-old man with a perfect voice on fit twitter, snarky and ugly and it resonates. he doesn't need the media. until the media convinces him that he needs them, he's not going to use it. it's double pleasure. he gets the message to the people and he gets to quick the "the new york times" and cnn and whoever he's mad at in the teeth. >> i did have most of the presidential election without the access to donald trump. in a way it was a gift. i never needed access. i could cover him fairly and

didn't have to worry about the blo blow bl blowback. i think people respond to fair journal i678 and i think the press still has an opportunity to cover him fairly. abc news's dan abrams faced fierce online backlash after speaking about the problem of fake news. why? he's here next. same nose. same toughness. and since he's had moderate alzheimer's disease, the same never quit attitude. that's why i asked his doctor about once-a-day namzaric. (avo) namzaric is approved for moderate to severe alzheimer's disease in patients who are taking donepezil. it may improve cognition and overall function, and may slow the worsening of symptoms for a while. namzaric does not change the underlying disease progression. don't take if allergic to memantine, donepezil, piperidine or any of the ingredients in namzaric. tell the doctor about any conditions including heart, lung, bladder, kidney or liver problems, seizures, stomach ulcers, or procedures with anesthesia. serious side effects may occur, including muscle problems

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live from america's news headquarters, i'm kelly wright. here's what's happening. post christmas words of differences between president obama and his successor donald trump. the president says in a podcast hosted by his former adviser david axelrod that he's confident he would have won a third term if e had won against mr. trump. mr. obama believes he would have been able to sell middle america on the vision he's had for the past eight years. mr. trump responded, no way. mr. trump is turning husband twitter attacks toward the u.n. trump tweeted that the u.n. is quote just a club for people to have a good time. washington's abstention thaz infuriated israsraeli leaders.

mr. trump tweeted things will be different ap january 20th. now back to the kelly special. well as we've already seen this year, fake news can have real and violent consequences. like when edgar welch allegedly fired shots inside of a pizza place. investigating a conspiracy theory online about a child sex ring run out of the restaurant by democrats. a pizza shop. joining me now, dan abrams, was attacked online after calling out the pizza gate story as 100% false. book to s good to see you. you can't do that because the internet tells me it's so. >> or the internet says it hasn't been investigated enough. conspiracy theory gets thrown

out with this no actual evidence and the people wh want to believe it say to people wh say there's no evidence, this isn't true, the response is that's because you haven't investigated it and you create a circular nonsense which puts you in a position where there is so such things and what's truary not true. that's a dangerous place to be. >> is it more dangerous now an it was in the past? >> yes. >> why? >> social media. the bottom line is that now anyone is a media organization. anyone who wants to share an item can and does do that, which is generally a good thing. the problem with that is that there's not a filter. some people would have the filter used to be terrible. the mainstream media filter was gore badge. it was better than this. and when i say this, i mean no filter at automobile which is anything gets thrown out there, anything -- people on facebook. you watch some people and you say where did you get this information? well i saw it on facebook.

>> there was a fake article about my getting fired. i got fired? thought i would find out about my security card not working. facebook had to come out and apologize for it. it happens all of the time. >> it's not that facebook is writing the articles. people who are using facebook are distributing it. the one thing that should give some hope to those of us who care and like the media as a whole is that when people are polled it still shows that 60-something percent of them view mainstream media organizations as either credible or very credible. now, 60-something percent isn't where you would hope it would be. you would hope to be in the 80s and the 90s. but high 60s. which says that there's only a minority of people who say i can't believe anything that comes from the mainstream media. the mainstream media has problems, real issues. it's not that you can equate mainstream media coverage with fake news. >> what do you think?

we were talking with the panel, what do you think in the era of trump a journalists challenge is going to be? how do you cove him? that's what everyone asks. >> the problem is two-fold. he has such disdain for the media. for anyone who criticizes. if you criticize donald trump, you're the enemy. >> that's why i keep saying the "the new york times" is not going to be happy ap and donald trump is not going to be happy with them either. >> that's right. but this is great for the "the new york times," by the way. it's going to make them sort of the voice to take on donald trump. he's going to keep giving them pub liscy. what donald trump did for vanity fair talking about this failing magazine. oh yeah, what's vanity fair up to these days. right, right. yeah. it's not a bad thing when donald trump blasts you because he blasts everybody. but from a journalistic point of view, you've got to call him out

when she's saying things that aren't true. if he attacks you and insults you, i don't think it's the journ journalist's responsibility to say, well, donald trump is attacking me. i think the way you serdealt it it's the model. you've got to walk a line not letting it impact you. still going, still going to attack him and challenge him by i'm not going to do it any more than i would have. >> i will say for the record, as much as he came after me, that causes a real danger in people's lives. it did in mine. i work for a news organization that had a lot of money and hired me guards and i was safe. if he did this for somebody who wasn't in a fortunate position, it would have first amendment implications. that's not fair to the individual reporters. >> and just as important as that is this idea that suddenly you're going to start punishing certain media organizations

because they publish things you don't like. i mean, the washington post getting banned from covering the trump campaign. what? i mean that is complete -- >> but it happened time and time again starting with the des moines register and down the line it went without many people complaining. now it's a slippery slope. >> that's a constitutional problem. >> great to see you. even bf president-elect donald trump takes office, we're hearing warnings that he represents an unprecedented threat to the press. but some of these voices were silent when president obama was going after fox news. we'll take a trip down memory lap wh lane when we come back. but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease.

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the spare, no, i don't want to put anybody out. nonsense! we lend it to everybody. some people we hardly know. well every the course of the 2016 election and in the days that followed, toep journalists issued dire warnings that president-elect donald trump represents an unprecedented threat to the freedom of the

press. but president trump would not be the first to find himself at odds with the media. as howie kurtz reports. eight years we've had president obama seeming to have a whole lot of trouble with one network in particular. >> look, if i watched fox news i wouldn't vote for me either. >> now he's taking a parting swipe at fox. he told a sympathetic publisher part of it is fox news in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country. but part of it is democrats not working at a grass roots level. he did partially blame his own party. but the president has the world's biggest bully pulpit but often portrays fogs as all but drowning him out. >> i've got one television station that's entirely devoted to attacking my administration. i mean, that's a pretty -- >> i'm assume you're talking about fox. >> that's a pretty big

megaphone. >> that view promoted by aneat that dunn, made no distinction between the network's news and opinion programming. >> but you don't have to take my word for it. if you talk to something who said i don't know, i was watching fox news and they said it's horrible -- >> fox journalists would push back when they were excluded in a media blitz. >> everything is personal. they are the biggest bunch of cry babies i have dealt with in my 30s years in washington. >> justice department also battled with the press. aek fox's chief washington correspondent james rosen in leaked investigations. sometimes obama uses the channel to argue that the right and the left prefer sympathetic outlets but lately his fox fixation seemed to fade. >> better late than never. >> president obama is entitled

to challenge what he you views as unfair krit irk. but compared to trump, donald trump is way har hash harer wit press. >> we were talking about some of the stay taattacks he's had on reporters. when we was coming after me at the height of his anger after that debate, and many of his supporters were angry about that question i asked him at the debate, i did what you said. i said to my colleague on "the kelly file." you check me. i have to have an armed security guard now. i'm under threat. my kids are under threat and i don't want to go too hard on him to punish him and i don't want to go too easy on him out of a desire to get him to back off either. you need somebody to have your back >> your team came through for you. because iz was watching at that

time and this could come, how is she going to react. let's see. and you did. i thought you were remarkably fair in that. as a matter of fact when you went and did the sbesh view with him in prime time, people said you were too nice to him. but that was the way you covered him. down the middle. and look, you saw what he was doing on twitter. the other day i said maybe we should have twitter mops for truth when he lies on twitter. >> you have to be -- you were in a similar situation, molly. as a journalist covering donald trump, you are going to have to understand storms will come and figure out a way to weather them. >> right. there were times when i covered trump and i was more favorable than other journalists before and there were times i'm critical of him. and when you're critical of donald trump you get an army of people coming after you. and you have to figure out a way to handle that where it doesn't affect how much you respond. that is something i do not think a lot of journalists are excelling at.

many general, they're whipped up when donald trump goes after them. >> what did you make of barack obama, if we didn't have fox news on in the bars, we would have had a different result chblt i'm really wondering what his understanding of bars are. because i love going to bars and there's never a lot of cabling news on in those. >> it's an untapped market for us. we're going to look into that in our ad sales. but it is a bit hypocritical of barack obama now to be taking this, like, i've got the vapors over donald trump and the first amendment when he's spent eight years blowing off this network and attacking us relentlessly. >> i think sometimes there are personalities on the network that could give as good as they got with him. >> that's fine. so our editorial page doesn't like him. >> right. >> that's fine. sean hannity does not need to like him. that shouldn't make me refuse to speak to the journalists of fox news, which he did. and as you well know, that's

what donald trump gets in trouble for doing. he doesn't like the editorial page so he punishes the reporters. >> in 2009 when he cut fox -- he didn't do it, some staffers -- >> anita dunn. >> cut fox. >> and the other networks stood shoulder to shoulder with us and said no. >> and the ap on james rosen, several newspapers including mine gave editorials about it. the question now what happens. i think that the press is never going to act like that because we all want to beat each other every day. but hopefully there will be times when the reporters in the pressroom when they think something is not become answered, they stand together. >> megyn, i believe president obama was the biggest enemy of the press since richard nixon. in 2009 when he went after fox and said fox is not a legitimate news organization.

he tried to get abc and other people to go in on it, i wrote about it. and here's this guy at the baltimore sun -- politico called me up and said, you're the only mainstream journalist who says fox is legitimate. are you a true believer? i said yeah i'm a true believer in democracy and the fact that the executive branch of the government does not get to say who the hell is a legitimate member of the press. you've got to stop this. he was going full tilt on that. and it was finally when the treasury department press thing -- >> they were giving interviews to all of the networks except for fox. and the other networks said you can't do that. >> and in fairness jack tapper who was at abc was the first to break and call him out on that. to give him credit. i was so happy to get the cover of somebody from a network. they were saying you should be really worried a thy ed ied tha there with fox. i'm serious. obama and what he did to james

rosen, the times and fox, outrageous. criminalized it. >> donald trump is going to take tight a new level. barack obama tried to delegitimize fox. that didn't work put. donald trump is going to try to delegitimize the whole media. the media has helped him. there's a reason why the country doesn't trust them. >> this is the problem with how we handled ourselves throughout the last year. so many of us were so extreme and overt from in our partisanship that people don't necessarily feel that donald trump needs to be dif rent to the media. it's automobiles important to have that media investigate and hold someone accountable. >> it's like the boy who cried wolf. >> nothing but the boy who cried wolf. >> they were apoplectic over everything he did.

no one is listening to him anymore. >> taeb breakup of the media where donald trump with go by the gate keepers and communicate with people directly true twitter decreases the public outcry for transparency and press conferences. and i think it's hard are for the public to see how important it is to have those when you're directly asking questions and having the chance for interviews when he's constantly talking to us. >> he's a master communicator. a master community cater and very effective at, you know, penetrating the lens, connecting with the audience. it's going to be an interesting ride. stay tuned. it's not unusual for the president-elect to call out the media for being biassed, crooked and even untruthful. we' we'll show you how the media is returning to favor. te what are you supposed to do? drive three-quarters of a car? now if you had liberty mutual new car replacement™,

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abc news. also law news which i really like. sorry. i'm off on a tangent. >> promotion is good. >> i don't remember all of those people defending fox when barack obama spent eight years coming off us. >> i think you can argue there's a difference between obama going after fox and trump talking about changing the entire way the media covers the president. criticizing fox, you know, you can disagree with obama, say it wasn't helpful to him. donald trump criticizing the "the new york times" or whoever, i think those two are equivalents. but my greater concern is what donald trump is talking about doing in terms of marginalizing the media as a whole. >> it's already happened, hasn't it? >> yeah. >> already done it.

>> basically saying i'm not going to let the media be the check on me. and you know, in a situation where the media has mhistoricaly been the place that represents people in asking hard questions, in getting answers from political leaders, from putting people in power their feet to the fire. i think if you do it from a macro perspective, that's scary. if they start tinkering with do they give a daily briefing, not a daily briefing, that's not that big of a deal. >> do you think some of how this goes is wrapped up in houb well he does as president? if the economy doesn't start roaring and these folks in middle america don't get the jobs they were promised, maybe they start listening more with an open ear. maybe they can hear skeptical coverage in a different way. >> i think that right now donald trump is in his honeymoon period as much as it's going to be. which is he's got a group of fierce supporters who are

thrilled for what his election represents. and part of what that represents is anti-media. >> yeah. >> it represents putting the media in its place. these people who can tell us. who they think they know better than us. the message has been heard. with that said, to fundamentally change what the media does vis-a-vis the president is scary stuff to me. when you start saying i'm not going to hold press conferences. pick and choose when you want to hold them. we've got to have regular press conferences. >> i don't know if we've got to. >> i think we've got to. >> i don't know if we're going to get them. if you look at the past year when we was running for office, you almost had some jounl irnal who had access who had to be soft on him because he would cut off access if you were tough on him. there were some exceptions but that was the rule.

and then you would have people who were free to cover him skeptically when he deserved it, not when he didn't. we're seeing a bifurcation of the media that have access and don't and a difference in the coverage. can that system possibly sustain? >> yes. it's not a system that i particularly want to see, but i think it's where we're going. the one thing i'll say for donald trump is he'll change his mind about people. >> yes. >> like he won't -- he'll say this is the worst most awful person media entity in the world. and then there will be a nice article about him, someone will approach him -- >> he was saying that about cnn and then i saw melania on anderson cooper that night. >> he is willing to forgive. but we don't want to to be all about did you say nice things or not about donald trump and therefore that's going to determine the coverage >> do you think he generally gets mad at these media organizations or because he wants to delegitimize them because he knows that critical

coverage is coming and it ease easier to paint with a wide brush saying, they all suck. you can't believe a thing they say. >> the effect is definitely what you're saying there. delegitimizing the media as a whole. i don't think it's as plotted as that. i think trump tends to respond and react and say what's on his mind ap and what's on his mind has typically been to be able to do what he wants. he's been a powerful rich person for a long time who has been able to not worry about what anyone thinks about him. and as president of the united states -- >> isn't that great? >> but as president of the united states, you have to care. it matters what other world leaders think about you. it matters what the people you represent think about what you're doing. it matters how congress and the senate view -- i mean these things matter. and as a result i think it's really important that we not accept this idea of completely delegitimizing the media and

throwing everyone in a bucket saying we can't trust anything. forget it all. >> most reporters make very little money. they do it because they love the first amendment. they love being responsible to their readers, their viewers or listeners. there are others in a different part of the business. i hope people will keep that mind. dan abrams, a pleasure, sure. >> great to be with you. type 2 diabetes. listen up. we're not professional athletes... but that doesn't mean we're giving up. i'm in this for me. for me. along with diet and exercise, farxiga helps lower blood sugar

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watching, for bearing with us,d. we appreciate your attention and open mindedness this year as you listen to us walk you through what we're looking at next. all the best. take care. welcome to the special edition of "hannity." >> so during the 2016 campaign, president-elect donald trump chris koszed the country explaining what he would do for elected. tonight for the full hour we'll examine some of donald trump's promises like these. let's take a look. >> we will build a great wall and stop the drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth. every day, the law known as obamacare is destabilizing our health