Eric StarkmanEric Starkman
One of the most popular tourist attractions in New York City’s Times Square is Robert John Burck, better known as The Naked Cowboy. Despite his moniker, Burck is neither naked nor is he a cowboy. He parades around the district in his underpants, cowboy boots and hat, with a guitar strategically placed over his crotch. There’s nothing on the public record indicating that Burck even knows how to ride a horse.

Mr. Burck, who reportedly pulls in $150,000 a year making a spectacle of himself, achieved his infamy not because of his deft media relations skills, but rather an appreciation of the fact that the media pays attention to people who act or say things shocking or provoking. In 2012, he garnered some free publicity when he declared himself a Tea Party Presidential candidate, vowing a “very conservative policy” and an “unapologetic commitment to our borders, our language, and our culture.”

Donald Trump is The Naked Cowboy on steroids. As a national carnival act, Trump’s presidential campaign was impressive, as he won the election running pretty much on the same populist platform Burck articulated four years ago. Trump’s mastery of shock and provocation is perhaps unparalleled, and this expertise has created the erroneous perception that he’s a master of media manipulation. But as underscored by his recent interview with the New York Times, Trump’s professed claim that he is a master negotiator is as bogus as Burck’s cowboy representation. Indeed, when compared to the media relations management capabilities of Hillary Clinton’s team, Trump and his people are downright incompetent.

Trump is correct in arguing that the Times’ coverage of his campaign was decidedly the harshest of the mainstream media, a claim in which I suspect the newspaper takes great pride. Jim Rutenberg, the newspaper’s media columnist, acknowledged that reporters regarded Trump as a “demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalist tendencies” and the newspaper’s stories about Trump uniformly drip with disdain. Columnist Ross Douthat even “joked” about Trump’s assassination, and unlike a Los Angeles Times contributor with a similarly warped sense of humor, wasn’t fired for the missive.

Admittedly, there are no shortage of people who view the Times’ Trump coverage as accurate and very well deserved. Regardless, the Times clearly established itself as Trump’s foremost media enemy and one he shouldn’t engage, particularly given that the newspaper had violated a promise to keep comments from an earlier off-the-record meeting private. Yet Trump still agreed to meet with a bevy of the newspaper’s newsroom and editorial page journalists last week on terms that were considerably less favorable and controlling than the newspaper granted Clinton.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, we’re aware of the degree the Times was willing to genuflect to Clinton in order to gain access to her. Reporter Mark Leibovich allowed Clinton and her communications people to veto entire portions of comments she made in interviews she did with him. The editorial control was such that Clinton’s people were even allowed to nix a joke from comments they granted could be published.

As America’s next President, Trump could have potentially vanquished the Times by forbidding everyone in his administration from engaging the newspaper, thereby forcing the publication to essentially become an aggregator of news from other publications in its coverage of his Presidency. Instead, he agreed to an on-the-record meeting that unbelievably began with him saying that “I have great respect for the New York Times. Tremendous respect. It’s very special. Always has been very special.”

The Times journalists in attendance were not wooed by Trump’s flattery, and with the exception of publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. — and possibly columnist Thomas Friedman — no one in the room appeared interested in making nice. (Amazingly, White House Correspondent Julie Hirschfeld Davis showed up late to the meeting). Consider executive editor Dean Baquet’s first question suggesting that Trump’s election was responsible for an alt-right convention the previous weekend in Washington.

I’m going to let Vanity Fair’s T.A. Frank, a Trump detractor, explainthe unjustified bias of Baquet’s question:

“(Richard) Spencer’s alt-right organization, the National Policy Institute, held its annual conference in Washington, drawing about 300 people, none with any meaningful known connection to Trump or even to (the vehement Trump supporting website) Breitbart. (In fact, when I counted, I saw that Spencer has received less coverage at Breitbart – much of it focused on disavowing any connection to him, than in the New York Times.),” Frank wrote.

The New York Times was the clear beneficiary of the Trump meeting. For all Trump’s Twitter ranting about the Times being a “failing newspaper,” they have him on the record wholeheartedly praising the publication. The transcript of the meeting is considerably more damaging than any article the Times has previously published about Trump, as it reveals how shockingly shallow and inarticulate he is when not in a controlled setting. Just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s aides prevented him from being photographed in a wheelchair, one would expect Trump’s people to strive to avoid publication of full transcripts of his disjointed thinking.

Given that Trump won the election without the Times’ support, getting Trumped by the newspaper on its own hardly matters. But if Trump can be so easily played and exploited by an enemy located within an easy limo ride from his home and office, one must legitimately wonder how he’s going to manage enemies he has never met located in places he has never been.

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Eric Starkman is co-founder and president of Starkman, a corporate and crisis communications firm. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter, @ericstarkman.