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Interviewing Donald Trump can be an exasperating ordeal, especially if you’re not employed by one of his preferred outlets. So ABC News anchor Terry Moran had a tough job when he entered the Oval Office on Tuesday—even more so as he challenged the president on topics ranging from immigration policy to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
At times, Moran seemed a bit like a hurried shopper, trying to make his way through his grocery list of questions without pressing the evidence that should have been at hand. That was especially evident when the interview turned to Trump’s post that featured a photoshopped image of Kilmar Ábrego García’s tattooed hand that purported to show additional characters literally reading “MS-13.” Trump insisted it was legitimate. Moran insisted it wasn’t. It would’ve helped if Moran had come prepared with a photo of Ábrego García’s actual “MS-13”-free hand to compare with Trump’s fake image, the way this excellent Wall Street Journal story does.
That said, if you ever watch a Trump interview and expect a Colonel Jessep or Perry Mason moment, in which a certain question will suddenly cause him to admit failure or scream for smelling salts, fuhgeddaboudit. The best a reporter can hope for is an unintentionally revealing quote or two—exactly what Moran elicited about the promises big law firms made to stave off Trump’s wrath. “They paid me a lot of money,” Trump said of the supposed pro bono millions. “They just signed whatever I put in front of ’em. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m actually surprised myself.”
And to his credit, Moran kept his cool through a lot of bullying and insults. It takes the patience of a kindergarten teacher on the day after Halloween to keep going with an exchange like this:
Moran: It’s the tariffs, right? We still have 145 percent tariffs—
Trump: Well—
Moran: —on China
Trump: Why is it—
Moran: Your treasury secretary said we basically have an embargo on China.
Trump: Look, you’re trying to—
Moran: And that—
Trump: —say something’s gonna happen, Terry—
Moran: No, no, no, no. Okay, well, do you—
Trump: Nothing’s gonna happen.
Moran: You know business. I wanna ask you—
Trump: Terry—Terry—
Moran: I wanna ask you.
Trump: I do know business. And—
Moran: Yeah, so 145 percent tariffs on China. And—and that is—
Trump: That’s good.
Moran: —basically—
Trump: That’s good.
Moran: —an embargo.
Trump: They deserve it.
Moran: It’ll raise prices on everything from—
Trump: They deserve it.
Moran: —electronics to clothing to building houses.
Trump: You don’t know that. You don’t know whether or not China’s gonna eat it—
Moran: That’s mathematics.
I am not an AI user, even as I realize that it’s improving every year and that, before long, it’ll become as indispensable to our lives as Google or Uber. So I was skeptical when an invitation from the Financial Times to subscribers showed up, asking me to try its new AI tool, called AskFT.
The interface is simple. There’s a box into which you type your question—such as “What is the latest on the China/US trade war?”—and within seconds it can churn out a thoughtful, accurate summary answer, with footnotes and links to FT stories that informed its response.
AskFT is limited because of its reliance on its own articles, and it can’t seem to answer questions like “How many cars did Tesla sell in 2024?”
But the best use case, at least at this point, is that this deployment of AI could replace news sites’ internal search engines, which range from frustratingly mediocre to laughably terrible. And when assigned that task, AskFT is a huge improvement.
Much of the best reporting on the impact of Trump’s immigration policies has come from independent reporters. Add Radley Balko, Judd Legum, and Rebecca Crosby to that list. Last week, Balko told the story of Clay Jackson, a Texas lawyer who heard that a local immigrant family needed legal help. Jackson went to the family’s home, advised them of their rights, and offered assistance with getting pro bono counsel, since immigration law is outside his wheelhouse. A few days later, two men showed up at Jackson’s door. Neither showed a badge, but they told him they had “information that you are obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.” His Wi-Fi had also been mysteriously interrupted during the visit, rendering his door camera useless.
About six weeks later, on April 23, Balko’s story ran. Later that same day, according to Legum and Crosby, Jackson was fired from his job as an attorney at a Fortune 500 insurance company, Fidelity National Financial. The company cited “unsatisfactory performance and violations of company policy.” It didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Local journalists are also on the ground, tracking immigration-enforcement stories. Spencer Humphrey, with KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, broke the story Tuesday about a family of US citizens who were terrorized by immigration agents, who tore up their home, seized their electronics, and threatened their young daughters—all because the feds were looking for tenants who’d already moved out. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals,” said the mom. (The video is even more disturbing.) Two days later, the Department of Homeland Security grudgingly acknowledged its screwup: “Unfortunately, the warrant that the court did give was for a house that the targets had moved out of two weeks prior. So that was not an ideal situation, obviously,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told NPR’s Michel Martin. McLaughlin did not include an apology.
To observe “Ethics Week,” the Society of Professional Journalists recently asked college newspapers to publish the most unethical edition they could muster. “Make up stuff entirely. The wilder the better,” SPJ advised, adding this caveat: “But run the SPJ Code of Ethics with a letter from the editor explaining what you’re doing.” The winner would get a $500 prize.
The reaction from journalists and journalism professors was withering. Comments on SPJ’s LinkedIn post ranged from “I am truly appalled” to “Who thought this would be a good idea?” to “What the hell are you doing?” to “This is a disaster.” Among the few positive responses was this, from a content marketer: “Thanks for sharing.”
(And congrats to the winner, the University of Arkansas’s Traveler, which ran this.)
Hat tip to CJR colleague Lauren Watson. If you have a suggestion for this column, please send it to laurelsanddarts@cjr.org. We can’t acknowledge all submissions, but we will mention you if we use your idea. For more on Laurels and Darts, please click here.
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