Last week, President-elect Donald Trump held his first press conference since being elected. While the meeting was supposed to allow Mr. Trump to lay out his proposal on how he will unravel himself from his many conflict of interest issues, the conversation quickly turned to an intelligence briefing for Mr. Trump – specifically a 2-page synopsis of a 35-page report...

No one in modern American politics has used social media to influence an audience better than Donald Trump. His tool of choice: Twitter – the technological equivalent of a 1770 broadside. Long before he ran for president, Trump would use social media to preen before a television appearance. “Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night...

Without a doubt, last year was the year the news media and politics fused into a kind of “Kardashian” alt-reality of over-the-top, dramatic nonsense that turned logic on its head. However, I want to go back in time, revisiting an event that took place in Boston, because I think there are some interesting parallels to the 2016 presidential campaign. On...

Gerard Baker is The Wall Street Journal’s editor in chief. You have a strangely nuanced view of what is or is not a lie when it comes to the utterances and tweets of President-elect Trump. Here’s what you said (Trump, ‘Lies’ and Honest Journalism): “[A] ‘Lie’ implies much more than just saying something that’s false. It implies a deliberate intent...

While the election is behind us and Donald Trump is scheduled to be the 45th President of the United States, I’m trying to be hopeful that he will be a positive force for the country and do the right thing. But it’s getting difficult. On Monday, (Dec. 12), Trump announced he would delay a press conference scheduled for December 15...

A few years ago, a college buddy contacted me by e-mail with a headline and link to a website that talked about a conspiracy theory that he believed to be true. His message: “Jim, you need to look into this. You can’t believe what they’re doing!” This was the first of several messages all with a similar format: startling headline,...

We are standing on a precipice of an Alt-Reality where self-serving falsehoods are driving out truth and objectivity. Goodbye Walter Cronkite; hello Alt-Deceivers. Fake news stories have quickly taken on a life of their own. Part of this is due to the hyperpartisanship of the recent election cycle. Another part is due to Donald Trump shamelessly pushing false information at...

Last Sunday on the CBS News program 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley spoke with House Speaker Paul Ryan. One exchange caught my attention. Pelley: Trump tweeted, in the last week or so, that he had actually “…won the popular vote, if you deduct the millions who voted illegally.” Do you believe that? Ryan tried to dismiss this with a smile and...

It didn’t take long for President-elect Trump to show us the difference between what he said during his campaign and what he says now. During the campaign, Trump called President Obama “incompetent.” In last week’s Oval Office meeting, Trump now calls Obama, “a very good man.” During the campaign, Trump said that Obama is “very stupid,” and “the founder of...

While the results of Tuesday night’s stunning upset – by a man who has never served an elected office – will be analyzed and parsed for months and years to come, here are some observations, both general and ethical. – The vast majority of pollsters and media, armed with the latest technology, did not come close to getting it right....