Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, had a problem. He was hosting a party whose guests included a bipartisan group of former White House staffers, and there wasn’t enough ice. While he was driving to the store, his phone rang. It was his wife, the journalist Susan Glasser. “Don’t worry, I’m getting the ice,” he told her. “No, no, no, you don’t understand,” she said. “The president just fired the F.B.I. director.”
彼得·貝克(Peter Baker)——《紐約時報》的首席白宮記者——遇到了一個問題。當時他正在舉辦一個聚會,客人包括一群兩黨的前白宮工作人員,這時冰不夠了。他開車去商店買冰,這時他的手機響了。是他的妻子、記者蘇珊·格拉瑟(Susan Glasser)。「別擔心,我正在去買冰,」他對她說。「不,不,不,你沒明白,」她說,「總統剛剛解僱了聯邦調查局(FBI)局長。」
He returned, bag of ice in hand, to a room full of White House veterans, Democrat and Republican, stunned by the news. “It was striking to have all these people, very experienced people in Washington, there in that moment,” he said, “mouths agape, trying to process what had just happened and what it might mean.” He excused himself from his own party and ran upstairs to write.
他拿著一袋冰回到家,看到一屋子的白宮資深工作人員——既有民主黨人,也有共和黨人——都被這個消息驚呆了。「那一刻真是很驚人,看著這些華盛頓的資深人士,」他說,「張著嘴巴,試圖消化剛剛發生的事情,以及這可能意味著什麼。」他離開自己的聚會,跑上樓寫稿。
There was no indication that the May 9 firing of the F.B.I. chief, James B. Comey, had been coming. The White House correspondent Michael D. Shear broke the news for The Times, as he happened to be at the White House that afternoon to run an errand. When Sean Spicer, then the president’s press secretary, appeared in the almost-empty briefing room to announce the news, Mr. Shear sent an email to The Times’s Washington bureau from his phone: Comey fired. “It was all on the fly,” he said. “In a different White House, it would be mapped out to the nth degree.”
去年5月9日FBI局長詹姆斯·B·科米(James B. Comey)被解職,是沒有任何徵兆的。白宮記者邁克爾·D·希爾(Michael D. Shear)為時報報導了這個消息,因為那天下午他碰巧去白宮辦事。時任總統新聞秘書肖恩·斯派塞(Sean Spicer)出現在幾乎空無一人的新聞發布廳宣布這個消息時,希爾用手機給時報的華盛頓分社發了封郵件:科米被解職了。「一切都是突發的,」他寫道。「換在另一個白宮,這種事早就事無鉅細都安排好了。」
For the journalists who have covered the first year of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, such episodes have come to be expected. “It’s relentless, the unpredictability of it,” said Elisabeth Bumiller, the Washington bureau chief. “I knew it would be really wild and different, but I expected him to be somewhat different than the candidate Trump, and he really hasn’t been.”
對於負責報導唐納德·J·川普總統任期第一年的記者來說,這類事件在意料之中。「這種不可預測性是常態,」華盛頓分社社長伊麗莎白·布米勒(Elisabeth Bumiller)說。「我知道情況會十分狂亂,不同於以往;我以為他會跟競選時有所不同,但他並沒有。」
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“I think he just fundamentally doesn’t understand what the White House press corps does,” added the White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, “because the press he’s used to interacting with” — business, celebrity and tabloid coverage — “is so different.”
「我覺得他根本不明白白宮記者團是幹什麼的,」白宮記者瑪吉·哈伯曼(Maggie Haberman)說,「因為他所熟悉的媒體」——商業、名人和小報報導——「跟這太不一樣了」。
The early days of the administration, a period usually marked by a steep learning curve for a new White House staff, were especially chaotic. When Mr. Trump’s first travel ban was issued, on Jan. 27, administration officials “couldn’t even tell which countries it was,” Mr. Shear said. “They were putting on a good face, but they had no idea what was going on.” The White House correspondent Julie Hirschfeld Davis asked three officials that evening whether the ban affected green card holders, and received three different answers. “There were no talking points, so they didn’t know what to say,” she said. “Some of them were guessing, some of them were afraid to guess.”
新政府初期尤為混亂,這段時間對全新的白宮工作人員班底來說,通常會有一個高強度的學習過程。希爾說,去年1月27日,川普首次發布旅行禁令時,政府官員「甚至不知道哪些國家被禁」,「他們一幅若無其事的樣子,但他們不知道正在發生什麼情況」。白宮記者朱莉·赫希菲爾德·戴維斯(Julie Hirschfeld Davis)當晚向三名官員詢問,該禁令是否影響綠卡持有者,她得到了三個不同的答案。「沒有談話要點,所以他們不知道該說什麼,」她說。「他們中有些人是在猜測,也有人不敢亂猜。」
The White House has settled into more of a rhythm in recent months, according to several Times journalists who cover it, a shift they attributed in part to personnel changes — particularly the replacement of Mr. Spicer with Sarah Huckabee Sanders and of Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff, with John F. Kelly. The bureau, too, has adjusted. In response to the president’s early-morning Twitter habit, for example, reporters and editors are on duty at 6 each morning. And the bureau’s staff has grown from about 70 people in November 2016 to more than 100 now.
據幾名負責報導白宮的時報記者稱,近幾個月,白宮找到了一些行事的節奏,他們認為這部分歸因於人事變動——尤其是薩拉·哈克比·桑德斯(Sarah Huckabee Sanders)取代了斯派塞,以及約翰·F·凱利(John F. Kelly)取代了前幕僚長雷恩斯·普利巴斯(Reince Priebus)。時報的華盛頓分社也相應地做了些調整。例如,為了應對總統清晨發推的習慣,分社安排了記者和編輯每天早上6點值班。該分社的工作人員已經從2016年11月的約70人增長到了現在的100多人。
Still, much of the unpredictability that has characterized this administration cannot be compensated for — it is a function of the president himself. “There isn’t some secret sauce to covering him,” said Ms. Haberman. “He’s incredibly unusual. He’d never run for office before and he won the presidency. This is a strange moment in history. He has no familiarity with the government that he oversees. I cannot describe how strange this all is. Sometimes you just have to show and not tell.”
但是,這並不能完全應付這屆政府引以為特色的不可預測性——這是總統本人的一項功能。「報導總統沒有什麼祕密武器,」哈伯曼說。「他極其不尋常。此前他從未競選公職,現在他當了總統。這是歷史上一個奇怪的時刻。他對自己掌管的這個政府毫不熟悉。我都無法形容這一切有多麼奇怪。有時候你只能是向人們展示,而非講述。」
When Mr. Trump sat down with the Washington correspondent Michael S. Schmidt for an impromptu interview last month, not even the president’s staff knew it was coming. The interview itself would have been unthinkable in prior administrations. Mr. Trump, however, often seems to enjoy engaging with journalists, whether or not his staff would like him to.
上月川普與本報駐華盛頓記者邁克爾·S·施密特(Michael S. Schmidt)坐在一起進行一場即興採訪時,就連總統的幕僚都不知道會有這回事。要是換在之前的政府裡,這樣的採訪是難以想像的。而川普常常看上去很享受與記者接觸,不論幕僚們是否願意他這麼做。
The unpredictability is compounded by the president’s unprecedented obfuscation and denial of facts, and by offensive off-the-cuff comments like those he reportedly made last week in a White House meeting, all of which can leave his staff scrambling to defend the seemingly indefensible. Still, Ms. Davis said, “In a lot of ways, they have embraced the chaos, and understood on some level that it keeps the press off balance, and that’s where any White House likes the press to be.”
總統前所未有的不知所云和否認事實,以及如上週據說的那樣,在一場白宮會議上發表的冒犯性即興評論,都加重了這種不可預測性。而這都會讓他的幕僚們連滾帶爬地去為這些看似無法辯解的行為辯解。但戴維斯表示,「在很多方面,他們已經接受了這種混亂,並且在某種程度上認識到這能使媒體失去平衡,而這正是每一屆美國政府都想看到的。
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Although Mr. Trump has avoided traditional news conferences, he has developed a habit of stopping to speak with reporters on the White House lawn before boarding Marine One — and of going off-script at events, as he did in October, when an appearance with Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, turned into a freewheeling 45-minute question-and-answer session. And then there are, of course, the tweets.
川普避開了傳統的新聞發布會,但他形成了一個在登上海軍陸戰隊一號(Marine One)之前駐足於白宮草坪與記者交談的習慣——還有在一些場合的即興發揮,正如他在10月份做的那樣,把一個與參議院多數黨領袖米奇·麥康乃爾(Mitch McConnell)的短暫露面變成了45分鐘的隨性問答環節。當然,還有那些推文。
The result, Mr. Shear said, is that despite the anarchic nature of covering Mr. Trump, “we know so much more about what this president is thinking at any given moment than we ever did with Obama. Just because he wears it on his sleeve, and he tells us.”
希爾表示,結果就是,儘管報導川普時自帶一種無章可循的特性,「在任何時候,我們對這位總統的心中所想,都要比我們對歐巴馬了解的多得多。就是因為他把一切都擺在了檯面上,會告訴我們。」
That includes Mr. Trump’s professed feelings about the “failing New York Times,” as he often calls it. “I think he wants validation, and that he feels angry when he doesn’t feel like he’s getting the respect he deserves from the paper,” Mr. Baker said.
這還包括川普對常被他稱為「快不行了的紐約時報」(failing New York Times)公開表達的看法。「我想他是想要得到認可,而當他感覺報紙沒有給予應得的尊重時,他就會生氣,」貝克說。
“It’s all politics,” Ms. Bumiller said. “We’re sort of amused by it now.”
「這都是政治,」布米勒說。「我們現在覺得還挺好玩的。」