The President of the United States looked his chief budget cutter in the eye, saying:
You’re a victim of sabotage by the press. They’re trying to bring you down because of what you’ve helped us accomplish.
As if to erase any doubt that his budget guy was unwanted by the President because of all the negative media attention that had been directed his way, spilling over on to the President himself, the President reassured that “I want you to stay on. I need your help.”
No.
This was not a recent back and forth between President Donald Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk. This was back in the early 1980’s, as President Ronald Reagan was making a point of standing up for his Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), young and brilliant former Michigan Congressman David Stockman.
And the tale of the media, Reagan and Dave Stockman has much to pass on to today’s spiritual heir of Stockman -- Elon Musk.
Stockman was a precursor of Musk. a man who became a media target for daring to carry out Reagan's agenda. Reagan had made a campaign promise to reduce the size of government and cut government spending. Now, in the beginning of what would be his first term, Reagan was determined to carry out that promise, and he had chosen Stockman to do the job. (As a young aide to a Pennsylvania Congressman who served on the House Budget Committee at the time, I recall the story for sure.)
Leaving Congress to take the job, Dave Stockman as OMB Director was a force of nature. He was in the headlines daily. Sometimes, it seemed, almost hourly.
And then.
So pursued by the media was Stockman that he made a serious media mistake - trusting a left-wing media outlet. Specifically that would be The Atlantic magazine, where he had given an extensive interview on his trials and tribulations as the President’s chief Budget guy.
On the day of his 35th birthday the wonder boy/ruthless budget cutter, as he had been repeatedly depicted in the media, received a call from a White House colleague. “Have you heard about tonight’s news?” He was asked.
No, was the answer. Stockman had incautiously made the mistake of giving a background (so he thought) and extensive interview about his time as OMB Director. Now it was being published. Stockman recalled the moment this way in his memoirs:
Lesley Stahl of CBS would inform the nation that in the upcoming issue of The Atlantic Monthly, William Greider, national news editor of The Washington Post, had quoted me as saying that the (Reagan) tax cut had been a trojan horse to disguise a giveaway to the rich.
….Within hours the White House press corps had managed to transform Greider’s article from a thoughtful (only slightly erroneous) analysis of the honest failure of a radical attempt to transform U.S. economic and fiscal policy into a tale about a budget director who had never believed in his own revolution from the beginning.
It was wrong -- and it was devastating.
Stockman went on that “level-headed journalists” such as conservatives “George Will and William Buckley” would soon write up their own analysis of the article, going on to say….
…the White House press room is not a place of calm and orderly reflection. Soon I was the Judas of the Cabinet Room, the man who willfully deceived the President and who had now shed his disguise so as to complete the betrayal.
Eventually Stockman became such a repeated target of the liberal media that there was not much choice left other than to resign. Stockman turned on Reagan and on "Reaganomics." (In 2024, he wrote a book called Trump's War on Capitalism, with a foreword by...Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
This bit of Reagan history with Stockman is worth recalling in the wake of the Trump-Musk recent interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity. The New York Post wrote up the story of the Hannity interview, headlining:
Trump, Musk accuse media, pundits of ‘trying to drive us apart’ in preview of Sean Hannity interview
The Post story reports:
President Trump and billionaire DOGE chief Elon Musk accused the media and pundits on Friday of trying to create tension between them in an effort to drive them apart.
“'hey want a divorce. They want you two to start hating each other,' Fox News host Sean Hannity told Trump and Musk in a clip from a lengthier interview that will air next week.
Trump, 78, agreed with the Fox News host and revealed that Musk had already warned him about the media’s effort to sow discord.
….'Actually, Elon called me and said, ‘You know, they’re trying to drive us apart.’ I said, ‘absolutely,’” Trump told the Fox News host.
In short? As the ancient wisdom goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
It has been 44 years since young David Stockman left his congressional seat to become President Ronald Reagan’s wunderkind Budget cutter in chief. And here the nation finds itself again, as if nothing at all has changed.
Sitting in the Oval Office is, like Reagan, a President elected resoundingly on a platform of reforming the federal government and cutting the massive waste of government spending. At his side is a younger man who, like Stockman, has a reputation as a wunderkind budget cutter. A seriously smart genius who can help the President fulfill his campaign promise to both cut spending and reform the Goliath/behemoth that is the federal government of the United States.
And as President Trump and Elon Musk go about their task, there is the liberal media of today zeroing in on them, doing their best to, as Trump and Musk say, “drive us apart.”
Shades of the 1980’s Reagan and Stockman era. Imagine that.
In fact, Trump and Musk are more than well aware of what the media is trying to do with them, as evidenced by their remarks on the subject to Sean Hannity. Good for them.
And the best advice for the two? America has been here before. The media will try to ruin everything you want to do. Stick together and buckle in.
