The Love-Hate Relationship between Trump and the Mainstream Media

WASHINGTON -- There is plenty of political bad blood flowing through our nation's capital, but one relationship that could be described as the love-hate variety is between President Donald Trump and the mainstream media.

It has been a never-ending roller coaster ride.

And here's some "real news": President Trump likes going after the mainstream media, even calling them the "enemy of the American people."  

'We Are Not Fake News'

Meanwhile, the opponent -- in this case the mainstream press -- doesn't mind punching back.

"We are not fake news," said White House Correspondents' Association President Jeff Mason. "We are not failing news organizations and we are not the enemy of the American people."

The gloves came off at the president's very first press conference, a testy affair where Trump sparred with a few of them, exclaiming, "The public doesn't believe you people anymore!"

A Media Research Center study shows that 89 percent of the Trump coverage by the major media networks is negative.

Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told CBN News he believes this treatment is intentional.

"They want to highlight what they perceive to be failures," Lewandowski said. "This is exactly what they did during the campaign. They said the president would never run, that he would never be successful, the campaign was in shambles," he said.

"But it wasn't," he continued. "It wasn't sophisticated enough. But the American people stepped up and said, 'we want Donald Trump and voted for him.'"

Lewandowski says all the president wants is a fair shake and the whole story to be told.

"When he does a long interview with a major publication like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal all he asks for is don't edit it. Just print it verbatim and if you do that he believes that to be a fair interview," he told CBN News.

"I agree with him. It's when they cut it up, chop it up and they don't run the full context of what he's saying is usually where the media perpetuates a narrative that isn't true for the president," he said.

'He Loves the Media'

There has been plenty pushback from the mainstream media team.

"He loves the media in many ways as much as he hates it," Paul Farhi, the media reporter for The Washington Post, told CBN News.

"I think Trump makes a very big show of disliking us, disrespecting us and disparaging us, but I think in fact secretly, or maybe not so secretly, really likes us," Farhi said, "loves the attention, has used that attention for his own advancement and has really courted the media in a lot of ways."

Trump courts the media, using handwritten notes to either praise or blast them. But whatever the case, Farhi says he definitely works the room.

"Trump is a very sophisticated media animal," Farhi told CBN News. "He has worked with the New York media, which is the most intense for decades. He knows his way around and he knows how to utilize the media to get his message out."

The question now is will we continue to see this daily soap opera drama play out the next four years?

Jake Sherman with Politico told CBN News there's no reason to believe anything will be different.

"Donald Trump is 70 years old," he noted. "He's not going to change, so if we're looking for some sort of major course correction or a major shift in dynamic, we're not going to get that. He is who he is and you're not going to change that at this point in the game."

The one thing Trump may look to change is the country's libel and slander laws to make it easier to sue reporters and media outlets over their stories.

That could be the next level in an escalating fight with no end in sight.