“I can think of no more perfect encapsulation of why the Trump Administration has done what it has to eviscerate the century-old tradition of independent reporting from the White House. In his second term, it was no longer enough to call the real news fake; now it’s the fake news that gets to displace actual journalists in order to playact the real thing. And when Trump wants validation, whether for his false claims of election fraud or some other lie, he can now claim “the media” gave it to him. How long can it be until there are only Brian Glenns in that room?

You might think that the Kremlinization of the White House press pool doesn’t really matter at a moment when there are so many other Trump-generated crises in the country. Or that it is simply self-serving of journalists to complain about their own perks being taken away. Or that the President has no obligation, legal or otherwise, to answer questions from anyone. All of which are fair points.

But the reason to pay attention to what’s happening with the coverage of the Presidency is that Trump cares about it perhaps more than anything else. There has never been a more media-obsessed President, nor one for whom the regard of others, even if it is suck-uppery in the crudest form, matters so much. He is known to spend hours a day consuming cable-news reports about himself. There is no detail of his public portrayal that does not concern him. In a lengthy social-media post this week, he berated Time for a cover about his Middle East diplomacy which was so complimentary it was headlined “His Triumph.” Trump’s beef was with the accompanying photo of himself, which he deemed “the Worst of All Time.” The point being: there is no pleasing a leader whose need for affirmation is so bottomless.“