Was it a “spy”? Is it a “gate”? If not, should it really be called “Spygate”?
In a fusillade of tweets and statements in recent days, Trump has tried to establish “Spygate” in the pantheon of “-gates” — that is, scandals — that began with the Nixon-era break-in at the Watergate office complex in 1972. Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Wednesday, Trump said: “A lot of bad things have happened. We now call it ‘Spygate.’ You’re calling it ‘Spygate.’ ”
Generally speaking, they aren’t. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press, Politico and Bloomberg, among others, say they will not call it that on their own. They will use the term only if they are quoting a source, such as Trump, who is using it.
That has not stopped Trump’s branding efforts, which are clearly aimed at undermining Mueller and the FBI’s investigation of his campaign’s possible ties to Russian operatives. In a tweet Thursday morning, Trump wrote that former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. “has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE - a terrible thing!” ( Clapper says Trump mischaracterized what he said. )
News organizations say they are reluctant to use the term, because it is potentially inaccurate and politically loaded.
First, it is not clear that the informant the FBI used to gather information on Trump’s 2016 campaign was, in fact, a spy. The informant, identified in news accounts as American college professor Stefan Halper, had several meetings with officials from Trump’s campaign but was not embedded within the campaign itself. Several experts, including the FBI’s former director, James B. Comey, have said the agency regularly uses “confidential human sources” in its investigations to gather information.
And neither Trump nor White House officials have provided any evidence for their most explosive claim — that the “spy” was placed there at the behest of the Obama White House to collect information that could be helpful to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Such an action would amount to the kind of political scandal that Trump is suggesting and would justify slapping the “gate” suffix on it.
So far, however, that’s not the case.
“We will use ‘Spygate’ only in a direct quote or attributed to Trump,” said AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton, echoing a policy others have set.
Washington Post managing editor Cameron Barr said the phrase “should be attributed to whoever is using it. In this case, the term was invented by President Trump, seeking to escalate his assertions to the level of scandal. The term isn’t neutral, hasn’t been employed by people on both sides of the debate and can’t be supported by the facts that have been established to date.”
A New York Times spokeswoman cited the newspaper’s stylebook on the use of “-gate” suffixes. It says that the use of the term “equating current controversies with the 1973-74 Watergate scandal carries polemical overtones. . . . If a writer considers a more recent episode comparable, the case should be made straightforwardly.” Times reporters have not made such a case.
The skepticism about “Spygate” puts mainstream outlets at odds with conservative news sources. Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” program and its opinion personalities, including prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, have pushed the issue for several days. Breitbart went all in, too, with headlines such as “Spygate: More Vindication for Breitbart, Mark Levin, Donald Trump.” Rush Limbaugh echoed one of Trump’s Wednesday tweets, saying on his radio program on Wednesday that “Spygate could be one of the biggest political scandals in history.”
Infowars host Alex Jones, who has promoted various conspiracy theories, claimed on Wednesday that he, not Trump, coined the phrase — last year.
(Technically speaking, “Spygate” was actually coined in 2007, after the New England Patriots were accused of secretly videotaping defensive signals relayed by New York Jets coaches during an NFL game.)
Even some would-be Trump allies are reluctant to use the spy formulation. Sen. Lindsay O. Graham (R-S.C.) told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday that Trump “probably shouldn’t” refer to Halper as a spy or to the imbroglio as “Spygate.”
Whatever its antecedents, the term appears to constitute some good old-fashioned marketing by the president. According to the AP, Trump told a friend that he wanted to frame the issue as spying because “the more nefarious term would resonate more in the media and with the public.”
