Welcome to Off Message. I'm Isaac Dover. Today's guests, Julie Pace, the Washington

Bureau Chief for the Associated Press, position she just moved into, and Peter Baker, the Chief

White House correspondent for the New York Times, and the author of a new book out called The Call

of History, which is about the Obama presidency, all sorts of photos by New York Times photographers.

Why then?

Well, President Trump wants to have a war with the media.

It's pretty clear.

He sees the political advantage of it, and in judging from whatever cost-benefit analysis they're making in the White House, it seems like they're willing to take the costs for the benefits that they get out of this.

They go after reporters. They go after news outlets. And of course, in just the last week, we've had what seems like elevated to a new place of the attacks on Mika Brzeinski for having a facelift, which a lot of people

reacted to and said was a new low. Then over July 4th weekend on Sunday, the president

tweeting that video of him when he was at the WWF, but with the CNN logo superimposed on the person he was beating up, that did not get

as condemned as the Mika Brzezinski tweet, but of course it's all part of the same continuum.

So what does everybody do about that? What do you do if you are a White House reporter, and it's

your job to cover the president and the people who

work for him every day. Julie and Peter are people that I covered the beat with when I was

there every day covering Obama and they are still there covering Donald Trump. I think you'll find

the conversation really interesting, as well as what they can tell you about Donald Trump

and the people who work from that may not be immediately obvious, and what they can tell you about

how some of the assumptions about reporting about the White House have changed and been challenged

in ways that they will maybe surprise you, say are actually kind of positive.

Remember to subscribe and rate us on iTunes or whatever your favorite podcast platform is.

We have some excellent episodes coming up, including with Senator Mike Lee up next.

...