David Fahrenthold claimed the Donald Trump presidency “is the best thing that has ever happened to journalism.”

He added that he thinks the Washington Post is in a “renaissance,” particularly with the election of such an unconventional president.

Fahrenthold, a Pulitzer prize-winning political reporter for the Washington Post, gave a lecture in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium on Tuesday, detailing his work covering President Donald Trump’s business dealings.

Fahrenthold is this year’s winner of the Toner Award for excellence in political reporting, an award presented by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications to a political journalist to honor alumna Robin Toner.

Fahrenthold has worked at the Washington Post for 17 years after graduating from Harvard University. He won the Pulitzer for his reporting on the Trump Foundation and was part of a team that broke the story on President Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood tapes.

He started covering candidates for the 2016 presidential election back in 2014. He wanted to talk to the “loser” candidates who had very low polling numbers, such as Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee. Fahrenthold said he liked how they were approachable.

It was not until the Iowa Caucus in 2016 that Fahrenthold began following Trump. At one of the candidate’s rallies, he saw Trump hand over an oversized check to a charity for veterans.

Fahrenthold said he found this peculiar, because candidates cannot use charities as a means to gain support, and started investigating Trump’s foundation and where its money goes.

In his speech, the reporter explained how Trump used his foundation to avoid taxes while maintaining the status of a wealthy philanthropist.

When asked which story he was most proud of, Fahrenthold recalled an article published a few days before election night that summarized all of his findings on the Trump Foundation.

He went on to describe how Trump attended an event for the opening of a new orphanage without ever giving the orphanage a dime.

Fahrenthold said Trump stole the seat of one of the event’s major donors, proceeded to sing “This Little Light of Mine” with the orphans and left the event without ever giving the organization any money or even a word. Fahrenthold said he believes Trump “wanted to do as little as possible” in order to appear as a rich, generous “playboy” figure in New York.

Fahrenthold spoke little about the Access Hollywood tapes and said that reporting failed to tip the scale of the election. He talked about how his job as a journalist is to simply inform the public. It is the public’s job to take that reporting and make informed decisions, he said.

On election night, Fahrenthold said he and another Washington Post reporter were asked to write either the victory story for Trump or Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Fahrenthold wrote the Trump victory story, and Fahrenthold said doubt lingered in the back of his mind as he wrote it.

Fahrenthold repeated how he believed Trump does not really hate the media. He referenced Trump’s interviews with numerous media outlets the president has condemned, such as the New York Times.

The White House’s relationship with the media is eccentric, Fahrenthold said during his lecture. He recalled a time Trump had a phone call with a congressman, and without the congressman’s consent, invited a Washington Post reporter into the Oval Office to sit in on the conversation.

After his lecture, students lined up to thank Fahrenthold for speaking to them and for his reporting.

Published on September 20, 2017 at 12:42 am

Contact Tobias: tlcraner@syr.edu