The White House will write its own positive news coverage if no one else will

Impact

President Donald Trump needs the American people to believe in his "Buy American, Hire American" executive order as an essential move to strengthen the domestic economy and stem the tide of immigration — exactly as his supporters want.

And if the press won't write rave reviews, the White House will.

After the White House announced the order, which will crack down on the influx of skilled foreign workers, they followed up with a statement full of glowing comments from top administration officials.

You've got White House economist Peter Navarro calling the order "muscular," Trump's secretary of the treasury, Steve Mnuchin, saying how "proud to stand with the president," and senior adviser Stephen Miller calling it a "historic act of leadership."

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Why did the White House release this deluge of internal praise with no additional context? Possibly because the press isn't buying it.

Fortune wrote that Trump's order could "kill his plan to rebuild America," while Vox pointed out that the order will "just make infrastructure more expensive." CNBC took a different approach: showing that Trump, in his own business ventures, has failed to adhere to the "buy American, hire American" pledge.

Even the staunchly conservative Federalist, which has said discussions over income inequality were "anti-rich prejudice," called the executive order "dangerous nonsense."

It follows naturally that the press would run their own informed analysis, facing a White House that would rather send out buzzy statements than make its executives available for interview and independent scrutiny.

Except for Breitbart. They ran the comments straight from the White House press release.