Zeke tweeted something that turned out not to be true on Trump's inauguration day, quickly corrected himself, but the administration publicly criticized him for weeks after.

Ever since, he's been like this This is yet another example of how Republicans work the refs (and win). https://twitter.com/MaxKennerly/status/1324400589019746305

He was tweeting about changes in decoration. Tweeted that the Churchill bust had swapped places with the MLK bust, was corrected, and tweeted two corrections/apologies within about an hour...

Spicer jumped on him for it

The next day, Trump gave a speech at the CIA where he claims that they wrote a story about this (it was a tweet, no article) and then complained about there not being a big enough retraction in the article that didn't exist. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-cia-headquarters/

The day after that, Kellyanne Conway went on Meet The Press where she brought it up again as evidence that the press was out to get them.

Again, this was very clearly a mistake that was corrected as soon as he realized it.

You may remember this particular Meet the Press appearance because the part I quoted in the previous tweet is what came immediately before the coining of "alternative facts."

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-01-22-17-n710491

AND THEN THE DAY AFTER THAT Spicer brought it up yet again during the press briefing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sean-spicer-press-conference-transcript-jan-23-2017/

And then IN FEBRUARY Trump was STILL talking about it, this time at an event to commemorate Black History Month https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-african-american-history-month-listening-session/

All of this happened after the admin publicly accepted his public apology, too. (It was Spicer at the time, not McEnany on the PressSec account, obviously.) They still brought it up every chance they could, even with Spicer later claiming that there never was an apology.

Time (where Zeke Miller was working at the time)'s EIC issued an apology at the time. Again, all this over what was very clearly an extremely minor honest mistake. https://time.com/4645541/donald-trump-white-house-oval-office/

Right from the start, it was very clear how the White House was going to operate with the press. Any mistake, no matter how small, would lead to claims of bias that would be brought up for weeks.

And the goal there is to discourage criticism, to make journalists think, "eh, it's not worth it," and to just be compliant.

And so Zeke's approach to social media very quickly just became regurgitations of whatever the administration told him with zero scrutiny.

It's "working the refs." It's what Republicans have done with mainstream media, what they've done with tech companies and social media, etc. It's grievance politics. They do it because it works. And it works because somewhere along the line someone chose "eh, not worth it."

Meanwhile, there are people this White House believes are very fine wonderful journalists and whatnot who peddle absurd conspiracy theories about Democrats operating a baby-eating cabal or whatever tf it is this week