I read an interesting article on The Guardian today about the media’s role in Trump’s election. These kinds of articles are pretty common now, but this one seemed more thoughtful than usual. Essentially they wondered if maybe Trump had been playing the media for chumps the whole time, and maybe they didn’t do a good job covering him.
To which I can only respond with, “Duuuuuuuuuuh.”
It was incredibly obvious that the media was covering Trump more than any other Republican primary candidate. It was stupifyingly obvious that the media was covering Trump more than Clinton after the conventions. It was mind-numbingly obvious that Trump was taking advantage of all of it. I mean, stunningly, staggeringly obvious.
Personally I thought that the media felt responsible for accidentally helping Trump win the Republican nomination, and then set out to tear him down in the general election by relentlessly picking at everything he said, while totally ignoring Clinton. At some point the general public saw that too, and viewed Trump as the underdog fighting against all the forces of that evil corporate media, and that’s probably (one reason) why he won. (That and Democrats didn’t bother to vote.)
Even when Comey popped up at the end with those emails again, the media didn’t seem all that interested in it. They framed it all in terms of how it might help Trump win (making the election more exciting), and didn’t focus at all on the actual content of the emails.
He’s still manipulating the media, by the way. Today he met with The New York Times [Fox link to prevent accusations of liberal bias], which will lead the news for days. One can’t help but wonder what that might be covering up.
