By Michael Goodwin
Forget the calendar. When it comes to media coverage of Donald Trump, it’s 2016 all over again.
Proving they remain infected by a fact-resistant virus, most members of the self-proclaimed smart set are once again horrified by GOP voters. Repeating the contempt they displayed when Trump won the nomination and the White House eight years ago, they are also furious that their nightmare could be happening again.
How can it be that their fellow Americans remain so stupid after they’ve repeatedly explained Trump’s flaws? Why do voters refuse to listen to their media masters?
The New York Times certainly doesn’t have any qualms about looking down on middle America and the people who live there.
“The responsibility of Republican voters,” it declared in a Sunday editorial, is “to nominate a candidate who is fit to serve as president.”
Trump, the Gray Lady insisted, “is manifestly unworthy.”
This is the same Times that, after the 2016 election, apologized to readers because its reporters and editors underestimated Trump’s appeal. This time the paper sees the appeal, but refuses to recognize it as anything other than a mass movement of the ignorant.
Not that it would matter because the Times hasn’t endorsed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. Regardless of whom GOP voters nominate, the paper will support the Democrat, even if it’s a dead raccoon — or Joe Biden.
It just wants a different Republican to beat up on because it fears Trump will win.
Willful ignorance also was on display at CNN, where a headline reported Trump’s historic Iowa victory margin as coming despite his “leaving office in disgrace.”
Commentator Chris Wallace piled on by bemoaning a “willful denial of reality” among Trump supporters and suggested they belong to a “cult.”
Wallace also cited the criminal cases against Trump as a reason for his being surprised the former president remains on top. Apparently Wallace missed the repeated polls showing that Trump’s support surged because of those unprecedented cases, not despite them.
Is it possible Wallace doesn’t know that the four criminal cases and one civil one were all filed by Democrats? Does he believe the party affiliation is just a coincidence and that GOP voters are crazy if they believe Dems are weaponizing the legal system to protect Biden and jail his opponent?
Speaking of those who refuse to see, Bloomberg reported on the sour mood at Davos where, as a headline put it, “Elite Size Up the Global Risks of Another Trump Presidency.”
‘A great concern’
Oh no, the hand-wringing has begun among the private-jet set!
The outlet quoted BlackRock vice chairman Philipp Hildebrand as saying, “You know, we’ve been there before, we survived it, so we’ll see what it means.” He then added: “Certainly from a European perspective, from a kind of globalist, Atlanticist perspective, it’s of course a great concern.”
Ah, yes the globalist perspective. Bringing that up is like throwing red meat at Trump supporters, who have the chutzpah to want a president who puts America first. How dare they!
Then there’s Joy Reid, the chief racial arsonist at MSNBC. She singled out “White Christians” in Iowa who supported Trump, saying they believe they are entitled to own America.
And so it goes in the comfortable confines of the best and brightest, where being wrong year after year means never having to admit it.
None of this is to suggest Trump is pure as the driven snow and without fault, or even a shoo-in for the nomination. Iowa did its job by trimming the field, and while Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley survived, one of them must bow out soon for there to be any chance of beating Trump.
The next test is whether Haley can pull off an upset in the New Hampshire primary and whether DeSantis can register enough support there to continue to South Carolina and beyond.
But the left-wing media is also on every ballot in every Republican primary. Its intense hatred for Trump continues to blind card-carrying Dems about the reasons for his appeal and thus distorts coverage of the campaign and the stakes for America.
Distrust of media
Like robots, the mainstream media repeat Dems’ talking points that Trump is a danger to democracy without recognizing that just 16% of Americans trust newspapers to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” according to a 2022 Gallup survey. It found that trust in television news falls to a basement low of 11%.
Perhaps admitting that Russia, Russia, Russia was nothing more than a Hillary Clinton dirty trick and that the FBI was in on the scam would be a good first step in regaining some of that lost trust.
Giving back the Pulitzer Prizes that fed the misinformation would also help cleanse the past.
Instead, there is zero indication that any substantial change in coverage is coming. Consider that, while most major media have reported on Biden’s historically low approval numbers, they refuse to make the connection between his obvious failures and why so many Americans want Trump back in the Oval Office.
For example, ABC News/Ipsos released a survey Sunday showing Biden with an approval rating of just 33%, which pollsters called the low point for any president since the final three years of George W. Bush’s tenure were swamped by the Iraq war and the financial crisis.
Results like that make the reasons for Trump’s support obvious to those who care to see them. Another one comes in the same poll’s finding that 47% of respondents say he has the “mental sharpness” to be president, while just 28% believe Biden does.
And 57% believe Trump is in good enough physical health for the job, while just 28% say the same of Biden.
Those and other comparisons explain Trump’s appeal. The refusal to report on and explore those explanations is a result of the bias among a relative handful of highly educated coastal elites who want a Democrat in the White House.
That bias explains why they have played dumb about Biden’s frailties and failures.
Take the southern border.
A recent CBS News poll found that 93% of Americans think the situation there is either a problem or a crisis, yet the networks and other leftist media largely ignore it.
When they do bother to cover what has become an unrestrained invasion, most of the time is spent insisting that both parties are to blame.
Trump supporters know better.
They know the number of illegal crossers surged the minute Biden took office and hasn’t stopped since.
They know the idea of a border wall is more needed than ever and believe Trump is far more likely than Biden to build one.
There’s no mystery in any of this. There’s only a corrupt media that believes they know what is best for America and are entitled to pick the president.
Trump supporters have the courage to disagree. For this, they must be shunned.
