The mainstream media has totally failed to live up to the challenge of covering Donald Trump

Ever since Donald Trump appeared on the scene, the mainstream media has struggled with how to deal with him as a candidate. At first, they were enchanted by his sheer weirdness, which made for great copy and footage. But when Trump flooded the field with lies, they couldn’t bring themselves to use the term. They used “falsehoods” or “claims without evidence.” Most of all, they treated Trump as if he were just like any other candidate, even when he was anything but.

You would think that by the third time around, the media would have learned its lesson. If anything, the media has gotten worse. This election cycle, reporters at major outlets seem to be going out of their way to treat Trump ever-so-gently, normalizing his most dangerous behavior.

Related:

New York Times publishes story based on edited emails put together by anti-trans activist

The story accused the Biden administration of wanting to remove age limits on gender-affirming surgery. But that’s not what happened.

Perhaps the worst offender is the self-appointed paper of record, The New York Times. When the scandal broke about Trump illegally filming for a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery last week – while his aides physically assaulted a worker – the Times reported that the “campaign clashed with an official” at the cemetery, which downplayed just how brazen Trump’s actions were. The paper then followed up with another story about how Trump “returns to the politics of forever wars,” as if that was the story instead of how the Trump campaign broke the law prohibiting using the hallowed ground for political purposes.

Dive deeper every day

Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues

Daily

Weekly

Good News

In short, the politics became the story, not the scandal.

Or look at the paper’s coverage of Trump’s cognitive decline.

Oh, wait. That was just reserved for Joe Biden.

Instead, the Times decided to run a story about Trump’s truly bizarre rantings at his rallies. They didn’t question the stability of someone who worries about being eaten by sharks or praises Hannibal Lecter. Rather, they came up with this humdinger of an appraisal: “It is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills, and Rosie O’Donnell.”

Who are we kidding here? Trump’s inability to think linearly hints at cognitive issues. He is now the oldest candidate to run for president. Instead of a serious look at whether he’s displaying exactly the kind of problems that the Times took Biden to task for, the paper came up with a cutesy little piece that quotes English professors instead of geriatricians.

The Times‘ velvet-glove approach to Trump extends to his allies as well. In a piece about Trump’s appearance before Moms for Liberty, the paper treated the extremist group as a stand-in for “the fired-up suburban women” that Trump is in danger of losing. Moms for Liberty is a far cry from the suburban women demographic, consisting instead primarily of evangelicals who don’t have kids in public schools. The article failed to mention the group’s recent scandals with one howler of an exception: “The Moms for Liberty can get a bit carried away – one of their local chapters once accidentally quoted Adolf Hitler.”

Here’s the problem. It wasn’t an accident. Hitler was actually quoted by name. (The paper had to issue a correction.) Also not mentioned in the “bit carried away” part was the group’s efforts to ban hundreds of books and attack drag queens.

The list goes on and on. There’s the story about J.D. Vance that says that he “confounds Democrats.” He does no such thing. Democrats are delighted that Vance, a bottomless well of misogyny, is on the ticket. He’s the most unpopular vice presidential candidate in modern times, which, considering Sarah Palin, says a lot.

There’s also the false equivalency, like the story about how Kamala Harris and Trump each have a housing plan. Harris’ plan is to give first-time homebuyers a $25,000 tax credit. Trump’s is mass deportation of undocumented immigrants; that is, the people who make up an estimated 20% of the construction industry’s workforce. Do those sound like equivalent plans? (The Times reassures us that economists have doubts about both plans.)

It’s not just the Times, of course. The Washington Post did a story about how Trump “lost his mojo” after Biden dropped out instead of looking at what it says about his mental state that he couldn’t campaign like a normal candidate.

Reporters think that criticism is a sign that they are doing their job. They have the same sense of infallibility as the pope does.

But the fact is that the press has spent the past nine years normalizing a man who is not normal. They treat him like any other candidate – indeed, better than any other candidate. If Kamala Harris did a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery, the press would be all over her. Never mind a credible story about a $10 million cash bribe from Egypt. You probably haven’t heard about that one, but that’s another Trump story that has come and gone over the past few weeks.

Our current reporting – or at least our current reporters – aren’t up to the task of covering Trump. They can only fit him into the template that they have been using for decades. It’s a horse race, and Trump is one of the horses. How will his statements play with voters? How is he doing in the polls?

The scandals, the increasingly bizarre behavior, the felonies, the insurrection – it’s all too much to fit into that template. So it falls by the wayside. When it comes to the task of telling the truth, too much of the mainstream media isn’t up to the job.

Don't forget to share: