The following is commentary intended for discussion. Add your comments.
I keep hearing media pundits, whether left or right; and news reporters, bringing up Donald Trump in terms of negative impact on another politician’s popularity.
Nearly always, the baked-in assumption seems to be that a Trump association is bad or harmful for the other political figure.
For example, in the recent Virginia governor’s race, it was claimed that Democrat Terry McAuliffe was wisely making Trump an election issue to use against his opponent, Republican Glenn Youngkin, who pulled off an upset. Trump endorsed Youngkin.
Before the results of that race were in, the media and analysis were treating Trump as if his endorsement or link to Youngkin were a complete liability. They said things like: “Trump endorsing Youngkin is a big factor… people may see him as too in line with the former President” or “The question is: has Youngkin separated himself enough from Donald Trump.”
When McAuliffe lost, it was said that he wasn’t successful in making Trump a centerpiece of his campaign.
But who’s to say he was not successful in making his criticism of Trump a centerpiece… and many people actually like Trump so they voted against McAuliffe?
Likewise, when Youngkin won, he was universally praised for having pulled off the upset by supposedly deftly distancing himself from Trump.
But who’s to say his perceived link to Trump, or the Trump endorsement, didn’t help put Youngkin over the top?
The record of Trump endorsements is pretty impressive from what I have seen.
Today, the news coverage and analysis about Trump feels much the same as it did in 2015 and 2016, when few seemed to have a realistic picture of the sentiment of so many Americans.
It’s as if the pundits seem not to know that in 2020, Trump got more votes than he did the first time, and more votes than any sitting American president in history.
He still remains wildly popular among a large segment of the population. Arguably, he is far more popular today among Republicans and some Democrats and Independents than is President Biden among Democrats and Independents.
And it’s outrageous that free speech and open information advocates aren’t screaming every day that Trump remains censored by Big Tech, which has worked so hard to make him disappear from America’s landscape.
Another thing that occurs to me after 10+ months of a Biden administration: Trump policies proved to be inarguably correct on numerous fronts. Some is a matter of opinion; but some of it is not. Yet there is little to no media analysis harkening back to Trump statements and policies in comparison to the Biden administration.
Trump was right to withhold judgement about the Rittenhouse case. Though Trump is widely portrayed as a character who shoots off at the mouth and puts no thought into reckless statements, it is Biden (a candidate at the time) who made harmful and uninformed comments about Kyle Rittenhouse.
Nearly all independent scientists seem to say that the lockdowns were harmful, since many knew at the time– and Trump raised the question– that nearly all infections take place indoors, not outdoors.
Trump wasn’t correct about everything, and that’s not the point. But the media at large cannot bring itself to report a two-sided or neutral analysis when it comes to Donald Trump, lest they say anything that would be perceived as positive about the former President.
In this way, we continue to get a slanted picture of what’s happening in politics and in America.
Has the media learned anything from its past missteps and mistakes?
What do you think?
