Trump, media creation, pummelled by those who crowned him Republican POTUS
The media needs to ask itself what its responsibilities are in this Being There-level quagmire
American media is often its worst analyst — its cable tv channels spend days deciphering and commenting the President’s tweets and various nonsensical statements.
As Trump was close to being inaugurated, a few facetious political observers compared him to Chauncey Gardner, the recluse gardener played by Peter Sellers who lucks into the halls of power, while uttering platitudes that are hailed as gospel.
Trump playacted as a candidate for decades, for the sheer vanity of it, prodded by the likes of Roger Stone. 2016 was no exception, the Apprentice money was almost gone and this fountain of self-regard needed the adrenaline shot of his name uttered every second. He ran and improbably, faced by a wooden and ineffectual Democratic candidate, won.
The media’s inability to properly gauge and report that Trump is way beyond his abilities and just winging it the entire time needs to be analyzed.
Matthew Gertz’s Jan 2018 Politico article is a must read:
Gertz does a superb job detailing what the media mostly eschews: that Trump is, in essence, live tweeting Fox News with abandon, without any regard for protocol, policy or political fallout.
This week’s Everest level of political chaos whereby Trump decides, via tweet, on a whim, to pull troops from Syria, dumbfounding his Republican “allies” in Congress, has just been topped by the back and forth on his “wall” campaign promise.
Trump’s only base is that of the phalanx of hucksters who prance around conservative media, the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Ingrahams and their clones. They have been livid in the past 48 hours on Trump’s reported punting of the wall funding and have been thrashing him on tv, twitter and talk radio.
As MSNBC’s Katy Tur asked today, who is actually governing ? The President, Congress, or right wing media pundits ?
This question is the core question of the moment and how the chaos wrought by the supposed “dealmaker” has not triggered a total institutional meltdown comes down to luck, in this writer’s humble opinion.
Media outside the right wing bubble should recognize its role in building up Trump’s candidacy, its role in constant questionable normalization, and how this contributes to hurt norms and institutions.
Who will start some much needed self-reflection ?
