U.S. President Donald Trump walks beside Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel (R) upon arriving at the Brussels Airport, in Brussels, Belgium, May 24, 2017. (Photo: Reuters)
Don’t be fooled.
Those in America’s political press working overtime to run President Donald Trump out of the White House aren’t really trying to save democracy from “dying in the darkness.”
The real saving mission they’re on is much more personal. It’s one aimed at trying to save their credibility.
In many ways, it’s perfectly understandable why so many in the political press would like nothing more than for the Trump presidency to just simply go away.
By any honest assessment, Trump, orchestrator of the “Make America Great Again” campaign, took everything they thought they knew about how politics should be played on the national stage and completely eviscerated it.
From memorably branding his Republican primary opponents on social media to masterfully exploiting free television appearances to publicly antagonizing some of the most revered media outlets in the country, Trump abandoned political conventionality entirely in favor of shock and awe.
The now-president’s antics had cable news commentators genuinely shrieking in horror daily and nightly all throughout the run-up to last year’s general election.
Pundits with the benefit of column space continually wrote piece after piece detailing how Hillary Clinton was going to blow Trump off the electoral map and preserve Barack Obama’s legacy.
As far as the political press was then concerned, there was absolutely no way that Trump could win the presidency.
It was an impossibility.
Polling data they cited ad nauseam assured them it wouldn’t happen.
Needless to say, the political earthquake that shocked the world on November 8, 2016 was an epic embarrassment that many purported political experts still aren’t anywhere close to getting over.
Not only were some of the biggest names out there in American politics exposed as being completely out of touch with the country’s mood last fall, they were shown to severely lack in imagination.
Never in their wildest dreams did prognosticators working in the political press ever conceive that such a significant portion of the electorate – enough to allow Trump to decisively take the Electoral College – absolutely had it with political correctness, career politicians, and business as usual in Washington.
To the political media’s dismay, voters that ultimately decided the 2016 presidential election weren’t obsessing over identity politics, climate change, wanting to reign in law enforcement, or further empowering the regulatory state.
What those voters wanted – what happened to be the sweet spots Trump understood better than anyone else – were jobs, a growing economy, control along the southern border, ObamaCare to be revamped, adherence to law, and the gloves to finally be taken off in the global fight against ISIS.
Sadly, instead of trying to learn anything from so badly misreading the electorate and being oblivious to the populist rage that fueled it, many continuing to opine on politics in the country’s major newspapers and over the airwaves have spent over six months diving straight into an eerie form of groupthink.
Aside from all but declaring that absolute truths in politics are now vitally essential to the country’s survival, those in the political press continue to go out of their way to treat anything Trump-related – no matter how benign – as cataclysmic events.
Each and every day is a new constitutional crisis. Every decision Trump makes is unprecedented. Anything and everything reminds them of Watergate.
Some have even taken to literally begging the public at large for leaks.
Without question, many in America’s political press are working angry and determined. They’re also very much sickened to have to admit they missed the rise of Trump from the onset. Truth be told, they’re far more distraught that the president has already revealed something many in the country now believe more than ever before.
Many of those that cover politics in the media for a living really do know next to nothing, at all.
