You Can't Always Smear Who You Want

On Inauguration Day, 2017, The Washington Post ran a front-page stunner: "The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun. At the moment the new commander-in-chief was sworn in, a campaign to build public support for his impeachment went live."

The headline was marked by two and half months of bickering after Hillary Clinton barely conceded. The Russia-Russia-Russia hoax was developing wings in the background in. In the first 22 days of the new Trump administration, Michael Flynn, Trump's choice to be his national security adviser, resigned because he had had friendly conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak - and he lied about them to the FBI.

[It was not unusual for America to be friendly with Russia - President George W. Bush and President Putin met at least 28 times during his presidency from 2001 to 2009. Their interactions included formal summits, bilateral meetings, and informal encounters at international events].

When Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, he used the vast levers of the Deep State to help launch a Special Counsel investigation that did not stop until July 2019. The Muller report found nothing wrong, but wily California Senator Adam Schiff was waiting to pounce - this time about Ukraine - and trigger the first impeachment.

Through every day of the first Trump presidency, the media followed along with unprecedented negative coverage. The Pew Research Center published a significant study in October 2017. The coverage of Trump was more negative compared to that of his predecessors. About 62% of the stories were negative, compared to 20% for Obama, 28% for George W. Bush, and 28% for Bill Clinton during the same period. Only 5% of stories about Trump were positive, significantly lower than for Obama (42%) and Bush (22%).

Something remarkable has happened since Trump won the presidency a second time. Media coverage isn't just glowing, but by the media's standards of 2017, it is better than glowing.

NBC News won the sweepstakes and scored Trump's first big post-election network interview. Kirsten Welker, the moderator of the network's venerable Meet The Press, secured the honor of traveling to Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate to sit down for a discussion that lasted nearly 1 hour and 15 minutes. (Welker had also moderated the second presidential debate between Trump and candidate Joe Biden in 2020, a performance in which she constantly interrupted then-President Trump and let Biden off without challenging him adequately.)

At Mar-a-Lago, Welker seemed to acknowledge the gravity of the moment.

KRISTEN WELKER: President-elect Donald Trump, welcome back to Meet the Press.

President-elect Donald Trump: Thank you very much.

KRISTEN WELKER: Thank you so much for being here. You are the first president since Grover Cleveland to win non-consecutive terms. Republicans now have control of the House and the Senate. What do you plan to accomplish in your first 100 days in office?

Here was a network news anchor acknowledging history and truth, an anomaly by the standards of the legacy media during Trump's first administration.

When Time magazine chose Trump as its Person of the Year 2024, the publication conceded that it was not a difficult choice. That declaration was itself extraordinary. 2024, after all, was the year Vice-President Kamala Harris made history by becoming the first Black woman on the presidential ticket. It was the year Elon Musk engineered a remarkable comeback for Twitter, now renamed X, and celebrated unprecedented achievements in space exploration. Either Harris or Musk could have been eminent winners.

However, the newfound love that the legacy media has developed for Trump caused the magazine to pay glowing tributes to the 47th President-elect, notwithstanding the political bias of the owner, Marc Benioff, the chair and CEO of Salesforce, an ardent Democrat.

Time said: "Since he began running for President in 2015, perhaps no single individual has played a larger role in changing the course of politics and history than Trump....Trump has remade American politics in the process. He won by enlarging his base...and won the largest percentage of Black Americans for a Republican since Gerald Ford and the most Latino voters of any GOP nominee since George W. Bush. ­He became the first Republican in 20 years to win more votes than the Democrat, with 9 of 10 American counties increasing their support for Trump in 2020."

The most fascinating turnaround came from the anchors of MSNBC's Morning Joe, who made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to make amends with the President-elect. Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist are the most ardent critics of Trump on television.

The big tech companies Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI have all agreed to donate to Trump's inauguration. Each drives public engagement through its media offerings, such as Facebook/Instagram feeds, Prime Video, and ChatGPT, and is historically known to support Democrats. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg flooded Democrat precincts with $400 million in campaign cash in 2020. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, penned an op-ed saying that his paper will never endorse a presidential candidate again and will attempt to be neutral.

Several factors are driving the media's behavior. First, the press bet big on the Democrats for seven years and lost. Second, the media tried to act bipartisan and bet even bigger on the Never Trumpers, pushing the brands of Liz Cheney, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence. In doing so, the media lost even more credibility as voters found these personalities to be toxic and rejected them with a vengeance. Third, media organizations saw their influence wane as new and alternate media outlets - podcasts, independent news offerings like Tippinsights and the Free Press, and unfettered/uncensored citizen journalism on X - dominated the 2024 presidential coverage.

The media has a crucial role to play during the next four years and must act as a legitimate watchdog for the American voter. For years, Fox News' selling theme was: "We Report. You Decide." The legacy media is beginning to embrace this vision - at least, that is our hope.

Related: Top pollster: Dems doomed if they don’t change their tactics | Mulshine