5 Ways the Media made Trump Happen

http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-ways-the-press-made-donald-trump-happen/

Presenting “both sides,” even if one stands opposite the facts.
In place of the truth, the press often affects a sense of balance. Why else are conspiratorial climate-deniers booked as talk show guests opposite the scientific experts who represent the near-consensus of their academic fields? During this campaign, the media has attempted to equate Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump’s campaigns in order to further the narrative that both parties are sides of a coin. As if doing something to fight climate change and actively trying to make it worse — begging droughts, floods, and chaos — are two equally acceptable opinions. 

1. Completely ignoring the Republicans’ demolition of political norms.
   In 2009, Republicans handed President Obama an economy engulfed in flames, and then blasted him for the deficit created by Bush-era policies. When a billionaire-backed Tea Party arose “spontaneously,” the press told us it was “non-partisan” and focused only on fiscal issues. When the GOP-controlled House refused to service our debt, causing a global financial panic, the press painted this as politics as usual, a problem Obama needed to fix. Today, the press is letting Republicans deny a president with more than 300 days left in office his choice of a Supreme Court nominee. In a world without accountability, everything is permitted.
2. Indulging Trump’s whims with almost no accountability.
   Last Wednesday night, MSNBC — America’s “liberal” news channel — devoted a whole hour to a “town hall” with Donald Trump, something it has offered to no other single candidate. “Wednesday night, there was no mention of his racist comments toward Mexicans; his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin; or his stigmatization of Muslims,”Slate‘s Isaac Chotiner wrote. “He wasn’t pressed hard for any policy details, nor challenged about his well-catalogued dislike of the truth.” Instead, it was pure infomercial: Trump was treated like a Morning Joe cast member being honored for his place in the celebrity-political culture the show exists to venerate.
3. Passing on nearly all coverage of his policies or past.
   Most of the coverage of Trump’s policy proposals is really just the press’ celebrating the notion that people don’t care about the details of his policies. They — much like Trump’s declarations of his net worth — make almost no sense. The Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus actually did a bit of digging and found Trump’s platform “utterly ridiculous“: President Trump would, apparently, reduce the debt without cutting Medicare or Social Security, while offering trillions in tax breaks that go mostly to the rich and which would require eliminating the entire military several times over to balance the budget. It’s the height of insanity and instead, the media is off repeating whatever racist nonsense Trump’s managed, without much effort, to distract them with. And forget substantial questions about his past, or about the horrendously expensive-yet-useless wall he wants Mexico to pay for.
4.  Tolerating his racism without inflicting any cost to his campaign.
   As Marco Rubio becomes more competitive, Trump is beginning to hint that he will go “birther” on the senator — who was born in Miami. Trump’s evidence that Rubio isn’t a “natural born citizen” is a substantive as his evidence that Barack Obama wasn’t — skin color. Today, Trump won’t even comment on the Obama birtherism that made him a conservative star. And instead of pointing out the obvious racism in his attack — and his many others, including the hideous slander of the so-called “Central Park 5” and his scapegoating of Mexican immigrants — the press is treating it like any other political argument. Because their only fear is that he won’t give them another interview.