By John Dineen
Trump and the press, it seems, were made for each other from the beginning
When the postmortems for this presidential campaign begin, the press will likely return to the summer of 2015, when Donald Trump began his unlikely ascent to the top of the Republican heap.
And the press will readily plead mea culpa, that it did not take Trump seriously enough, early enough.
But, as Dylan Byers of CNN helpfully pointed out Wednesday, it would be instructive to set the way-back machine for 2013, when Trump was dropping in on presidential preliminaries.
Byers tweeted a link to his August 2013 Politico piece on Trump and the press reaction to his toe in the presidential pond. Now, Byers, being human, probably wouldn’t have directed our attention to his piece unless it looked pretty good in retrospect. In fact, it was uncanny — disconcertingly so.
Byers wrote:
“Even as reporters suggest that Trump should not be taken seriously, many media organizations continue to cover him as a potential legitimate candidate, as they did in 2012. The reason for that is something Trump, the executive producer and host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” is very familiar with: ratings.
“Trump’s noncandidacy tests the traditional view at news organizations that political journalists are the gatekeepers, the arbiters of which candidates deserve serious attention by virtue of their fundraising and endorsements and the strength of their ideas. Trump is making a mockery of all that. The attention he gets shows the media just can’t help themselves when high Web traffic and ratings get into the mix. And it seems both the celebrity-businessman and the journalists are in on the joke.”
Trump met none of the traditional standards for a presidential candidate — but his audience didn’t care. The press was, in turns, dismissive, then derisive. But it was also obliging: Trump delivered TV ratings and website page views and news organizations, struggling to find a working business model, profited.
I’ve called it presidential politics’ Boaty McBoatface — Votey McVoteface, I suppose — moment.
Whatever the outcome of this election, the postmortems are likely to characterize the Trump phenomenon as an outlier. Maybe — but the factors Trump exploited will still be in place the day after the election.
Trump may have gotten here first, but why would he be the last?
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