When will the national cable network media stop trumpeting Trump?
All of the cable media - conservative, liberal and mainstream (if you can find an impartial news-only mainstream major network these days) - need to stop using Trump and his trumpisms as ratings and click bait.
A better question might be, is it too late for cable and network media to stop acting as though Trump and his nonsense are the most important thing happening right now? Is it too late for so-called news anchors to stop allowing him to get away with completely wrong assertions? Are they ever going to stop crediting him as having "tapped" an angry, populist nerve?
It may, in fact, be too late. After all, Trump was the guy who, according to one early campaign report, had to pay people to show up at his announcement. And now - mostly due to all of the free advertising from cable "news" personalities who've played with the Donald for fun, for ratings, for clicks - he's No. 1 in the GOP polls.
It seems the only folks more bumbling than the mainstream media about Trump's reality TV shtick are the other GOP presidential contenders who are jumping right in with him on his stir-the-slime, reality TV-like stumping. One after another, some of the army of GOP hopefuls have jumped on the Trump claim that birthright citizenship should be abolished!
Pundits (and the cable news networks) have treated Trump's candidacy like the click-bait ads for "stars' most revealing wardrobe malfunctions." They thought people would react like they would to watch a train wreck.
Well, guess what? It's working. The America that looks at wardrobe malfunction videos and Duck Dynasty is eating it up. That America is Trump's 25 percent. But what if?
What if there's more who like Duck Dynasty than anyone has realized? Tune in to a national news show anytime and you can get way more Donald Trump (and Donald Trump responses from other politicians thanks to media anchors who ask about the Donald's latest outrageous rant than about something real and serious like melting glaciers or minimum wage or falling stock markets) than you get of Duck Dynasty, which airs only once a week.
So the result of all that free air time on cable so-called news 24-7 is driving Trump in the polls.
The New York Times wrote Saturday:
"In poll after poll of Republicans, Mr. Trump leads among women, despite having used terms like "fat pigs" and "disgusting animals" to denigrate some of them. He leads among evangelical Christians, despite saying he had never had a reason to ask God for forgiveness. He leads among moderates and college-educated voters, despite a populist and anti-immigrant message thought to resonate most with conservatives and less-affluent voters. He leads among the most frequent, likely voters, even though his appeal is greatest among those with little history of voting."
There's more.
"Tellingly, when asked to explain support for Mr. Trump in their own words, voters of varying backgrounds used much the same language, calling him 'ballsy' and saying they admired that he 'tells it like it is' and relished how he 'isn't politically correct.'"
He's not ballsy, he's full of himself. He's not telling it like it is. He's playing on people's ignorance and bigotry. He's not anti-politically correct. He's an actor, and he's the epitome of conniving when you think about what politically correct really means. PC is an pejorative term for using language, actions, or policies that are seen as excessively calculated to not offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society. Trump has calculated how to use his politically incorrect mocking to whip up the outrage that buoys him.
Conservative columnist Michael Gerson understands, and he recently took the gloves off:
"[Trump] is choosing an enemy [Mexicans] in order to organize and direct public anger. There is a difference between striking a populist chord and feeding cultural resentment with racial overtones."
And it's the big network media's fault. They've used Trump as a circus sideshow, and it is backfiring on us all. Even if he eventually flames out, valuable time has been taken from seriously considering issues.
There is one valid Trump story out there. Trump told his supporters that he - unlike career politicians - wouldn't be holding his hand out for money. He doesn't need it, he said. He would spend his own cool billion.
But he was offering a politically correct comment (using language to mislead.) His homepage includes a prominent "donate" button, and Politico has reported that he attended a super PAC fundraiser in July. In early August, he began sending out fundraising requests to conservative mailing lists.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman told Politico last week: "Any and all donations to either the Donald J. Trump for President campaign or Super PACs looking to support Mr. Trump as the front runner for the Republican nomination are greatly appreciated, but totally unsolicited."
How very PC of you, Donald.