The Atlantic magazine has begun publishing a near-daily online column called ‘Trump Time Capsule’ in which, James Fallows, one of America’s most distinguished journalists, chronicles demonstrably false or shocking things that Donald Trump says. Fallows concludes each column with a note stating that he is not trying to change anyone’s mind — simply to ensure that there is a record out there so that no one who later regrets supporting Trump can claim they were not aware of what they were signing up for.
Over last week, the Washington Post published an op-ed piece speculating whether a turning point has been reached in the way the presumptive Republican Party nominee is covered by the national media. The same topic was the subject of a long analysis segment on Sunday on the CNN-USA’s media criticism show Reliable Sources.
Last week, Trump was deftly skewered by Hillary Clinton for his lack of qualifications (Trump, she said, does not have ideas “just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies. He is not just unprepared, he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility”.). He held a nationally televised news conference that degenerated into him haranguing the assembled media for close to an hour. At one point he called a reporter “a sleaze”. Later in the week, Trump suggested that judges who are Latino or Muslim are unfit to preside over legal cases against him. Asked whether this was not the dictionary definition of racism said matter-of-factly said, no, it’s not.
After all this, one might assume that his campaign is imploding. Perhaps that is true, but it is also worth considering just how few people may be aware of all of this, and how little they may care if they are.
It is hardly a novel observation that in the polarised world of modern America, liberals and conservatives both tend to live inside closed information loops, each group consuming ‘news’ that tends to reinforce its own preconceived notions. It is surprising how thoroughly the progressive and traditional/mainstream outlets seem to be losing sight of this fact.
Early last Friday evening, I conducted a small, and admittedly unscientific, experiment. At the website of Slate, a respected, left-leaning online magazine, these were the three top headlines:
‘Why Trump is already flailing’
‘If you defy Donald Trump, He’ll use your ethnicity against you’
And: ‘Watch the latest example of how embarrassingly incoherent Trump sounds’
Directing my browser to Fox News’ Politics website a moment later, however, I found a very different world:
‘GOP lawmakers want answers on deleted State Department video briefing’
‘Vox editor suspended for encouraging riots at Trump rallies’
‘VFW fires back at Obama: Politics not ‘confused’’
A column by Fox’s media critic, Howard Kurtz, asked: “Obsession? Why media are feeding public’s hunger for Trump tales”.
On the main Fox News homepage, there were no stories directly about Trump at all, though the story of alleged liberal State Department perfidy and the account of Vox (another online magazine) dismissing an editor who had advocated violence at Trump events ranked number two and four, respectively.
On the day Trump held that combative news conference, its aftermath was discussed extensively on CNN and liberal-leaning MSNBC. On Fox, Special Report, the channel’s main politics of the day show, barely mentioned it.
Taking it for granted
My point is that there are two media realities in America right now. In one, Trump is a threat to American democracy itself, but things may turn out alright because his campaign is clearly disorganised and stumbling. In the other reality, the most important issue by far is the fear that the mainstream media will ignore Hillary’s long list of alleged crimes (many of which, for the record, are being ‘ignored’ because they have been investigated ad nauseum by the GOP with little or nothing to show for the effort).
This is not to say Hillary is some sort of a saint, but it is fascinating to see how the hatred of her has become so internalised on the Right that many Republicans (and at least a few Democrats) simply take it for granted.
It is comforting to think that Hillary cannot possibly be as widely loathed as her detractors believe, and that Trump’s base of angry, ageing white people is nowhere near large enough to win a general election. It is also, however, a very strange election year and one will be ill-advised to take much of anything for granted with five months still to go.
In all, neither of the partisan narratives of this campaign season feels quite right. For someone whose campaign is collapsing, Trump still seems to have a lot of enthusiastic partisans. For someone whom the Right fervently believes America loathes, Hillary seems to be doing remarkably well. The truth obviously lies somewhere in-between. Figuring out exactly where: That’s the hard part.
Gordon Robison, a longtime Middle East journalist and US political analyst, teaches Political Science at the University of Vermont.
