One of the overarching themes of Donald Trump’s campaign has been vilification of the press. Most recently, of course, this has shown itself in his campaign banning various news outlets from reporting on him. But this strained relationship has been a feature of his entire 2016 run — remember his press conference that turned into a surprise attack on the reporters present? Remember his threat to “open up the libel laws” so that he can sue people who write negative things about him? Remember when he threw a tantrum about Megyn Kelly asking him questions in debates? Remember when he complained back in the early days of the primaries about how the press in general treated him worse than anyone else?
In this, as in many things, Mr. Trump is full of it. Compared to other candidates, he has been treated with the softest of kid gloves.
Past candidates who have been sunk on the power of one thing that they said or did (think Howard Dean screaming, or Rick Perry forgetting his own policies in the middle of a debate) would have killed for Trump’s resilience to his own ridiculousness. Present candidates (think Hillary Clinton) would kill to have their blunders taken with as little genuine gravitas as Trump’s.
When, in a George H.W. Bush campaign ad, Mike Dukakis took to the fields with his tank, the resounding impression it left (which resulted in his loss) was that he was childish, did not take our military seriously or was just plain old goofy. When George Allen called S.R. Sidarth “macaca,” a word referring to a monkey, he was promptly (and rightfully) lambasted for his racism, and his defeat helped to turn the Senate blue.
Trump, on the other hand, has talked about his genitalia on television, called Mexicans rapists, blatantly revealed his lack of foreign policy chops on several occasions, said a judge ruled against him because the judge was Mexican, tweeted a Star of David to symbolize Hillary's corruption, mourned the tragedy of 7-Eleven and so on, and so on. And yet, he is virtually unscathed in the polls.
I attribute much of this not to the robustness of his supporters, but to how the media has largely treated it: Not with the seriousness a presidential candidate engaging in bizarre and offensive behavior deserves, but with the nervous, permissive laughter usually granted to your drunk uncle at a family reunion. Oh, Donald. You just say the darnedest things!
Partially, this is because he’s great for ratings. A train wreck understandably draws rubberneckers, and since Trump revokes press passes at the drop of a hat, poking the bear isn’t good for business.
But Trump needs the media more than they need him, in the end. Without the media, he wouldn’t be where he is right now — sitting pretty on billions of dollars of free advertising and a position that Jeb Bush would probably have been a shoo-in for if he hadn’t been sucked into the black hole that is The Donald.
Bush’s defeat was humiliatingly chronicled on national television, with newspapers lamenting his poor debate performances, boring behavior and lack of spine. Trump, by comparison, was Bush’s “at least” counterpart — “At least he’s interesting to watch.” “At least he stands up for himself.” “At least he’s honest.” Rather than treating them both as real candidates, Trump was treated as a springboard off of which to treat Bush like a real candidate.
We ran Jeb’s “please clap” moment over and over again and mocked him for his hopeless desperation until he was permanently attached to the label of “pathetic.” We played the glitch in the Rubiobot on loop until it felt like Rubio’s entire campaign dangled on his next debate performance. This is how real presidential candidates are treated by the press: They are ruthlessly mocked for small mistakes, torpedoed by edits to their images and ultimately held accountable for not only their policies but for their ultimately meaningless (or telling) campaign missteps.
Are gaffes the best way to cover presidential campaigns? No. Often, they’re irrelevant to a candidate’s general worthiness for the office. But if we’re going to do it to everyone else, we should be doing it to Trump. He’s not immune to his own mistakes because he’s so strong; he’s immune to his own mistakes because the media is still treating him like a joke. Somehow, we still think he’s going to sink himself — and he could. It’s not too late.
But he’s going to need some help. And that's where the media comes in.
We need to start taking Trump seriously. We need to start vetting his policies — or calling out his notable lack thereof — like we do when Hillary refuses to clarify her positions on issues or Bernie Sanders comes out with something that doesn’t entirely make sense. We need to start pointing out his outrageous flip-flops (like we did with Mitt Romney and John Kerry) instead of blithely tolerating them.
We need to start making scandals out of his blatant racism the way we did for a few weeks when we collectively remembered that Hillary once called black men “super-predators” — instead of brief media sideshows where we ask, “Is this racist?” as if there really needs to be a debate about saying someone is unqualified to do their job because of their “Mexican heritage.”
We need to start treating him like the nominee of the Republican party. The things he says and does need to have consequences, the way the things Hillary says and does do.
Trump is frighteningly close to the presidency, and eventually, we’re going to run out of time to start taking him seriously. If his condemnation of the media continues (and it will, because being hated by one establishment or the other is critical to his campaign) we’ll eventually hit a point where even swayable Trump supporters or moderates on the fence will start ignoring the press and taking his word for it that the media is just lying and corrupt. At that point, it could be too late to start coming down hard on him.
It’s time to stop laughing. It’s time to stop being scared of retribution and indulgent of intolerance and ignorance. One of the jobs of the press is to be a watchdog. So it’s time to take off the gloves and start swinging the way we should have done months ago.