The Press Is Making a Huge Mistake

By Becket Adams

Sunday, June 18, 2023

 

The obvious effort by the press to secure Donald Trump the 2024 GOP nomination is a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.”

 

Sure, major newsrooms may once again see the ratings and subscriptions boosts they enjoyed between 2015 and 2020. And, sure, for an industry that donates overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates, it probably doesn’t hurt to have someone as troubled, toxic, and legally tied up as Trump to run against the Democratic incumbent.

 

But trust me, members of the press, when I say this: You don’t want another four years of President Donald Trump. Your heart may tell you it’ll be great for promoting your personal brand or securing (another) book deal, but your brain knows you don’t want to do this again. He’s no longer a circus act, performing hitherto unthinkable acts of political insanity for a captivated, shocked audience, including you. He’s now a one-trick pony, just an older, more tired boor and loudmouth, obsessed with relitigating the 2020 election. Face it: Trump has become mind-numbingly tedious.

 

You know this. We all see that you know this. We can see that your commentary is phoned in, that your questions and coverage are recycled and cliché. You’re tired of it, in fact positively exhausted, despite your attempts to appear excited.

 

Here’s another thing you know: The public doesn’t want another four years of what the media dished out during Trump’s term. The public doesn’t want to spend another four years watching every single person in the news industry focus obsessively on Trump, his every utterance and action. No one wants another four years of news cycles dedicated to how the president walks down ramps or how he drinks from a glass of water. No one wants another four years of members of the press tearing their hair out over Rose Garden remodels or how the president misspells words such as “hamburger” and “coffee.”

 

No one except for Trump and his most loyal acolytes want this.

 

Perhaps the clearest example of the press’s Trump fatigue came this week from the New York Times. The paper gathered a group of its columnists and opinion writers and asked them the same boilerplate questions we’ve been asking since Trump — and here’s the most threadbare cliché of them all — came down the escalator. Many of the writers tried their best to say something interesting and original about the figure who has dominated every facet of the news industry for eight years now. With one exception, it amounted to nothing, as it has all been said and done. Originality regarding Trump has become nearly impossible. Wit? Please.

 

We have beaten this subject to death, folks. We’ve even beaten to death the subject of beating the subject to death.

 

The writers were asked, for example, “How seriously should we take Donald Trump’s candidacy?” What inane rot. He is a former U.S. president. He announced his candidacy months ago. He has a sizeable war chest. Why wouldn’t you take his candidacy seriously?

 

Frank Bruni responded, “We should take it with maximal, bone-chilling, psyche-ravaging, hope-slaying seriousness.” Michelle Goldberg said “a Trump restoration could be an extinction-level event for American democracy.”

 

Throw in a reference to fascism and xenophobia, and you get a free coffee.

 

Another question: “What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?”

 

We don’t have to do this. We really don’t.

 

“Where to start?” asked Bruni. “Where to stop? We’re witnessing not just the unprecedented but the unimaginable . . .”

 

Et cetera, et cetera.

 

“He repeatedly has shown himself happy to trash democracy and shatter the nation to satisfy his own ego and ambition,” said New York Times editorial writer Michelle Cottle.

 

Said David French, “We know beyond a shadow of a doubt — Trump is uniquely dangerous.”

 

Which brings us to the one exception to the Times’ pitiful and uninspired cliché fest. Ross Douthat, and Douthat alone, had the moral courage to have a little fun with the exercise, to go where his colleagues didn’t dare to go for fear of appearing to be unserious thinkers. He was the only one essentially to admit, “Everything about Trump, including this exercise, is boring.” He was the only one unafraid to say the obviously correct thing we all feel and know.

 

Responded Douthat: We should take Trump’s candidacy “as seriously as a spring tempest. As seriously as a summer forest fire. As seriously as the north wind shaking the barren trees on the last day of autumn. As seriously as the winter wind, blowing in the same bare place, with the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” (Kudos to Douthat for bringing — literally — a little poetry to this exercise.)

 

Said Douthat: What matters most about candidate Trump is “that his second term was foretold in the Necronomicon, written in eldritch script on the Mountains of Madness and carved deep, deep into the white stones of the Plateau of Leng.” (A little fantasy-horror reference, anyone?)

 

In his laugh-out-loud funny contribution, Douthat is the only one who says anything of actual interest, with any wit or inspiration. Like the jester in Shakespeare, he’s out here cracking wise and delivering hard truths with a light touch. And the hard truth here is that the news industry, even though they’re eager for a Trump nomination because they think he’d be easy for Biden to beat, absolutely cannot manage another four years of the same nonsense. You can see it in the color-by-numbers news coverage, hear it in the autopiloted commentary.

 

The press likely assumes another Trump presidency will be great for business. But the media may find themselves heading down the path to terminal, soul-crushing boredom, dragging any remaining viewers and readers with them.