Hey, contempt all around
Arecent survey of Americans’ views of the news media by Gallup and the Knight Foundation “goes beyond others that have shown a low level of trust in the media,” according to an Associated Press report of the findings, “to the startling point where many believe there is an intent to deceive.”
This comprehensive disdain for the media isn’t so “startling” if you pause to consider that much Donald Trump-related reporting resembles an unremediated Superfund site.
My opinion on that front was only hardened by the near-uniform contempt journalists showed for the audience at the recent CNN town hall with the former president. I’ve seen a lot of scorn for Trump supporters expressed over the past eight years, but never so concentrated as the wall-to-wall condemnation of the audience that night.
Any objective observer could tell that many of the New Hampshire Republicans in the audience were sitting on their hands, but that truth was inconvenient to the quickly established narrative that the audience reaction was, well, deplorable.
The New York Times reported that “the audience’s regular interruptions on behalf of Mr. Trump were like a laugh track on a sitcom.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution political columnist Patricia Murphy, reflecting a widespread appalled reaction in the legacy media, wrote that “the crowd went crazy” after Trump blasted E. Jean Carroll, winner of a partial court victory the day before, when a Manhattan jury rejected her rape allegation but found Trump responsible for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded her $5 million in damages.
Apparently, it horrifies the legacy media to encounter skepticism of any verdict against Trump or to show approval for his version of events. I was watching the town hall, and neither was the audience unanimous in its support of Trump nor did it “go crazy.”
Republican audiences are skeptical of legal attacks on Trump because they have seen so many of them. Just because people applaud various Trump remarks does not make them certified enemies of the #MeToo movement or conspiracy theorists about voting machines.
I believe many of Trump’s characterizations of the 2020 election have been flat wrong; I declared on election night and since then that Joe Biden won, and convincingly so. I have told Trump that in person.
But I also think that when he says “the election was rigged,” many in the legacy media hear only “the voting machines were fixed,” or other absurd conspiracy theories, instead of the entirely justified “the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed to help Joe Biden” or “we faced a series of improvised voting rules that struck us as deeply unfair.”
Many changes in voting law were made during the pandemic, often with little notice and zero debate, some imposed by courts or seemingly with an almost reckless disregard for traditional voting norms.
Now we’re on to the 2024 campaign, and the legacy media’s contempt for Trump and the tens of millions of Americans who support him still burns with the heat of a thousand suns. Journalists shouldn’t be surprised when they discover that the feeling is mutual.
The only safe assumption is that, for many of these voters, Trump simply has all the right enemies.