Trump is energizing Americans
After only a few weeks in the White House, President Donald Trump has done as promised during campaign rallies storming the country: He’s made America great again. But not necessarily in the way he intended.
Trump’s polarizing personality, his ongoing battles with the truth, his unrelenting attacks on the media, his sexist statements about women and his promise to undo Obamacare have energized Americans across the entire politiord spectrum, revving them up in unprecedented ways.
In short, Trump has breathed new life into the freedoms in the First Amendment.
Let’s start with the once dying-on-the-vine news business. For much of this century, all the news about the future of news was gloomy. Newspapers were slashing staffs, subscriptions were declining; the Internet was killing the business. Prospects weren’t much better for cable TV or the networks.
But with the “Trump bump,” there’s a resurgence of interest in the news. This attentiveness is certainly intensified by the president tweeting that the media is the “enemy of the people.”
Those fighting words brought more than 80 journalism groups together to condemn Trump’s attacks on press freedom. The public is equally energized. News subscriptions are skyrocketing, non-profit news outlets are getting record donations and cable news, such as CNN, is enjoying impressive ratings, big digital audiences and reccal profits.
“Every time he tweets, it drives subscriptions wildly,” New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said on CNN’s Reliable Sources.
The Times and some news organizations are also beefing up staff and tapping into the hunger for factually accurate, fair contextualized information. The Times, for example, added 276,000 new digital subscribers in the fourth quarter — the best quarter for the paper since 2011. It’s added
25,000 on the print side — best since 2010. The figures are also encouraging for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Pro-Publica and others.
One new digital Times subscriber is Billy Marsden, 25, who admitted that for years he’d read the paper pirating his mom’s subscription. “I started subscribing because I think it’s worth $200 to keep well-informed,” said Marsden, a San Francisco consultant with Bain & Company. “There’s never been a more important time to support an independent press than today.
As a millennial, Marsden isn’t a typical subscriber. But there’s nothing typical about these Trumpian times. In addition to creating a greater demand for reliable information, Trump’s presidency
has spiked record numbers of females interested in running for political office at the local, state and federal level.
Last month, New York Magazine reported that more than 13,000 women were planning to run for office. That’s an incredible figure considering how few women are in office. Although 51% of the population, women only hold 20% of seats in the U.S. House (84 of 435) and U.S. Senate (20 of 100). State legislatures are about 25% female, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Emily’s List, a political action committee that supports pro-choice Democratic women, said that since the November election, it has heard from more than 4,000 women who might run for office — 1,600 since the inauguration. VoteRunLead and She Should Run also report an uptick in interest.
And women are much more vocal about not putting up with sexual assault after hearing Trump brag about grabbing women on a recording shortly before the election. The incident provided an opportunity for discussions about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior.
Trump has unwittingly motivated people to get active and speak out —
even if for different political reasons.
Notably, large vocal crowds filled his campaign rallies, revealing a new wave of political interest on the right — just as an estimated 3.2 million marching the day after Trump’s inauguration showed a commitment on the left. People are civically engaged. They want their voices heard, belying the muchmaligned stereotype of an apathetic electorate.
The president’s promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has lawmakers facing angry crowds at once-ignored town hall meetings. On both sides, fear of losing health care coverage is evident.
This isn’t the same as the peace and love protests of the 1960s and 1970s that galvanized a generation and brought an end to the Vietnam War. But maybe it could be. What is significant is that Americans of all political persuasions believe they have a voice, opportunities and a news media determined — regardless of presidential assaults — to soldier on and ferret out the truth.