USA TODAY International Edition
Rieder: Media in a bind over Trump,
Like it or not, his bombastic, bigoted remarks resonate with a big chunk of the electorate
There’s no doubt struggling Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is right when he says front- runner Donald Trump is playing the media “like a fine Stradivarius violin.”
“This is what he does,” Bush said told reporters Tuesday as he campaigned in Manchester, N. H. “He’s an expert at this. He’s phenomenal at garnering attention.” Yes he is. Trump is the consummate showman, a genius when it comes to turning the spotlight on himself and keeping it there.
He has done it throughout the campaign, and there’s no doubt all of that media attention has something to do with his perch at the top of the GOP polls.
Over the past few days, the frenzy over The Donald’s appalling call Monday “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” has completely dominated political discussion.
So it’s easy to blame the media for the rise of a neophyte politician with a penchant for bombast, insults and expressing ugly, alarming sentiments. But I wouldn’t. For one thing, there’s no direct link between media hype and political success ( see Walker, Scott; Perry, Rick; Thompson, Fred; and many, many more.) Coverage doesn’t muscle people into supporting candidates. Deplore it all you will, Trump’s know- nothing, guy- in- a- bar, bigoted, nativist rhetoric is resonating big- time with a significant chunk of the Republican electorate, and has been doing so for quite some time. If people aren’t buying what you’re selling, you are going nowhere, media or no media.
More important, there’s no way you can ignore someone who has been at the top of the polls for months and has completely controlled the GOP conversation for so long. No matter what you might think, political journalists ultimately don’t ( and shouldn’t) get to determine who is covered and who isn’t. The political process does.
And when said front- runner has a ( dubious) gift for making remarks that please, excite, inflame, appall, repulse — and force competitors to respond — well, that raises the stakes enormously. You can’t just dismiss it all as too shallow and sleazy and prissily avert your gaze. It’s news.
Particularly when those statements include demonizing Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers; questioning the war-hero bona fides of John McCain; peddling fiction about thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/ 11; and, most egregiously, calling for a ban on an entire group of people from entering the USA, provoking the ( understandably) overwrought Daily News of New York to feature on its cover an illustration of Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty.
Trump’s latest riposte is so far out of the mainstream, so antithetical to what the U. S. has long stood for, that it would be criminally irresponsible to soft- pedal the remark, one which Stanford historian David Kennedy told The
Washington Post’s Dan Balz makes Trump “further out there than almost anyone in the annals of ( U. S.) history.” Especially when the “keep out all the Muslims” ploy comes from someone who may well be the presidential nominee of one of America’s two major political parties.
And yet, and yet ... Bush is on to something. All of this coverage is totally playing into Trump’s hands. He thrives on publicity. While his escalating embrace of extreme positions abhorrent to many Americans makes his general election climb, should there be one, increasingly uphill, it is music to the ears of his supporters. They are completely turned off by traditional politics and politicians, they are apprehensive about terrorist attacks, and they love Trump’s disdain for niceties and pieties.
It’s no accident the building- awall- to- keep- out- Muslims stratagem came just after news about a poll that found him trailing Ted Cruz in Iowa. Trump loves his poll- leading status, and mentions it over and over, and desperately doesn’t want it to go away.
So the bind: How can you not call Trump out on statements beyond the pale? How can the media not fact- check and discredit his frequent flights of fancy, his wanton disregard for the truth? But the more opponents denounce him, the more the factcheckers refute him, the more his substantial base loves him.
With each outrageous statement, political savants have predicted that this one, at last, was so awful, so unacceptable that it would bring Trump down. But it hasn’t happened yet. The old rules are gone, and Trump, who helped eviscerate them, knows it. It seems like nothing short of insulting the beloved Adele could stop the juggernaut, and perhaps not even that.
In 2012, when Trump flirted with a presidential run before deciding against it, I was aghast at the overheated coverage. And the near hysteria over whether he would endorse Mitt Romney was as hilarious as it was silly.
When Trump announced his 2016 candidacy in June, which seems like an eternity ago, I wondered how the media should respond to the upcoming circus. This was before Trump ascended to the top of the charts, and part of me hoped he could be ignored. But one of my favorite political savants, my colleague and USA TODAY Washington bureau chief Susan Page, knew better.
“To the degree he or anyone else is part of the political debate and a factor in the national conversation, they warrant coverage,” she told me, adding, “Does Trump connect with voters, and does he raise issues that resonate with them? That’s the question.”
For better or worse, Trump has answered that question decisively.
No matter what you might think, political journalists ultimately don’t ( and shouldn’t) get to determine who is covered and who isn’t. The political process does.