For years, members of the media beat themselves up for playing into Donald Trump’s hands by giving him too much oxygen. But eight (or so) years into the Trump show, the media isn’t quite as enamored as they once were—a development that is causing some observers to complain that his court cases and his insane political rhetoric are not garnering enough attention. By keeping a lower profile, he’s not just surviving. He’s thriving.
As a result, some Democrats are suddenly clamoring for more Trump coverage. As Reid J. Epstein of The New York Times recently observed, “Criticizing the news media for giving Mr. Trump a platform is out. Quietly pining for major networks to again broadcast live coverage of Trump campaign rallies is in.”
This latest bit of media analysis could change. When it comes to Trump and the media, the latter are “damned if they do and damned if they don’t.”
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The self-flagellation has run the gamut. It’s a mistake to platform Trump. It’s a mistake to not cover his craziness so that people can have a front row seat for his evil antics. And if the media (or the legal system) go after him too aggressively, they risk playing into his “outlaw appeal.”
It’s impossible to pinpoint the correct level of Goldilocks coverage. But at some point, the smart place to land was to suggest that Trump should not be covered like a normal politician.
Along those lines, back in 2016, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank offered the media some sensible advice: “No more live, wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s rallies and events,” “No more Trump call-ins to TV shows,” and “Rigorous use of real-time fact-checking, pointing out Trump’s falsehoods in the stories in which they’re reported.”
It took years, but each of Milbank’s elements were eventually incorporated into the media’s coverage of Trump. And yet, Trump seems to be doing pretty well—which either means that a) the impact of Trump’s media manipulation was overblown to begin with, or b) the damage has already been done.
I’m inclined to believe the latter. Media attention greatly benefitted Trump when he needed legitimization, but times have changed.
Truth be told, building the perfect beast (er, Trump) took decades, and the entertainment media probably had a greater hand in it than did cable news or the press corps.
It’s almost impossible to overestimate the benefit that came from hosting NBC’s The Apprentice, for example. Not only did this make Trump a household name, it also cast him as a powerful business leader.
We have not yet seen what it would be like if Oprah Winfrey, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, George Clooney, or Tom Hanks ran for president. Ronald Reagan went pretty far after working as an actor and serving as governor of California (we may as well throw Arnold Schwarzenegger’s name into that hypothetical group, though he isn’t eligible to be president).
How much of Trump’s appeal can simply be chalked up to his celebrity status?
A celebrity would naturally garner earned media from an industry that is chasing clicks and ratings.
Along those lines, back in March 2016, it was reported that Trump’s candidacy had amassed almost $2 billion worth of free media. He ended up more than doubling that amount.
That certainly didn’t hurt Trump. These days, however, the coverage (or lack thereof) is pretty much irrelevant. This is partly because Trump enjoys essentially a 100 percent name ID. And—love him or hate him—almost nobody is undecided about him, which is to say that additional information is not likely to sway them either way.
Meanwhile, in the years since Trump came down that escalator, the media landscape has changed dramatically.
Right-wing voters don’t trust (and often don’t watch) mainstream media coverage, and they are therefore unpersuadable. This was already starting to happen before 2016, but Trump’s overt campaign to delegitimize “fake news” was a calculated effort to expedite this technological shift.
The exodus of conservative viewers, readers, and listeners was also helped along by an increased liberal media bias, which evolved as the MSM catered to their own growing tribe of Trump-hating subscribers and viewers.
In a world where this media sorting is now essentially a fait accompli, it makes sense for Team Biden to be rooting for more Trump coverage—if for no other reason than to aggravate and turn out the progressive base who is left watching the establishment media.
It’s ironic that Trump, a consummate media grandstander, now benefits from staying out of the headlines, but that seems to be the case.
Perhaps this conclusion isn’t surprising. In the final days leading up to the 2016 election, Trump kept a surprisingly low profile. That strategy probably helped him win.
Likewise, during arguably the best election year Republicans have enjoyed in the Trump era (Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s election in 2021), Trump was largely silent and mostly kept at arm’s length by Team Youngkin.
A similar phenomenon could now be taking place. Part of the magic of Trump is that when the media benefited by covering him more, that helped Trump politically. And now that the media’s financial incentives may call for less coverage, they are once again doing him a huge favor.
As the saying goes, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
