Among certain sequestered circles, a particular species of chicken-egg debate is now vogue. Did the media create Donald Trump, or is it Trump who has inspired the present media frenzy? The celebrity GOP presidential candidate owes his ascension in the polls to a variety of factors, and most of them are not rooted in his coverage in either the mainstream or conservative press. The retrospectives on Trump’s rise and eventual fall should be left to the historians, particularly when there is no evidence, yet, that indicates his candidacy is even close to being over. Rather, it’s more constructive to ask why Trump became the central focus of the 2016 race, and there are more facets to that project than political reporters condescendingly examining and classifying the Trump backer as though he were some strange new breed. If support for Trump is a legitimate expression of the righteous outrage of an aggrieved GOP voter base, then he should be treated like a viable candidate. But the mainstream press has done precisely the opposite. The media treats the celebrity candidate’s campaign like a curiosity, and he is afforded privileges no other candidate would be allowed.
On Sunday morning, the talk shows were again dominated by 2016 politics with Republican and Democratic candidates submitting themselves to grueling inquiries from the press. Donald Trump, too, endured a grilling on CNN’s State of the Union, ABC’s This Week, and NBC’s Meet the Press. Unlike most prominent political figures, however, Trump was allowed to conduct his interviews over the phone.
It’s extraordinarily rare that a presidential candidate is allowed to refuse even a remote broadcast when being interviewed for a major network. Allowing a candidate the privilege of phoning their interview in, and giving them the opportunity to access notes and the Internet during that dialogue, is an advantage that others in Trump’s position are not provided. In the absence of extraordinary conditions that prevent the subject from joining the host in studio or appearing in front of a remote broadcast camera, networks have previously had a habit of declining to extend that kind of deference to any one campaign. Indeed, Fox News Sunday refused to allow Trump to appear on their broadcast if he would only do so by telephone. The Manhattan-based media maven has no excuses for refusing to appear in person for his interviews save for his determination to preserve a level of comfort to which he has become accustomed. And yet, most of the press willingly accepts Trump’s preconditions; circumstances they would reject for any other candidate.
It would be one thing if this kind of docility from the watchdog press was an anomaly, but Trump is a virtual ubiquitous presence on network and cable news. He is a regular guest on every cable news morning show. If you missed it, don’t fret; he is just as likely to be heard prior to drive time as he is in prime time. And almost always on the phone, or in a prerecorded interview in the gilded lobby of one of his high-rise properties. For the political entertainment business, and cable news is the entertainment business, the controversy and ratings he draws are simply too good to pass up. If that means favoring Trump with circumstances that no other candidate would be offered, so be it.
It isn’t merely his manner of supplication from the press that is more than a little untoward. When the real estate mogul performs his tired and intentionally provocative act for his cable news interlocutors, he is treated like a performer rather than a politician.
In an appearance with CNN host Don Lemon on Friday night, Trump mounted a withering verbal assault on Fox News host Megyn Kelly which included the veiled accusation that her tough line of questioning at last Thursdays’ debate was the result of the fact that the moderator was contending with her menstrual cycle. The shocking comment led to the candidate’s banishment from the influential RedState gathering over the weekend, but it didn’t yield one follow-up question from Lemon. But for the outrage over Trump’s remark on social media, the comment might have gone entirely unnoticed. Does anyone believe Lemon, finely attuned as he is to even barely perceptible displays of bias, failed to catch the sexist slur?
It isn’t merely Trump’s penchant for offensive comments that his hosts on cable news outlets allow him to issue unchecked. The candidate’s appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday, a program that prides itself on its seriousness, exposed the extent to which cable hosts are willing to abdicate their responsibility to their viewing audiences.
After he again hurled slights in the direction of Fox News, Megyn Kelly, and RedState’s Erick Erickson, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski admirably attempted to steer the interview in a direction that might shed some light on Trump’s murky policy preferences. When asked how Trump would help women get access to capital in the form of small business loans or salary hikes, Trump said he would be “the best for women” and proceeded to attack Jeb Bush for lagging in the polls and praise his own ability to generate ratings. When Brzezinski asked the question again, Trump outright refused to answer. “As far as questions like that, Mika, I’m not going to do it on this show,” he said. “I don’t want to discuss it on this show.” A self-respecting news program might have ended the song and dance there. Instead, the spectacle continued for another six agonizing minutes.
Next up, former diplomat and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, pressed Trump to provide further details concerning his thoughts on foreign affairs. “What is your approach to ISIS in both Iraq and Syria,” he asked. Trump replied that “we need to take them out strongly,” and that would include the use of “boots on the ground” to “take the oil.” You heard correctly. “I’d put a ring around it and I’d take the oil for our country,” he added. “I’d just take the oil.”
This is not the first time Trump has contended that the United States should invade and, presumably, annex the resource-rich areas of Iraq and Syria currently in ISIS’s control. National Review’s Jim Geraghty displayed undue courtesy to Trump by dissecting this policy preference – one that predates the rise of ISIS — and noted the various ways in which his proposal is both reckless and unproductive. Any other candidate on either the Democratic or Republican side of the aisle who floated this proposal would not get a wry smile from the president of the Council on Foreign Relations or MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. The record would scratch, jaws would drop, and the remainder of the interview would be devoted to dissecting this fanciful notion. But not Trump. He gets a pass.
“Why do you think you continue to stay at the top of the polls despite the fact the establishment press and the Republican establishment in Washington predict your demise every two or three days?” Scarborough closed admiringly. It has been said and said again that Trump’s appeal is due in large part to economic anxiety, a crisis of confidence in American institutions, and the failure of Republican leaders in Congress to meet the expectations they set for themselves. If, however, the “establishment” press consists of network and cable news, it’s impossible to rule out as a contributing factor the favors his candidacy is granted by the political media.
