> I’m no fan of Peter Thiel, the billionaire who put Gawker out of business by bankrolling a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan, the professional wrestler. In fact, I find him appalling.
> But when he spoke recently at the National Press Club, he said something that struck me as quite perceptive about Donald Trump.
> “The media is always taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously, but it always takes him literally,” Thiel said. Journalists wanted to know exactly how he would deport that many undocumented immigrants, or exactly how Trump would rid the world of the Islamic State. We wanted details.
> But a lot of voters think the opposite way: They take Trump seriously but not literally.
> They realize, Thiel said, that Trump doesn’t really plan to build a wall. “What they hear is, ‘We’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy.’ ”
> Trump, quite apparently, captured the anger that Americans were feeling about issues such as trade and immigration.
Thiel was completely correct on this. It's a sad(der) version of the stereotype of journalism just being uncritical transcribers of the powerful, except journalists were doing it (ostensibly) to hurt Trump.
It's a great example of the damage of unconscious bias. If someone I love tells me they'll climb the highest mountain and swim the widest ocean to make me happy, I'll love them even though I know that's a literal lie. If someone I hate tells me the sky is blue, I still look for a way to pedantically correct them.
I know it's popular for journalists to be opinionated and fight for the truth and all, but I can't help but think that if journalists even tried to just believe in that impossible ideal of idealism, more of them would have come to empathize with Trump's supporters -- not the wacky crazy ones that make for good TV -- and see Trump's promises as a signal of priorities, not a literal fulfillment that Americans want.