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Comment by Veen | Hacker News Reader

There's truth in the idea that Trump supporting an idea made it toxic even if it was a good idea, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because the anti-Trump media attacked everything Trump said, whether it was sensible or not. They could have taken a neutral perspective and assessed his speech on its merits, but they did not and they bear some repsonsibility for that.

(To be clear: I'm not a Trump supporter and I think that when he was right it was by accident rather than design. However, many media organizations shamed themselves by embracing partisanship and abandoning even the pretence of neutrality).

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Are there a lot of examples of this? In general when Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't go too far overboard. The most obvious example was about vaccination itself. While people were worried that he would push out a vaccine that wasn't ready, people were on board with vaccination.

That said, I do think that Trump's brand was largely about division on social issues. So to that extent he often put at the forefront of his narratives positions that forced you to take a side. E.g., should Kaepernick be fired or not. Etc...

> In general when Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't go too far overboard.

I'd say those aren't the problem so much as the borderline cases where there are true and untrue interpretations of a certain statement, but of course they ran with the most uncharitable possible interpretation because they're convinced Trump is a ruthless dictator in the making.

I think media treatment of him was really weird. Some things were exaggerated, but something like suggesting, during the '16 campaign, in a plainly favorable tone, that his supporters might assassinate his opponent if she won, should have been the only thing anyone wanted to ask him or his proxies about until he was hounded out of public life. Instead it was dropped surprisingly quickly.

I think the media treatment was fair and evenhanded. I think what has changed with the media is that nothing sticks for very long. As you note, what might have been a big story in the past has a really short news cycle now. What was remarkable about Trump was the shear volume of stories -- each lasted for days, but was then followed up immediately (or concurrently) with another. Even Jan 6 is having trouble sticking in the news.

I think this was one of the issues that the Republicans ran into with the election. They thought that certain stories about Biden would stick and last. They missed that none of these stories last any more. You need a huge volume of stories to paint a narrative over a long period of time.

Someone else mentioned the uncharitable interpretations of things he said. That was earned over years of such statements. It wasn't a new isolated incident.

> Someone else mentioned the uncharitable interpretations of things he said. That was earned over years of such statements. It wasn't a new isolated incident.

You're right to such a degree that I distinctly remember my first impression of him being formed by Rush Limbaugh (my dad was a listener) making fun of what a dishonest, sleazy joke of a human being Trump was. Must have been some time in the 90s. His reputation was decades in the making, and at one time that take on him was practically universal. The transformation was fascinating to watch.

(can't edit, but not sure if the DV was over disbelief or for some other reason—if the latter, cool, no problem, I take no issue with whatever your reason was; if the former, it's on YouTube and it's exactly what I've said it is, though on review technically he may merely have been suggesting that the "2nd amendment people" [as he put it] might shoot Supreme Court justices... so, you know, not exactly better. It's not clear which of those—or, maybe both—were what he had in mind when he said it.)

This is kind of arguing in circles, though. A big part of the reason media is so hard on Trump is that he is classless and they were embarrassed he was their president. It's not like his public image was any better in 1990 well before he ever openly declared political ambitions and decided he was a Republican. He'd been a sideshow clown for decades. Arguably, the ridiculous level of polarization we already had is the only reason he got to where he is. Even most Republicans were embarrassed of him until he won the nomination and they rallied to the only option left that wasn't a Democrat. But thanks to having way too many candidates in the primary, he didn't need the support of "most" Republicans. He just needed more than Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush.

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