Eric Boehlert’s Press Run is a must read today. (If you aren’t subscribing already, you really should. You are going to need his independent voice to get you through this time. The media is in chaos.)
Anyway, he writes today about the ongoing obsession with the “Trump voter” and he is 100% correct:
Shining an unprecedented spotlight on supporters of the losing presidential candidate, the press continues its four-year love affair with Trump voters. Forever centering them as the unequivocal focal point of American politics, news outlets are making sure to check in on them as they defiantly reject Trump’s lopsided electoral loss to Joe Biden.
Journalists are swooping into GOP-friendly outposts such as Youngstown, Ohio (ABC News), Colorado Springs (Washington Post), and Mason, Texas (New York Times), for what seem like group-hug sessions, as the press continues to give close-minded Trump supporters a platform to spread untrue claims about the election and about Biden.
“Did I miss all the stories about the 78 million Biden supporters who triumphed — and their wants and needs — and how rural-centric Trump supporters need to reach out and understand the massive urban/suburban majority in America?” asked SiriusXM host, Michael Signorile, watching the flood of media attention given to Trump loyalists in recent days.
The media’s firm fixation on Trump voters isn’t normal — the idea that our politics needs to concern itself with the bruised feelings of voters who supported the presidential loser has no basis in how the press traditionally views the election season. And yet, here we are as the press rushes in to hear and amplify Trump voters’ anger, angst and concern about the president’s loss, and push fabricated claims about voter fraud.
After Trump’s surprise win in 2016, news executives beat themselves up for “missing” the story and, led by the Times, launched four years of Trump voter stories — often from Midwestern diners — and presented their worshipful views on Trump as borderline sacrosanct.
“As time went on and Trump consistently proved to be unpopular — his aggregate approval rating never got above 50% — the press continued to plug away at profiling Trump supporters,” Oliver Willis notes this week. “Every misstep and disastrous decision he made in the presidency was greeted with another journalistic adventure into a diner that was inevitably packed with Trump voters who still backed Trump.”
• “I don’t see how Michigan could vote blue after everything that’s happened to us. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
• “Biden is in bed with China.”
• “For me to believe that Joe Biden got 78 million votes, I find that very hard to believe.”
• “I will never accept a Biden win.”
• “These mystery votes all came in for Biden and zero for Trump. Something is definitely fishy there.”
• “I will not believe that [Biden] is a legitimate winner.”
• “Everything I worked for, Biden wants to give to the immigrants to help them live, when they don’t do nothing but sit on their butts.”
There’s nothing wrong with the daily casting a wide net to get the temperature of voters. But that’s not what happened. For years, the media’s voter coverage has been completely obsessed with white, and usually rural Trump voters who adore the president.
Why the endless media desire to still normalize white Trump voters who live outside reality and reject Covid science along with election math? Especially when Americans, by five million votes, just rejected their standard bearer.
Without an ounce of self-awareness, the Post over the weekend noted that sore losers used to be ridiculed in American society. “But Trump’s refusal to concede to President-elect Joe Biden and his insistence, without evidence, that the election was rigged against him has focused a spotlight on a rapidly shifting culture’s growing acceptance of losers who push back against the truth.” [Emphasis added.]
There’s been a “rapidly shifting” cultural movement to accept sore losers, the Post reports, without noting the shift is being fueled by the media, which have completely embraced the sore loser mentality of Trump voters.
Last week, the Los Angeles Times cleared out space just so Trump voters could be heard. “As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters,” announced Letters editor Paul Thornton.
The brazen move wasn’t even unique. In 2018, the New York Times did the same thing: “In the spirit of open debate, and in hopes of helping readers who agree with us better understand the views of those who don’t, we wanted to let Mr. Trump’s supporters make their best case for him as the first year of his presidency approaches its close.” It’s funny how “in the spirit of open debate,” neither newspaper has devoted its letters pages exclusively to Democratic supporters.
On Sunday’s ABC News’ “This Week,” Martha Raddatz sat down with a handful of Trump voters who spouted baseless claims about election fraud, while the host offered almost no pushback. One week after Biden flipped five states, including long-time Republican bastions, Georgia and Arizona, none of the Sunday network talk shows featured a panel discussion with Biden voters.
Instead, we get kid-glove coverage of Trump supporters, who are allowed to launch election lies and nasty attacks on Biden, under the guise of news. Here’s a collection of Trump Voter quotes, taken from the recent Post, Times and ABC News reports:
• “It was a recipe for disaster when they decided to have these mail-in votes.”
• “When we deal with globalists and liberalism, I would put absolutely nothing past them.”
What’s the point of this endless media exercise? What’s the news value in providing a platform for Trump voters so they can regurgitate these hollow, and often hateful, claims on behalf of a candidate who just became only the fourth U.S. incumbent president in 150 years to lose his re-election bid?
Trump voters’ feelings aren’t news.
I don’t think the media will ever get past their obsession with these folks. After all, they were pretty much obsessed with them even before Trump came along to claim them. You know, “Real Americans.”
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