It's been something of a dark period as we've seen the press veer sharply away from telling a straight story about the Trump administration. TNR Officer Parker Molloy marked that after Trump responded to the No Kings protest with an AI-generated video of himself dropping gallons of crap on protesters from a fighter jet, the media had to scramble to smooth out the edges of the story. Was there a time when even the perception of this kind of antipathy towards ordinary citizens – say, when you call them “deplorable”? — infuriated the media. (Hell, there was a time when the political media issued a fatwa against Howard Dean for yelling at his rally.) But it never became a scandal, although I admit that the Democrats could have pushed the issue better.
And as we learned this week, pushing the issue forward can work wonders. Steve Bannon, as usual, sowed the pasture media with his claim that there is a “plan” to get Trump a third term. A news cycle then blossomed in which Trump was bombarded with questions from reporters about his plans to run again, questions he sidestepped—and those same reporters told their readers. that he doesn't rule it out. Perhaps my favorite line from this article is “Will Trump commit another crime?” there was a boomlet Time piece of magazine called “Why Trump Keeps Talking About a Third Term,” which said, “Whether Trump plans to run for president again, in violation of the Constitution, simply raising the possibility, some observers say, could be strategic in itself.”
The only problem with this statement is that Trump did not raise the issue.there were a bunch of reportersand thus turned what should have been a confrontation (“Why do your allies keep saying you plan to overturn the Constitution?”) into a playful conversation where they help Trump consider his options. (We're reliably aware that the president finds the maneuver in which he runs for vice president “too cute.”) Trump seems to have figured out the game this time. – Don't I rule it out? To one question he replied, “I mean, you’ll have to tell me.” This is what they did on the pages of their publications.
