Trump is What The Media Deserve

So this is no longer a controversial opinion: Donald Trump is horrifying.

Everything he represents, everything he says, and everything he does is awful. When people need inspirations for their super-villians, they overtly bite off Donald Trump. He's defrauded people of billions of dollars. He's grievously injured and insulted billions of people. His terrible rhetoric is used as justification for hate crimes across the country. This shouldn't be news to any person who would describe themselves as “informed” or “alive.”

And I sincerely hope this next part isn't a spoiler for anyone, because I never want to have to break any news this bad to anybody: He is a more-than-viable candidate for his party's nomination for President of the United States of America.

It's painful to say. It's like saying “this sentence is false.” It's like being sentenced to tell everyone you meet that Creed is your favorite band. It's like using a saw in your right hand to saw off your right arm. If I think about it too hard, I literally get nauseous.

You almost have to stand in awe that in this wonderful golden age of never-ending information and freedom of the press, something this bat-shit crazy could even happen. Perhaps, like me, you take a shot of whiskey, read a few different headlines, sadly realize this is actually happening and that you aren't in some kind of Matrix-gone-wrong, take a second, larger shot of whiskey, and then wonder:

How did this happen? Who can we blame?

I don't mean who's responsible- we already know the players. There's Trump, but you can't really blame him for doing what he's doing- that would be like blaming shit for smelling terrible. That's just what it does. Following that same logic, you can't really blame his supporters, either- they're either gullible or equally terrible, and based on the lovely discussions I've had with some of them, not the type of people who can be convinced. In fact, there probably aren't that many of them who sincerely believe what Trump believes. Most people who support the guy understand that as awful as he is, he's the man who's most able to operate in this political climate, and therefore the man most able to represent at least some of their political interests should he be elected.

The reason that Trump has momentum is because there is no serious entity left to challenge him. Trevor Noah can poke fun, but can't say he's wrong. Same with The Onion, or any other satirical medium. His Republican opponents can't stop him, because he's simply executing the play book better than they are. His Democratic opponents, should he make it out of the primaries, are going to destroy him, but that's not for months. There's no stopping this train wreck until then.

There certainly used to be. The media greats who worked tirelessly to deliver facts- your Pulitzer's, your Koppel's, your Cronkite's- could be depended on for objectivity and fairness. Had Trump tried this in the fifties, Edward R. Murrow would have metaphorically kicked his teeth in, and that would be the last we'd hear. But they're gone, and in their place is a hallow shell of what journalism used to be.

It took Trump less than 20 seconds to prove the inefficacy of even the most serious news outlets. This is George Stephanopoulos countering the claim Trump made that Muslims were cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center towers:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Police say it didn’t happen.

TRUMP: There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down – as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don’t like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: As I said, the police have said it didn’t happen.

That should have been it. But when Trump says “It was well covered at the time, George,” enough people can bring up a memory Rolodex of some of the things that happens on Fox News to realize that Trump has as much authority over what's true as the journalists do. I hate to be the one to tell this people in the news business, but unless you have the credibility and public trust to assert facts, people can say whatever the hell they want to you, and get off unpunished in the court of public opinion.

This, unfortunately, is catharsis. Since the creation of the 24 hour news cycle, the most popular outfits in news (mostly television, but by no means exclusively) have had a problem: “How can we find faster and better ways to sacrifice our ethics, obfuscate reality, and sensationalize meaninglessness? Fuck real news, we need to appeal to the masses for larger profit margins and market shares!”

They've gotten so good at fucking up what should be somewhat straightforward jobs that there are Emmy-winning shows that exists solely to make fun of them.

And the end result is delusion and disagreements- when information should be the most accessible it's ever been, it's also become the most obscured, because news outlets traded reporting the news for 

broadcasting bullshit and lost their credibility in the process.

Now they're forced to cover Trump- the monkey at the other side of the equals sign, the result of what happens when you refuse, for decades, to uphold journalistic responsibility in exchange for profit. They have to continue to give air time and column inches to the guy who brazenly shits in the graves of the journalists who worked to ensure this could never happen. And they have to smile while they do it, because that's what the shareholders demand.

So, media- congratulations. You've lost the trust of the nation you're in charge of educating and defending, and the prize is that you get to watch an attention-whoring gorilla throw his shit at you until his momentum finally runs out and his supporters begrudgingly abandon him. Have fun with that.

If you're lucky, you might not be remembered as the people who gave him all of the fuel he needed to embarrass you.

But again- you sure as hell deserve to be.

Sam Wellborn lives in Austin, waits tables, and enjoy s long walks on the beach.  Email him or follow him on Twitter.