Something else I've been wanting to say and the Brennan thing is maybe a good example. If you're in the media and your job is to find panelists to say the most inflammatory things possible (in the name of shining an aggressive light on the activities of the Trump administration), you're going to be happy that the former CIA director is calling Trump a traitor. You're going to trot it out right away and high-five and see it as an unmitigated good. But I wonder how carefully the media has considered its role. There is actually a reason not to immediately go with the most incendiary opinion available.
But when I think about that, I get into uncomfortable questions about the motives of the press. In the case of the MSM, is the goal to shine a light on perfidy? To make sure Trump is not "normalized"? To keep those clicks and ratings up? To create whole beats like Chris Cillizza's editor-at-large with daily or more often "analyses" telling people what the news means? And same thing with Fox or Breitbart or whoever. What do they see as their role?
There have been a couple of times when public opinion really seemed to crest against Trump: during the family separations thing, and during Helsinki, and to a somewhat lesser extent after the summit with Kim Jong-un. Those were times when I felt the potential of a genuine anti-Trump groundswell. But I have an uneasy feeling that the relentless news coverage, the seeming need to fill the air 24-7 with analysis, opinions, tidbits, tweets etc., leaves little room for the average person to simply consider what they know and begin to form their own opinions about how they feel about the job Trump is doing. I can see why the press does it; they feel they have to emphatically
not normalize Trump, or, in Fox's case to defend Patriot Trump against the gutter press that would bring him down.
I emphatically do not have any answers about this. I wonder if the whole country might be better off with a 24-hour or 48-hour blackout on Trump news. - or maybe just Trump speculation. No reading the tea leaves about Manafort, no analysis of whether Trump might or might not have said the "N word," no wondering what Omarosa really has.
As I write this Mom is listening to MSNBC and though I find it significantly less obnoxious than Fox, it's still kind of obnoxious. They're pumping up how agonizing tomorrow will be for Trump. But then, they'll have to fill the air tomorrow night as well. Seemingly
everything has to be portrayed as the last straw.
Maybe we could just has a moratorium on last-straw-ism
ETA: And obviously I am speaking as someone who wants him gone. But I want that to come as the result of a growing consensus that he is not fit to serve. And IMO that requires at least some degree of reflection, away from the shiny people on TV telling us what to think.
