Now Trump is an "independent" president? Give us a break
MONDAY, SEP 11, 2017 8:00 AM EDT
While his administration works to enact the most right-wing agenda in history, Trump basks in unearned adulation
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
During the first months of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was clearly operating by the seat of his pants. Because of that, many a jaded pundit declared Trump the flavor of the week and said he was no different than earlier fads like Herman Cain in 2012 — or maybe, if he was lucky, Fred Thompson in 2008, another TV star (but one who at least had political experience). " target="_blank">Elite reporters literally laughed out loud at the suggestion Trump might win.
When Trump began amassing delegates, everyone began to take him more seriously, and a new narrative emerged: Media pros anxiously waited for what they assumed would be an inevitable “pivot” to recognizable presidential behavior. They seemed to believe that his bizarre antics were a sideshow that he was cleverly deploying to set himself apart from his staid, more experienced rivals.
It wasn’t as if Trump had a set of issues that differed wildly from the pack. He took a different tack on “free trade” than the standard Republican position, and he promised not to cut Social Security and Medicare, which wasn’t much of a stretch since the others didn’t place their usual emphasis on “deficits” and “entitlements” in that campaign either. He was notably soft on Russia, but most of his agenda was standard GOP dogma — he just didn’t bother with the dog whistle. Trump spoke like a right-wing radio pundit instead of a politician trying to cover up the fundamental authoritarianism, racism, xenophobia, gun fetishism and plutocratic protectionism — which after all have been the basis of the Republican agenda for decades.
His voters loved it. Because those voters were heavily drawn from the white working class, the press saw him as “populist” even though only his trade policy and his vague promises to bring back manufacturing jobs from overseas fit that definition.
Trump has never made that pivot to normal, presidential behavior, but the mainstream media has declared one every couple of months, whenever he behaved in some way that seemed recognizably “presidential,” like ordering air strikes or giving a State of the Union address that didn’t include stories of mass executions with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. And the media still clings to the notion that Trump is a “populist.”
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http://www.salon.com/2017/09/11/now-trump-is-an-independent-president-give-us-a-break/
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Can the media just stop?! Please stop trying to make him "independent", "normal", or "Presidential"!!!
