To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Trump has announced he’s running again. Okay, apparently some people were surprised, turning out breathless articles about how Republican leaders wanted Trump to wait so as not to distract from the Georgia runoff. What about the big picture? What about the good of the party?
Yeah, right. The past six years have made it flamingly obvious that Trump cares nothing for the good of anyone but Donald J. Trump. If the price of not announcing, of not grabbing the spotlight, was a nuclear strike, his only concern would be to ensure he could make it to a fallout shelter.
Even before that, I was seeing one Trump story a day about how he said Governor Youngkin of Virginia had a “Chinese” name or insulted Mitch McConnell’s wife or had yet another freakout about how the election was stolen and the candidates he endorsed did awesome (they didn’t).
Enough. Sure, I realize we have to cover Trump if he does something significant like threatening reporters who cross him with anal rape (not at his hands, of course. He outsources his bullying). And cover his campaign. But we don’t need to cover every freakout, every lie, every accusation about fake media or how everyone who dares criticize him is engaged in a witch hunt, waaaah, why is the world so mean to widdle baby Donny? This stuff falls into a different category than Trump making a legal claim all those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago were his by right.
Simply making lying, racist claims shouldn’t be news. That Trump squeals every time he’s criticized isn’t news. It won’t become news now that he’s running again. Not covering all his campaign-launch speech is a good start. Save the coverage for when he does something or he’s charged with something, not just when he mouths off. Or do a weekly fact-check correcting whatever lies he’s said — that might be a good idea now that Facebook has declared Trump off-limits for fact-checking.
It’s even worse with Newt Gingrich. He hasn’t held elected office in two decades. He has no more power than any other pundit. He’s never had an intelligent opinion on anything and 90 percent of his opinions are lies, like his old claims atheists are imposing sharia on America. Yet just a couple of months ago Newsweek gave him space for a column (no, I’m not linking to it). Just let him go down to the dust from which he sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung.
Trump will be the nominee. Despite some Republicans saying he’ll do more harm than good — hopefully they’re right — Ron DeSantis will not beat him even if DeSantis runs. The base still adores Trump and Republicans will fall in line for their own self interest. Plenty of Republicans denounced him as the wrong candidate in 2016 … until he became their candidate. Few of them stuck the course; it will be the same this time. That still doesn’t make his idiotic babble newsworthy. Certainly not two years before the election. It’s easy coverage to fill column inches in a print newspaper and time on a news broadcast — but still.
Not giving full coverage on his campaign speech is a good start. And if your coverage is along the lines of “With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement Tuesday night that he was running for president,” I’m all in.
Fraser Sherman's Blog 