Back On Their Shit

 Annie Laurie is cataloging the atrocities. Perhaps the least surprising thing as we exit Trumpistan is the media rushing ahead of us to get back to the crap they've been doing for decades that, in fact, massively greased the skids into Trumpistan in the first place.

Trump is entirely a media creation - though not entirely a news media creation. Last night at dinner, Thing Two offered up the Trump was a real estate tycoon, but the evidence is pretty clear that he wasn't. He inherited a real estate empire, drove it into bankruptcy, bankrupted a casino and a football league...and so on. Trump had squandered every one of the massive advantages being born rich had afforded him, until Mark Burnett resurrected him as a "tycoon." For Cult 45, Trump's Celebrity Apprentice run is the touchstone of his presidency and personality cult. From the cruelty of "you're fired," to the staged opulence, it was all a lie, all a fake and yet it was on TV, so people believed it.

When Trump launched his presidential bid in 2015, it was largely treated as a joke, because Trump was a joke, a punchline. The elite media and elite Republican gatekeepers knew what he was - a con man with no relevant experience and the brains of bowl of room temperature chowder. 

Once he started winning contests (albeit never with a majority of the votes until mid-April), Trump was suddenly treated as a credible major party candidate. And then the bothsides began. We know all about "her emails" until it's become a punchline. We know about the "Clinton Rules." Trump is on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women? Well, Clinton got dizzy when she was sick. Same difference.

Biden largely escaped this treatment for two reasons. One was that he was not a Clinton, and his personal foibles, including his stutter, didn't resonate. The other was that he benefitted from four years of a dumpster fire that made boring old Joe look good by comparison.

I'm in the camp that, yes, our institutions saved us, because institutions are very hard to change. The Courts turned out to not be interested in overthrowing democracy. That's really not shocking. However, two of our institutions ARE broken, the Republican Party and the news media.

As we return to "normal" politics, we will have the sort of tedious bothsides nitpicking that frames every point of view as being valid. After four years of norm shattering, Biden's decision to tap a former general for Defense has resulted in pearl clutching. When he stumbled over Xavier Becerra's name, reporters rushed to cover the gaffe. Seriously? After everything that's happened?

The media are desperate both to turn the page on Trumpistan, yet also craving the ratings boost that the malign narcissist in the Oval Office gave them. They need the conflict that Mitch McConnell is more than happy to give them. They want to be able to frame every issue as being just two sides of the same coin, at a time when the GOP wants to strip away Obamacare, environmental regulations and civil and voting rights. 

In some ways the media is behaving better. They are consistently saying that Trump lost the election and he's lying about it. Great. But once Trump is gone, they will be back on their shit and paving the way for Trump 2.0.