David Harsanyi explains in the New York Post why coverage of President Trump is not helping mainstream media outlets improve their image.
Every morning, it seems, President Trump’s most determined opponents awake to find out what sort of obnoxious, fact-challenged, puerile, norm-breaking thing he has offered that day and say to themselves: “Oh, that’s nothing. We can do something dumber than that!”
So the nation wades from one bizarre and nonsensical controversy to another. As I write this, I can’t even recall what topic we were debating last week, but I’m certain it was idiotic. Part of the problem is that those who drive coverage of Trump are obsessed with the president in unhealthy ways, ways that have absolutely nothing to do with policy or governance.
For a couple of weeks now, our self-styled guardians of democracy have engaged in a concocted controversy about the president’s mental state. It wasn’t only liberal columnists plying their readers with this wishful thinking; the entire city of Washington, according to Politico, was consumed with using the 25th Amendment to remove the president. It was a major topic of conversation on the Sunday shows. Former Trump booster Joe Scarborough squeezed a week of coverage out of it.
When the president’s physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson — a man who has been the White House doctor since 2006 — explained that Trump is, in fact, “very healthy” and has “incredible genes” and excellent cognitive health, the White House press corps was in disbelief.
