Some things never change for the mainstream media.  After being blindsided by the results of the 2016 election, the New York Times and other media outlets professed that they would make a concerted effort to be more introspective.  They claimed they would try to better understand Trump’s appeal that won over the hearts and minds of so many of the 63 million people who voted for him.

As Michael Barboro wrote in the Times on November 9th, 2016, the morning of Trump’s historic victory, “It’s 3:30 a.m. in the newsroom, and we’re in a state of shock. Donald J. Trump, against what we thought were all odds, collected swing state after swing state after swing state. Hillary Clinton has conceded the race. Mr. Trump has won.  How did he pull off such a stunning victory? How did almost no one -- not the pundits, not the pollsters, not us in the media -- see it coming?”

Well, here we are, nearly four years later, and the media and the so-called “intellectual elites” have learned absolutely nothing from 2016.  They have not even attempted to try to answer the most fundamental questions that Barboro posed.  Instead they have fully committed themselves to their ritualistic practice of hatred and antagonism towards the president and his supporters in an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2020 election.

Over the past few months, the New York Times and the Washington Post scorned those who wanted to reopen their businesses after investing their entire livelihood into them, because they realized that destroying the Trump economy would hurt him at the polls in November.  When Trump offered to send in the National Guard to restore safety to our streets, we were told by news anchors that it would incite violence, even as we watched the Third Police Precinct in Minneapolis burn to the ground, while the nursery at St. John’s Church on Lafayette Square across from the White House erupted into a massive fireball, and as CNN Headquarters in Atlanta went up in flames.

The media that has been so dishonest in covering the health pandemic and the riots is now claiming that Trump’s reelection prospects are falling apart due to his slumping poll numbers.  In reality, they are struggling to find positive things to write about Joe Biden, so they need to continue to deflect any coverage of him by attributing failures to Trump.  Biden has very little enthusiasm, few original policies, and no grandiose plans to call his own.  The few ideas that he does have seemed to have come directly from avowed socialists Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.  Given his apparent mental decline, the media is covering for him, in a way not seen since they kept Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s clandestine polio condition off the record.

For three years, the media had no interest in macroeconomics, jobs, or the stock market.  Before the coronavirus came over from China, the Trump economy was booming, so naturally they chose to ignore it.  They never cared to mention the more than 7 million new jobs that were created since his election, or a rising income for median households that grew by $1,834 in the first ten months of 2019, or the 1.4 million Americans who were lifted out of poverty.  Only after the virus forced our economy into an artificial shutdown that caused a recession did they start citing the high unemployment numbers, once it became politically convenient to do so. 

The media never praised Trump for any of his memorable speeches, including the one he gave in Warsaw in 2017, where he said in front of a crowd that repeatedly chanted his name, “The triumph of the Polish spirit over centuries of hardship, gives us all hope for a future in which good conquers evil, and peace achieves victory over war,” or when he addressed the General Assembly at the United Nations last year, where he said, “If you want democracy, hold onto your sovereignty.  And if you want peace, love your nation.  Wise leaders always put the good of their people and their country first.”  They never cared to marvel at his speech in Ahmedabad either, in which he spoke in front of an audience of 110,000 people and said, “India’s rise as a prosperous nation is an example for every nation of the world and one of the outstanding achievements of the century.  It is all the more inspiring because you have done it as a democratic country, as a peaceful country, you have done it as a tolerant country, and you have done it as a great, free country.”

The mainstream media has failed to answer any of Barboro’s questions.  They do not want to acknowledge the issues that are important to Trump supporters.  What his supporters are seeking, seems fairly obvious.  They want a strong economy, private sector job creation, lower taxes, a soaring stock market, increased safety and security at home, more health-care choices, more school choice, and a strong national defense to protect American interests.  They want a vaccine and therapeutics that will vanquish the virus once and for all.

Finally, they want a president who is proud to be an American, proud of its institutions and its history, and respectful of our country’s Founding Fathers.  As President Trump said in his speech at Mount Rushmore on July 3, “We pay tribute to the exceptional lives, the extraordinary legacies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt.  I am here as your president to proclaim before the country and before the world, this monument will never be desecrated. These heroes will never be defamed. Their legacy will never ever be destroyed. Their achievements will never be forgotten. And Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom.”

The Democrats and the left-wing radical protesters who cause violence in our streets and tear down monuments do not stand for the issues that are important to Trump’s supporters.  That was already self-evident several months ago at Trump’s State of the Union Address, when Nancy Pelosi ripped up many of the promises that Trump is committed to fulfilling to the American people.  Each shred of paper that she tore up represented a potential Democrat voter who left the party forever, never to be seen or heard from again.  Maybe after the 2020 election, the media will figure out what went wrong this time.