THE MSM HAS PTSD FROM TFG

It's time for them to get over it and start covering Joe Biden accurately

[Not-at-all-annoyed author’s note: This was originally an Op-Ed submission to the Washington Post, but I’m not cool enough for the publication which recently greenlit an OpEd from a woman who literally wrote, “I’ve never been a fan of the Republicans, but at least Donald Trump knows how to dress.”

Also, as I write this on October 4th, I still don’t have a job writing about politics (or doing anything else JFC), but the above person does. As do the mediocre white dudes who recently blasted Martin Short’s talent and Joe Biden’s age, along with the petty 6th grader at the National Review who wrote with obtuse alacrity about Taylor Swift’s popularity: “Why does anyone even like her?”

Seriously, she was paid to write that. I’m not being paid to write anything. BUT ANYWAY, happy reading this Washington Post reject and please buy my book THE SOUND OF SETTLING because Marjorie Taylor Greene is about to put out a ghostwritten crapbook full of lies and typos that I MUST outsell.]

The MSM has PTSD from eight years of covering TFG.

And that's why they have no idea how to properly cover legitimately elected President Joe Biden now.

No matter how thirsty you are for clicks, you cannot Trumpify Joe Biden. It just doesn't work. 

He’s not merely competent at his job thanks to his entire adult life of working in public service; President Biden is consistently making history while cleaning up the unholy mess Trump made during his 4-year reign of incompetence.

When President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn in, I naively thought the constant barrage of Trump coverage would at least subside just enough to make room for the good stories about what their new administration was accomplishing literally from Day One. 

Instead, the MSM continued to harvest Trump's decaying carcass to satisfy their insatiable hunger for red meat.

The interview Trump did with Kristen Welker is a prime example of how Not to MSM in 2023. Her debut on Meet the Press should’ve begun with an exclusive interview with both President Biden and Vice President Harris. Instead, we heard she “extended an invitation” to sit down with her as well.

Come on now, really? We finally get a smart woman of color anchoring a legacy news program and she chooses to kick it off with a coddling attempt to further normalize Trump?

If you were to pull up any random nightly news broadcast from any mainstream media outlet ten years ago on YouTube, you’d see a very different news media. The biggest manufactured outrages of the Obama/Biden White House years were over mustard, a tan suit, and a quiet dropping of the f-bomb.

Now look at what we’ve got.

Sad!

As MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle quipped during one of the marathon broadcasts covering one of Trump’s four arrests (FOUR! ARRESTS! IN! THE! SAME! YEAR! How is anyone treating this abnormality as normal?), “The Democrats would be so happy if we opened every broadcast with a 10-minute segment on what the Biden administration did that day.”

YES WE WOULD, PLEASE AND THANK YOU! NOW IMPLEMENT THIS PLAN IMMEDIATELY.

It’s astonishing that this late into the Trump Shell Game of Constant Distraction, journalists with lengthy track records still can’t unlock how to make Trump actually answer a question. 

Of course Trump’s criminality is absolutely newsworthy. But if the MSM was framing all of this properly, they wouldn't be reporting on anything else about him. 

We wouldn't get breathless reports on brand new--and completely meaningless--polls showing Trump is still leading any other GOP candidate. 

And when they can’t book Trump ever again, we’ll still probably see his co-conspirator surrogates given a free platform to air their conspiracies on MSNBC. 

I’m not saying we don’t see any pushback from the MSM, but I am saying it’s not nearly enough when it comes to Donald Trump. 

The only thing Trump is truly good at is bullying. He’s been preying on the weakness of others his entire life, including his main adult children, all of whom will have to now testify against him thanks to the combined efforts of New York Attorney General Letitia James and Judge “Mensch on the Bench” Arthur Engoron.

But I’ll never understand what everyone’s so afraid of? He’s 77 and is basically like if a game of Three Card Monte could wear a shiny ill-fitting Brioni suit and the world’s longest tie.

Another writer for this publication suggested “at least he can still dress.” 

DO BETTER, PLEASE. 

But I’m not here to just criticize, I’m here with a solution: start by just telling the truth about Trump and then keep just telling the truth about him. Do not quote him or the spin from his surrogates. It’s really not hard to report on him accurately.

If you can’t do that, hire me to do it for you. I couldn’t be less scared of that narcissistic coward. In fact, he’s afraid of me.

Trump blocked me on Twitter (which I will forever call Twitter, just like Stephen King, but that’s another topic for another time) in 2015 and never unblocked me. Even after he was sued and ordered to unblock everyone he had blocked. 

You can’t submit a FOIA request to the White House, so I like to imagine Trump forced to sit at his empty desk in the Oval Office and presented with that list by the DOJ.

Perusing the names while holding his phone, he begins unblocking people. Then he gets to me and says, “No, not that one. She’s TERRIBLE.”

It would sound like “Tara-ble,” because of that brash New York dumb guy way he speaks.

I know he’d never agree to an interview with me. But at least I’ll always write the truth about him. And that’s something he hates more than anything.