Our press has an unhealthy obsession with “Trump’s base.” The obstinate 38% or 39%, that the media can’t stop talking about. The ones who still support Trump.
There is now, and has always been, an immovable base on both the Democratic and Republican wings of the electorate. However, the media is unconcerned with the base on the left because they view them as normal reasonable people and there is no need to examine or discuss them. The world will be fine if they remain right where they are. However, the base behind Trump is a different story.
The origin of the press’ infatuation with the Trump base was the election loss of Hillary Clinton. The media believes it is their job to shape public opinion. The clip below supports this. An MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski was caught in a Freudian slip as she warned her audience about Trump: “He [Trump] could control exactly what people think, and that is our job.”
The NY Times, CNN and MSNBC spent the campaign season ripping Trump apart with innuendo and lies; racist, sexist, assault, Russian spy, unfit, narcissistic, violence inducer and homophobic. And yet Trump won and Hillary lost. They saw his win as their failure and as their sin.
All sins need repentance and a crucial aspect of penance is a vow not to repeat the same sin again. Within the first week of the election-postmortem, the press went on a mission to understand these people who defied them and voted Trump into office. The manner in which they studied Trump voters resembled more of a recon mission of the enemy looking for weaknesses to exploit. The media needed to turn some his base to their side.
CNN sent correspondent Van Jones out to middle America to see what was wrong with these insubordinate fools. CNN host Alison Camerota conducted (video link) focus groups with Trump supporters. Political pundits and pollsters chastised themselves for not understanding the plight of these Trump voters. In time, the quest morphed into an angry frustrated mission. This base of voters became the silent enemy of the media. An enemy in need of conquering. A conquering that is proving difficult to achieve.
The warped sense of their role as mind-molders had a detrimental effect on the press. They devolved further into what we have now. A bunch of folks hell-bent on destroying Trump without any need to hinge their reporting to reality. They feel a responsibility to change the minds of Trump’s base to do the right thing and vote Trump out.
The Russia collusion story dominated the airwaves for months, the press abandoned the need for facts or actual news. The mission wasn’t to inform the public but rather to say both “Trump” and “Russia” together in the same headline to get the Trump-base to change its god-damned mind. And when that massive story didn’t dupe the Trump supporters they felt failure. In the following clip, we see CNN report on how their Russia story didn’t persuade the base.
“…not any of them [the base] willing to entertain that there might be more than just smoke to this [Russia] fire.”
The media is now constantly reporting polls to see if their propaganda is breaking the base. It never does. So after they perform a little self-flagellation, and some mocking of Trump supporters, the feeling of ‘if at first you don’t succeed try-try again” perseveres and a new slew of stories awaits on the horizon.