It's not half the country. It's 40 percent of eligible voters. It's a loud, obnoxious minority that, thanks to the magic of the electoral college, has an outsized chance at regaining the white house.
Yeah, the fact that people applauded is an important “part of the story.” Is CNN going to explain why? Are they going to say that it’s bad that people applauded lies and threats of violence? No; of course they’re not. Because Chris Licht wants Trump to win. He just knows he can’t actually say that. Not yet anyway.
Licht doesn't need to affirmatively support Trump to be an enabler, and it's a mistake to assume that he does. All he needs to do is externalize the decision-making about Trump, something that media is very used to doing in a political context after years of jamming every single policy question into some kind of "both sides" framework. By disconnecting voter decisions about Trump from the information they have on him and ignoring or externalizing that whole process, Licht arrives at a state where polls and reactions are inherently newsworthy. This is how we arrive at horserace journalism in general, but it's especially notable for the way that Trump has caused many consumers and even some producers of news to snap out of that paradigm.
The odious thing in Licht's behavior at this point isn't that he's adopted a particular analysis of Trump, it's his flat refusal to do any such thing. If you've read Bulwark's analysis of Lindsey Graham's descent into Trumpist reactionary politics, here's a useful comparison: Licht is now more or less in the same position that Graham was in from Trump's nomination into the beginnings of his presidency, before Comey's firing. It's possible Licht might snap out of it at some point - Liz Cheney did so when she was much further in the pipeline - but given his position and the history available to him, I'd say it's pretty unlikely.
It's not half the country. It's 40 percent of eligible voters. It's a loud, obnoxious minority that, thanks to the magic of the electoral college, has an outsized chance at regaining the white house.
Yeah, the fact that people applauded is an important “part of the story.” Is CNN going to explain why? Are they going to say that it’s bad that people applauded lies and threats of violence? No; of course they’re not. Because Chris Licht wants Trump to win. He just knows he can’t actually say that. Not yet anyway.
Licht doesn't need to affirmatively support Trump to be an enabler, and it's a mistake to assume that he does. All he needs to do is externalize the decision-making about Trump, something that media is very used to doing in a political context after years of jamming every single policy question into some kind of "both sides" framework. By disconnecting voter decisions about Trump from the information they have on him and ignoring or externalizing that whole process, Licht arrives at a state where polls and reactions are inherently newsworthy. This is how we arrive at horserace journalism in general, but it's especially notable for the way that Trump has caused many consumers and even some producers of news to snap out of that paradigm.
The odious thing in Licht's behavior at this point isn't that he's adopted a particular analysis of Trump, it's his flat refusal to do any such thing. If you've read Bulwark's analysis of Lindsey Graham's descent into Trumpist reactionary politics, here's a useful comparison: Licht is now more or less in the same position that Graham was in from Trump's nomination into the beginnings of his presidency, before Comey's firing. It's possible Licht might snap out of it at some point - Liz Cheney did so when she was much further in the pipeline - but given his position and the history available to him, I'd say it's pretty unlikely.