The Sell Out
How Right Wing Media abandoned all principle and sold out for Donald Trump.
My close friend is a Trump fan. He’s a normal guy, so I find this surprising. He doesn’t spend his time infesting the comments section or tweeting memes at people. He cares little about policy, but he thinks of himself as conservative. So why does he like trump? Because “he’s bringing up the issues I care about”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I tell him that Trump isn’t conservative. That he’s inciting racism, that he’s vulgar, that he’s just plain crazy. I’m getting nowhere.
Now, my friend is an insurance salesman by trade. He’s absolutely convinced the the end goal of Obamacare is “socialist [sic] medicine”, like they have in Canada. So there’s my angle. “You know,” I say, “Trump has praised the Canadian healthcare system. I saw him say it on the debate stage.” This surprises my friend. Then — “I don’t think he supports socialist medicine. I think Rush would say something if he did.”
You see, my friend gets his politics from talk radio. If Rush Limbaugh says Donald Trump is conservative, then he will believe that he’s conservative. If Sean Hannity calls him a Great American, then that’s obviously what he is. Ever since Donald Trump announced his presidential run, he has been boosted and supported by right-wing media. And many people like my friend hear them and believe them.
What impact has all this conservative media fawning had? When Trump started running for president his approval was 20%. This is how we view Democrats. This makes sense. On nearly every major issue, from abortion to healthcare to foreign policy, Donald Trump’s views align with the Left.
FiveThirtyEight assured us in June that Trump couldn’t win because of these numbers. But then a curious thing happened. By August he had shot up to a 60% approval among Republicans. The Republican base suddenly decided that Trump was one of them.
How does this happen? Right wing media gatekeepers, who should have warned people against Trump, instead sold him as an acceptable Republican to impressionable listeners.
We rely on our media to provide us with accurate information. Conservatives have learned not to trust the mainstream media outlets claiming impartiality, because they give the news a left wing slant and bury stories they don’t like. So we listen to AM radio and watch Fox News to get our news from a right wing source. Of course we don’t believe that Fox is “fair and balanced”, but we know it’s biased to our point of view. Radio and TV is entertainment, sure, but this way it was our entertainment. And many followers don’t think of it as entertainment, but as a serous place to get their information. Which maybe should have worried us, but it’s better than just getting the news from CNN, right?
I personally have learned a lot from talk radio. Mark Levin felt almost like a mentor to me. I used to listen to him in the evenings while studying for exams in college. Some of the talk show hosts were smart and gave us information we couldn’t find elsewhere. Others simply repeated boilerplate buzzword conservatism, which we didn’t take seriously but it did help affirm our identity.
These right wing media outlets warned us when John Boehner deviated from ideological purity and raked Paul Ryan over the coals for any budget compromise. They made Marco Rubio suffer for his participation in a heretical immigration bill.
But when it came to Donald Trump, the ball was dropped. Nobody thought to call him out on his views or intemperate rhetoric — and actions, as of late. Some of these outlets have practically become Pravda for Trump. Others have merely given him a promotional platform, or haven’t called him out on his views and behavior.
Still others played a game of plausible deniability. They didn’t support him, see. They professed neutrality. But they appreciated that he was shaking things up, or pointed out why they thought his appeal dovetailed with their pet issue. It doesn't matter. By remaining neutral, they legitimized him. And the results have been catastrophic. Anyone reasonably informed who has a following yet chose to aid Trump is a bad person. I have no other way to say this.
We entrusted right wing media to form public opinion, to help us decide which candidate to support. We trusted them and they have failed us.
Why? Why did they sell out?
Maybe they did it for increased viewership and clicks. “Clickservatives” we call them.
Maybe it was the immigration issue. For single issue anti-immigration activists his intemperate rhetoric (he’s not PC!) was enough to cancel out all his other, often outright progressive views.
Maybe they were just happy to get their licks in at the “establishment”, whoever that happens to be on any given day. (Never mind that Rush Limbaugh was smoking cigars in the White House when Paul Ryan was a backbencher crank who couldn’t get anyone to sign on to his budgets.)
Maybe it was about shifting the Overton window. When Trump talks wildly about deporting every single illegal immigrant, that gives room for Ted Cruz to take a more mild stance (never mind that it didn’t work that way; Ted Cruz is now saddled with Trump’s positions).
But there is something deeper at play here, something that makes me doubt the whole direction of right wing media. And that is the fight over who sets the narrative in the media culture war.
Drudge Report’s early claim to fame was breaking the Lewinsky scandal, when traditional media didn’t want to. Andrew Breitbart broke the ACORN scandals, when traditional media didn’t want to. These early New Media conservatives weren’t fundamentally about advancing conservative ideas. Their goal was to destroying the liberal establishment media. But we allied with them because we believed their goal was our goal.
In the age of New Media, the media can no longer block stories they don’t like anymore. Many thought that the playing field was completely leveled, and right wing media would be on an equal standing with mainstream media.
But they were wrong. The Left won the New Media front too.
We laugh at Vox Media. They make so many stupid mistakes there is a “site safety” meme floating around. But who gets the last laugh, who gets the most clicks? They do. And the many people who digest their news via Facebook, Twitter and Google News — who runs those companies? Liberals, all. So long as Google is left wing we will always be behind.
So if you are a right wing culture warrior, and you are losing, you start getting desperate. You don’t care much for ideology, all points you can score are fair game. They needed a Trump card.
Donald Trump is a self promotion genius. He has the ability to completely dominate the news cycle, to force the media to talk about what he wants them to talk about. Maybe it’s because he gets them ratings with his reality show act. Or maybe he just has some kind of undefinable media ability — a sort of emotional intelligence. People blame the media for covering him so much, but I don’t think they are making a conscious decision to cover him. He just knows how to play them. Donald Trump was the perfect instrument for a desperate right wing media to use to fight their culture war.
Right Wing Media lost its way when it stopped being about ideas and started being just Anti MSM, establishment. They embraced Trump to latch on to his ability to take over the narrative, and in doing so abandoned all principle. It is indeed a moral failure of epic proportions.
So what do we do now? I have no good answers. There’s talk of a List, of organizing a blackballing of anyone who ever supported Trump. “Are you or have you ever been favorable to Trump?” sort of thing. I’m not sure that approach is right, and sometimes by their own rules the people organizing it should be on the list. But I do think we need to clean house and clearly identify those elements that aren’t helpful.
As it stands now, our media outlets are either liberal/progressive or populist/nativist. Classic liberal conservatives lack a voice. We need a new media. But more than just a cull of traitors, we need to rethink and refocus our view. It can’t be just about clicks and ratings and beating the hated media. The intellectual boutique magazines always knew they were in the minority, and focused on giving that minority a platform of sorts. Perhaps that’s all conservative media can strive to do.
