Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago meltdown
Earlier today the Supreme Court confirmed what anyone paying close attention knew all along: Donald Trump was never going to be removed from the 2024 ballot. Even if he had been removed from the ballot, it would only have been in the kinds of states where he was going to get zero electoral votes to begin with. This was all one big, prolonged, empty story that distracts everyone from a lot of real stories.
But because the media falsely built up this “Trump is disqualified” thing as if it were something of consequence, of course they had to let Trump gloat once it ended up going nowhere.
Major media outlets including MSNBC put Trump live on the air at Mar-a-Lago in order to let him ramble about how thrilled he was to have won the case. Katy Tur is taking a lot of heat in particular for this decision, and she deserves it. She’s one of the most dishonest hosts in the history of MSNBC. But this isn’t just about her. Name one MSNBC host who at any point was willing to point out that the “Trump is disqualified” thing was going to be an obvious dead end. You can’t.
So because the media falsely built up the “Trump is disqualified” thing as if it were a real thing, Trump got to benefit from the perception of a major victory today. In reality this wasn’t a victory for him, because it was never a thing to begin with.
The only saving grace was that Trump’s “victory” speech was as much of a dementia riddled meltdown as ever. And each time the general public is exposed to that kind of thing (not Trump’s irrelevant base, whose votes are already baked in, but the voters closer to the middle who actually decide elections), it makes Trump more non-viable than never. But at this point the political media is failing us on every level – including your “friends” at MSNBC. It’s not going to get better until you stop watching, which is the only way to force them to rethink their approach.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report