It all comes down to ratings at this point
When Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 with a 3 million vote surplus, not one news outlet mentioned her and 2020. When Trump lost in 2020 by 7 million votes, every major news outlet (on the left and right) immediately insisted he was a lock for 2024. You get how this is all ratings-driven, right?
Of all the presidential nominees of either party who have run and lost in the modern era, Trump is possibly the LEAST likely to be viable in the followup election. And that’s before getting to his cognitive and legal problems. The guy is senile and under DOJ investigation.
But the media (on the left and right) has possibly never hyped anything as much as it’s been hyping Trump 2024. That hype started literally the minute Trump was declared the 2020 loser. And for the record, MSNBC was the most blatant about it of any outlet.
Clinton, boringly competent by reality show standards, was never good for ratings. In fact the media had to make up a phony email scandal about her just to get any ratings out of her at all during the 2016 election cycle. The media was never going to turn around and spend 2017 or 2018 hyping her as a supposed 2020 candidate, because there wouldn’t have been any ratings in that either.
But Trump is great for ratings. So of course the media has spent 2021 and 2022 hyping him as a supposed 2024 candidate. Nevermind that he’s become so senile he endorsed the wrong candidate during a rally speech yesterday. Nevermind that he’s under active DOJ criminal investigation (a fact that the media spent 24 hours acknowledging when the news broke, before going right back to pretending he’s off the hook).
The media will keep falsely hyping “Trump 2024” right up until the minute he’s criminally indicted, or he announces he can’t enter the race due to some health issue (something he’s already verbally laying the groundwork for). Then the media will act like it’s shocking breaking news that he’s not running, something that no one could possibly have seen coming.
The irony is that if Hillary had been good for ratings, the media would indeed have spent 2017 and 2018 falsely hyping her as a 2020 candidate, even though it knew she wasn’t going to run again – just like it knows Trump isn’t really going to run again. But it’s all about ratings at this point.
