Morning Glory: Trump Derangement Syndrome was real. So is 'Long TDS'

COVID-19 killed at least 7 million people worldwide and more than a million in the United States. The "official" worldwide deaths number is very low because China and other totalitarian states didn’t report accurately (just as China concealed the source of the virus) and poor countries had no infrastructure for counting and reporting. But COVID was the deadliest pandemic in the world since the Spanish flu that appeared at the end of World War I. 
 
"Long COVID" impacted hundreds of thousands of Americans and still does though many have recovered or are recovering completely. It’s a debilitating suite of symptoms that follow in the wake of the virus and while recovery has occurred for many, and is occurring for more, getting through "long COVID" often only occurs after years of rest and treatment. 
 
There are parallels in the media, both legacy and new media, to COVID and "Long COVID," parallels that are useful to spell out. The parallels present life and death issues for the news platforms involved and the careers of those afflicted. 

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"Trump Derangement Syndrome" was real and on open display before and most certainly after President Donald Trump’s shock win in 2016, which was certainly the biggest upset in modern American political history. 

President Donald Trump, accompanied by U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz (R) takes a question from a reporter during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House on February 4, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

That shock destabilized a lot of news organizations and many "reporters" and analysts. They could not recover their balance, could not report objectively on the good things that Trump accomplished in his first term. They focused solely and sometimes obsessively on false narratives about him or on his faults and mistakes, many of which were also utterly false like "Russia, Russia, Russia." 
 
"Trump hatred" combined in some places with "Fox News hatred/envy" to destroy the credibility of many people and platforms. Audience shares plummeted. If those individuals haven’t outright lost their jobs, they and their platforms have lost some, if not most of their audience. TDS was a killer of credibility. (Diagnostic tool: If you couldn’t write or produce a detailed story about the greatness of the Abraham Accords then you definitely had TDS.) 
 
Most people and platforms in the news business recovered some or most of their balance during the long, slow descent of the Biden administration into paralysis and confusion, a decline in direction and achievement that mirrored Biden’s physical decline. When Trump won overwhelmingly in November and did it so decisively that only ideologues could not see the significance of the vote, many with "TDS" forced themselves "on to the wagon" and abandoned reflexive "Trump hatred."   

As with all 12-step programs, first they had to admit they had a problem. Many did. Bravo. Some haven’t and their business model is simply to settle for super-serving the hard left or the irreconcilable right in the country. Fine. 

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BUT … there are now appearing in the third week of the second Trump presidency signs that "long TDS" is real and potentially widespread. Many journalists and analysts have "fallen off the wagon" concerning their pledge — internal and sometimes public — to cover Trump objectively, and have reverted to reflexive "Orange Man Bad." It seeps into many posts on X, many stories from legacy media, many podcasts across the ideological spectrum. 
 
In a nutshell, "long TDS" disables a reporter or analyst from even seeing the possibility of method and goals that Trump routinely deploys. They dislike him so much for various reasons —often aesthetic, sometimes policy-driven, often because they are partisans who won’t admit that fact to themselves or their audience — that they use the language of psychiatry to describe political actions: Trump is "crazy," Trump is a "lunatic," Trump is wildly undisciplined, always acting as a narcissist, always impulsive and caught in policy contradictions. They never entertain, even if only to dismiss, that he has plans and he’s executing them. 
 
I often disagree with the president (e.g. most recently on removing security details from targets of Iranian lethal retribution in our own country — a potential assassination or attack that could kill or injure past public servants and which would deal a terrible blow to his presidency.) Even more recently I was very wary of tariffs on Canada, but I suspect a non-economic motive there and with Mexico involving messaging to everyone in the world intending to cross our borders illegally or to continue their fentanyl distribution. Disagree with the effectiveness or the result but to not even entertain the idea that there’s a plan and he executed on it is a sure sign of "long TDS." 

"Trump Derangement Syndrome" was real and on open display before and most certainly after President Donald Trump’s shock win in 2016, which was certainly the biggest upset in modern American political history. 

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Smart people have to self-diagnosis about whether they have "long TDS." It is obvious to those of us who are openly partisan but also ready to criticize Trump as we did aspects of the George W. Bush presidency (remember the "ports deal?") or the campaign of then-former Governor Romney. 
 
A reporter or analyst who cannot stay calm and report fairly both the good and the bad as they see it, and crucially do it without raising their voices or rejecting out of hand contrary arguments needs to revisit their symptoms. Everybody else hears it and sees it, whether on a legacy network or a brand-new podcast. You cannot "win" audience back or find new audience if all they hear is the sound that accompanied the wreckage or legacy media in the last 10 years. 

Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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