Throughout the 2024 election campaign the legacy media continued to lose respect
Trump returns to the White House, elected 47th president, Fox News projects
The Fox News Decision Desk projects former President Trump will win the 2024 presidential election, with win in Wisconsin.
The results are in and former President Donald Trump didn’t just win the presidency. He defeated his archenemy, the media. You could see it in the hysteria as many leftist news outlets reported the numbers on election night. With each passing moment, they saw red in more and more parts of America.
To paraphrase former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, "Never was so much pain owed by so many to so few." Journalists ran the worst election in American history and were defeated by Trump and ordinary voters. Sure, Vice President Kamala Harris did her part with lame interviews, foolish sound bites and a refusal to even engage in conversation with major influencers like Joe Rogan.
But the news media, who opposed Trump in 2016 and defeated him in 2020, came back with a vengeance in 2024. They screamed "fascist," "Hitler," "Nazi," "garbage" and more at both Trump and his supporters. They hyped every negative story, every nasty soundbite and every pro-Harris poll, including one horribly wrong Iowa poll that came out just before the election.
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Journalists whistled themselves past the graveyard of their decaying industry, ignoring, debating or downright bashing anyone who brought up the awful hurricane response, the border, crime, the economy, national security or the wars in Europe and the Mideast that didn’t exist when Trump was president.
The news media turned one of the hallmarks of our democracy – the Fourth Estate – into a cottage industry for people who promote the most insane, far-left opinions. Ordinary Americans grew increasingly outraged and made their voices heard.
Boy, did they.
Americans voted for Trump because they noticed all the times the supposedly neutral press called Trump "fascist," compared him to Hitler and more. They noticed when wealthy, elite journalists pretended that inflation wasn’t a problem and that people could somehow afford the massive spike in housing and food costs. Oh, and that claiming otherwise made ordinary voters stupid or worse.
Voters saw ABC News host Martha Raddatz act like it didn’t matter when a violent foreign gang took over apartment buildings in Colorado because "the incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes." What she meant was a handful of apartments where the poors live and ABC News staffers don’t.
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The legacy media continued to lose respect. And it’s well-earned. A new Gallup study shows that fewer than a third of Americans hold a "great deal" or "fair amount" of faith in the media to report news properly. Americans have obviously been watching campaign coverage.
And that was before they lost this election. What will they tell their readers and viewers now? We already saw how bad the press was during the first Trump term. It will be far worse this time. The press already lost. They think they have nothing else to lose
We’ve seen repeated examples of journalists pretending anything they disagree with is either "misinformation" or "disinformation," even if it turns out to be true. (The Hunter Biden laptop is only one example of many.)
And when they don't openly lie about the news, they rely on so-called fact-checks to misrepresent it. Like how ABC’s moderators only fact-checked former President Donald Trump during the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. Or how they allowed President Joe Biden to repeatedly make false claims about Trump’s comments regarding the Charlottesville protests.
What’s disturbing is all those aren’t the worst examples of the pathetic liberal press this election. Here they are, so you don’t forget:
1. That’s real ‘garbage’
Which one is more important, a comedian making a joke about "garbage" or the president of the United States calling half the country "garbage?" If you’re the news media, you covered the first and covered up the second. And Biden’s comment came as he was stumping for Harris.
The Washington Post tried to muddy the waters and claim what Biden did was unclear. "Did Biden call Trump supporters ‘garbage’? It comes down to an apostrophe." Actually, it doesn’t. If Team Trump tried to doctor White House documents to pretend otherwise, the Post would have gone nuts. But when the current administration did it, nada. Even left-wing AP reported, "AP sources: White House altered record of Biden’s ‘garbage’ remarks despite stenographer concerns."
The comment was so bad that Harris had to distance herself from what Biden said. So, even Harris was more honest than the press. But with early voting already happening, most in the news media are incapable of giving Trump any talking points. Even when they’re true.
2. Biden’s health is still an issue
Biden’s cognitive decline remains an enormous issue the major media don’t dare touch – even though he still has the nuclear codes and is still president. Just like they avoided it prior to the debate. But when Biden embarrassed himself against Trump, the press threw granddad from the train and the ticket.
Yet, journalists haven’t pushed to remove him from office. Because that would put Harris in the job and she would be connected to every stupid and awful thing this administration has done. Instead, they presented her as a change candidate even though she said she would do nothing different.
It’s worth remembering that Biden’s mental fitness was an issue even heading into the last election, so he hid in his basement. After he won, his obvious failings got so bad that White House staffers had one person in an Easter Bunny costume move Biden away from inquiring reporters. And that was in April … 2022.
Back in March, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough went on a classic rant claiming that Biden was at the top of his game. "Start your tape right now, because I'm about to tell you the truth. And f-you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever." He wasn’t even laughed off the network.
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One day, when D.C. reporters all write their books about the Biden years, they will all admit their stories of how out of it Biden was. But they refused to report those because they had to stop Orange Man Bad.
3. Endorsements don’t really matter
Readers and journalists don’t care about political endorsements except when it undermines their sense that an outlet is on their team. Both were upset enough that the Los Angeles Times pulled its endorsement of Harris. But, they were ready to throw their Pumpkin Spice Lattes in protest when the Washington Post did it.
The Post is in Democrat Central, or D.C., a place so leftist that Trump has gotten 4-5% there in the national election. Twice. So, when leftist readers and even-more leftist staff were unable to bash Trump one more time, they revolted. (The Post staff is revolting … write your own joke here ____________.)
The rest of the news media threw a tantrum so bad that the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) even suggested the Post owner give the paper away: "Jeff Bezos Should Donate the Washington Post to a Charity." The article called it "a bold, patriotic move" to give away the paper along with perhaps $100 million to cover about one year’s losses. CJR’s hope is that the 250,000 readers who quit over the controversy would return.
What CJR failed to realize is that the Post is already a charity. It lost $77 million in 2023 alone. Even with those readers.
New York Magazine's Intelligencer summarized the news media’s campaign meltdown that led to these and countless other examples of bias. One network exec declared, "It's going to change everything" if Trump wins. That idea is intolerable to newsies. "If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they're not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form," the exec concluded.
Yep. He was right. DOA. Activists took over journalism and destroyed it. After all, Trump came back, maybe honest journalism will, too. But don’t bet on it.
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Dan Gainor is a freelance opinion editor for Fox News Digital.
