The media rooted for Donald Trump when he earned them ratings during the 2016 presidential primaries, and they now revile him as he earns them ratings during his presidency. Everything he loves, the media hates, and vice versa.
That's why Trump would do well to lay off of Joe Biden.
Given the extraordinarily sophomoric game theory guiding the media these days, Trump can provide a potent boost in the polls for whichever Democratic presidential candidate he chooses to insult. He's been wise to lay off Pete Buttigieg, and even more to laud and normalize that the South Bend mayor is married to a man. But his Biden panic is an effective call to arms for the media to defend and promote the former vice president.
If Trump loses Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2020, he loses the White House. No candidate is better positioned than Biden to reclaim the fewer than 100,000 Americans who handed those two states to Trump. Biden won both of those states along with President Obama, and he still maintains ample appeal in the Rust Belt. Nearly every head-to-head poll between Trump and Biden shows the latter besting Trump by five points at minimum, with plenty verging well into the double digits. Even the betting markets show Biden beating Trump by a hefty margin. Economist Gregory Mankiw plugged betting market odds into the Bayes Theorem and found that Biden has a 77% chance of beating the president.
Naturally, Trump can't stop beckoning the media to run interference for Biden.
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04.20.2024