Is This a Strategy of the "Liberally Biased Media"?

Since the 2016 election, I've limited my television news watching to local stations for local news, sports and weather, and the evening and Sunday lineup on MSNBC.  I reserve Saturdays for college sports.  I understand that while they try to avoid an obvious bias, they are commentators, not reporters, and they are putting their own perspective into their commentary, usually supported by evidence.  I much prefer their election coverage, especially on evenings such as the South Carolina Primary, where they can feel free to speculate, to be critical, to point out the obvious, and give a really realistic perspective of what's happening with the exit polls and the information being gathered.  

MSNBC's coverage of the South Carolina Republican Primary gives a great example of their approach.  They found some Trump voters who were willing to tell their reporters why they were voting for Trump, and there were no leading questions asked.  They just asked them who they were voting for and why, and they let them do the rest.  It was an eye-opening experience.  Everything that has been made part of the "deplorable" caricature of MAGA voters was right there for anyone to see, fully exposed in its unbridled ignorance and inconsistency.  MAGA is defined as a cult, in political terms, and those voters whose comments appeared on MSNBC's programming underlined exactly how dangerous it is to American Democracy and to the Constitution, as well as to the peace and social order that exists and protects us from violence and destruction.  

These people have, in every sense of the word, lost their minds.  And they are one hundred percent blind to the dangerous reality of the threat that they pose to the existence of the United States of America as we know it.  Comparisons to the Nazi movement in Germany in the 1930's are accurate.  There's been an abandonment of respect for societies norms, including respect for and obedience to civil law.  To them, laws they don't like are unjust, and it is just to disobey them, without consequences.  They are completely ignorant of this country's history, including of the volumes of words left behind by the founders which clearly state their intentions.  And they're full of fear, which causes them to look at everything as intentionally aimed at the destruction of their personal happiness. That's not an unfair evaluation of this movement.  

The fact that they've sold their loyalty to an individual who is one of the most psychotically disabled public figures in history should not be surprising.  Here's a guy who has aquired what they all really want for themselves, enough wealth to do as they please and ignore social standards, public opinion and the laws of a constitutional democracy.  He's been as "worldly" as they come, in terms of taking advantage of everyone with whom he does business, being openly dishonest and getting away with it, publicly humiliating wives whom he labelled as gold-diggers with numerous, publicly conducted adulterous affairs, and openly denying any adherence to the principles of the religion they claim is the most important thing in their lives.  

Their religion, conservative, Evangelical Christianity in most cases, is clearly not what they claim it is to them, or they would not be vulnerable to this man's philosophy of life as a pagan antichrist.  And that is what I got from MSNBC's coverage of the South Carolina Primary.  

Total Dominance of the News Cycle With Mixed Results

As a former President, Trump gets more coverage in the news cycle than the current President does, by far.  He's developed a strategy which gets him in the news for free campaign advertising as often as they will cover, and he has a knack for making them jump and run whenever he issues a call.  It's frustrating to me, to hear the name "Trump," over and over and over again, and to watch these journalists, who tend to be educational elites looking down their noses at most of their audience, incapable of resisting the temptation to cover something he's done that no other former President would ever have covered.  

So much for being fair and balanced, for journalistic principles, and for being a free press that holds government accountable to the people.  

But...maybe I'm missing something.  

In spite of the total dominance of the news cycle by Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, to make my point, he's not getting the benefit of all of that free advertising.  Using South Carolina as an example, in spite of all that he did, in a deep red state among his own party, where, considering the coverage he gets, he should have scored 90% of the vote, he didn't quite manage 60%, and that was a full 7% less than the polls said he would get.  His only remaining opponent, Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina, picked up 40% of the vote, and was an embarassment to him as his victory speech clearly indicated.  

And a pattern that is beginning to show up, as we are now several primaries into the election season, is that there is a solid segment of Republican voters, at least 4 out of 10, who aren't really all that enthused or excited about Trump running again, and among that percentage there's a significant number of them, at least 33%, who are saying that they're not going to vote for him in November.  He couldn't carry deep red South Carolina if he lost 33% of the Republican vote, not to mention the 60% of independent voters who are steering clear of his candidacy.  

So I wonder if there's some sort of strategy behind the media's coverage, without much commentary, of the stupid, idiotic things he says and does.  Clearly, there's no one around him who is either brave enough or honest enough to tell him that much of what he says and does, while it makes his MAGA cult happy, is turning off a much larger percentage of voters who, either subtracted from casting a vote for him, or actually turning out for Biden, which will lead to his certain defeat in November.  And the news medis is spending a lot of time covering everything he says and does.  

Ignorance Seems to be Bliss

I was stunned when the news came out with the report of his most recent gaffe, his claim that he is now more attractive to black voters because they can now more readily identify with him because he's had his mug shot taken and has been placed under indictment.  That's an openly racist insult, not even subtle in its content.  His support among black voters, 16% according to some analysts, not more than 12% according to more reliable ones, is a little higher than his Republican predecessors.  But statements like this won't increase those numbers, which have already started to decline as primary season got underway.  

The reaction he got from blacks in South Carolina was exactly what to expect in the wake of a statement like that. He didn't get 16% of the black vote there, yesterday.  The very small number who voted in the GOP primary voted for Haley.  And if an insulting statement like that helps wake some black voters up out of the illusion that they might benefit from a Trump administration in some way, then, by all means, take whatever time is needed to keep it in the news cycle long enough for people to get its full racist intent.  

Until recently, I haven't seen any network actually play very long clips of Trump speeches.  I'm sure they can hear television sets clicking off even as his image shows up.  But lately, even MSNBC has hung with some of his speeches, even giving a few close ups as he seems to space out, lose focus, mispronounce strings of words, lose his train of thought and mix up statements he repeats over and over.  The far right media loves to try and put together clips of Biden stumbling over words or seeming to take some time to gather his thoughts.  They got Mitch McConnell off camera as quickly as they could when he had his blank-outs.  

Trump's speech at CPAC was a disaster of mispronounciation, rabbit chasing, lost trains of thought, a droning, way-too-long bore fest that emptied the auditorium about halfway through.  I saw more of that on MSNBC than they've ever played, and the major networks actually focused on the gaffes and blunders.  I don't know who came up with it, but I saw a speech he made recently in which he was so out of it, he actually shortened sentences, mixed up words and basically endorsed Joe Biden.  And while he didn't catch it, social media sure did.  

So I don't know if there's really a strategy behind all of this coverage.  Conservatives have been claiming for years that the news media has a liberal bias, that most reporters and commentators actually are Democrats who vote for Democrats and in spite of their training, can't hide their bias and be neutral in their reporting.  Perhaps, by giving this kind of coverage to Trump, letting his own words and actions indict him, they are employing a strategy which will lead to his downfall.  I certainly hope it does.  For all the time he gets on television and in the news and on social media, he has lost ground when it comes to favorability, since the 2020 election.  His negative poll numbers are higher, positive poll numbers considerably lower, than they were the last time he ran, and he's not attracting new voters while he's losing independent voters badly and even among moderate Republicans, isn't getting good favorability ratings.  

It won't make any inroads with his core base.  But he needs a lot more than that to win the election, and the more exposure he gets, the lower his support seems to go.