Journalist template 3 col post

Background

One pattern which repeats itself in legacy media’s reporting and commentary on Donald Trump is something I call “Trump Hopscotch”. In Trump Hopscotch, the word “Trump” is written in the bottom square, and at the top, is written some bad thing or other as the occasion requires: Hitler, Stalin, Russia, Dictator. The rules of the game are you need to get from Trump to the Bad Thing, preferably in as few moves as possible. As soon as you get from Trump to the Bad Thing, you declare victory and the game ends.

Highlights: Michael Beschoss on MSNBC describing Trump’s comments as threatening a bloodbath if he won the election. Credit I suppose for at least remaining on script, knowing that however confused he was about what is was that Trump had said, he knew he didn’t like it.

Lowlights: Joe Scarborough, thinking he’d made the breakthrough that settled the whole “controversy”: the words “That’ll be the least of it”. A little proof of work is required here (†), but it is not difficult stuff to realize how preposterous Scarborough’s “breakthrough” was. There were two possibilities: Trump’s words amounted either to (i) an economic bloodbath in the auto industry and an economic bloodbath in the larger economy as well, or (ii) an economic bloodbath confined solely to the auto industry, with no effects in the broader economy, plus: a civil war. To Scarborough, who never stumbled into the first possibility, only the second even presented itself. In truth, for him and so much of the rest of the legacy media, it was Trump Hopscotch all the way down.