The media has a history of being unfair to live Republicans

Martin Knight:

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The mistake being made here is assuming that the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, etc. would be acting any differently if the President were anyone but Donald Trump. Awful in many ways as he is, the news media’s antipathy toward his Administration is really nothing unique, and has a lot less to do with Donald Trump than a long running institutional, ideological and partisan animus against the Republican Party.

For all the complaining about Donald Trump calling the media the “Enemy of the People”, the fact is that the media has long labeled every Republican President and the Republican Party as a whole the exact same thing.

For those of us who can still vividly remember the media’s seething hatred and contempt toward George W. Bush and his Administration from the onset, there’s no doubt that the same scornful disdain and loathing, at best only marginally less pronounced, would have met a Cruz, Rubio, Perry or even Fiorina Administration. Along with the perennial charges of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

Simply put, the evidence does not support the argument that any Republican President would have been able to avoid a similar torrent of negative coverage as what has confronted the Trump Administration – no matter how careful his speech or disciplined his behavior. There is a fifty year pattern of behavior by the news media when it comes to Republican Administrations and Presidential nominees that we just can’t ignore.

Let’s not forget; John McCain spent more than eight years shamelessly sucking up to the Washington Press Corps, routinely attacking his own party’s President and fellow Republicans in Congress in exchange for newspaper headlines and stories calling him a “Maverick.” He regularly referred to the media as his “base” and surrounded himself with advisers who were reliable echoers of the most damaging Democrat talking points against the GOP, their association with him being used to lend their attacks extra credibility.

McCain even appeared as a guest speaker at retreats for Congressional Democrats, where he would shower praise on the Democrat Party and calumny and oppobrium on the Republican Party, much to the media’s delight.

Yet he magically turned into a raging racist, sexist, adulterous warmonger when he won the GOP’s nomination in 2008.

In 2012, the GOP nominated Mitt Romney, one of the most decent men to run for the Presidency; courtly, polite, self-effacing and deferential to the point of obsequiousness to the Press – even going as far as to differentiate himself from Newt Gingrich in the 2012 Primaries by loudly proclaiming his refusal to get into a fight with the media, even after Newt parlayed his pushback against the Press to win in South Carolina.

He was still covered as a racist, sexist, dog torturing, gay hair cutting, rape enabling, cancer giving theocrat who wants to lock women up in binders. And, of course, found himself brutally undercut on national television by the supposedly neutral moderator refereeing a crucial debate with Barack Obama – on a point in which he was actually correct.
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The media will treat any Republican President like the Democrat partisans the media is.  They have become the leaders of the party despite never being elected as such.  In some ways, they have become more "honest" in their hostility to Trump.  They have boldly stated that they will not treat him fairly.  They have certainly lived down to their own unfairness standard.