If you want a single news story to help you see how the mainstream press has failed to cope with Trump's years in office, the @washingtonpost story today by Dawsey, Helderman and @Fahrenthold would do nicely. 1/

The reporters in question have done great investigative work during Trump's presidency, so this is not a persistent issue with their coverage. But this time they really framed the story terribly, in a horribly conventional-politics way. 2/

"Framing" can be conceptually overused in analyzing political rhetoric. But it's very appropriate to this news story, "How Trump Abandoned His Pledge to 'Drain the Swamp'". The frame is in place right there in the headline and reinforced in the story. It is a disaster. 3/

The headline, repeated in the story multiple times, offers a narrative: Trump pledged to fight corruption and then became corrupt. This is a false narrative in its substance. 4/

That is to say, Trump pledged to "clean up Washington" in the late part of his 2016 campaign. That's true, he did. But it was already established by that point that Trump was an epic, spectacular liar and a person with a long lineage of corruption. 5/

There is no reason to frame a story in late October 2020 that takes seriously anything that Trump said he was going to do in speeches given in 2015-16. Trump was never going to 'clean up the swamp': he was going to flood Washington with his own brand of swampwater. 6/

That is not just something that happened after he got into office--Washington somehow corrupting his intention to clean its corruption--it is something he brought with him and intended to bring with him from day 1. 7/

This is important. It's important because one of the stories that his base and the GOP are going to try to tell if Trump loses by a big margin is that he tried to clean things up and was beaten by corruption, by the "deep state". This story helps to affirm that narrative. 8/

It is a common thing for outsider candidates to say they will clean up Washington, often from corruption that the outsider has been a part of. Perot made his money underdelivering on government contracts, which didn't stop him from pledging to constrain government spending. 9/

Trump was more than just the usual Outsider-Comes-to-Washington. He never had any intention whatsoever of fighting corruption: that would have been like the Wicked Witch of the West going for a swim. The press should not be enabling Trump's lies, but they often fall into that.