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If you want a single news story to help you see how the mainstream press has failed to cope with Trump& #39;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& #39;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& #39;s very appropriate to this news story, "How Trump Abandoned His Pledge to & #39;Drain the Swamp& #39;". 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& #39;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 & #39;clean up the swamp& #39;: 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& #39;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& #39;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& #39;s lies, but they often fall into that.
