In the wee hours of the morning, a miracle occurred. The Stormy Daniels coverage dissipated, at least for a few moments, as President Trump welcomed home three American citizens released from captivity in North Korea.
But the New York Times felt obligated to deflate even this decisive accomplishment. It noted that “other administrations, including President Barack Obama’s, secured the release of imprisoned Americans without promising a summit meeting or improved diplomatic relations.” The rest of the media quickly piled on, compiling lists of every prisoner released from North Korea, Iran, and other hostile entities—oddly enough, none of these lists mentioned Bowe Bergdahl.
Today’s coverage will include political pundits acknowledging, through gritted teeth, that this is a major accomplishment for President Trump. They will then quickly shift gears to say that we have lost all credibility in negotiations after pulling out of the Iran deal and that Kim Jong-un is probably playing our idiot president.
Trump is on the verge of striking a deal with North Korea—one that might even get approved by the Senate, unlike Obama’s failed Iran deal. And it’s unlikely that this deal will include provisions for self-inspections of nuclear sites or secret shipments of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to North Korea. But the media is happy to criticize a deal that hasn’t yet materialized while giving long eulogies for one of the worst deals in American history.
The media exhibits an amazing amount of flexibility and creativity when it comes to criticizing Trump and exalting Obama. A few days ago, Joe Scarborough gave us a demonstration of this as he tied himself in knots. He argued that Trump finds himself in the same situation Obama was in a few years ago. Obama desperately needed a deal with Iran and Trump desperately needs a deal with North Korea. This desperation, he claims, will lead to a bad deal. In nearly the same breath, the “Morning Joe” panel criticized Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal. Somehow, Scarborough and his team failed to notice that they had tacitly admitted the Iran deal was bad. So how was Trump’s rejection of the Iran deal an indication of his desperation, exactly? If Trump is the one who saw the Iran deal was bad isn’t it likely that he is willing to walk away from another bad deal? This willingness to walk away does not diminish our leverage—it increases it.
But we should cut political pundits some slack. After all, they haven’t had much time to brush up on the subtleties of foreign policy and they certainly haven’t given much thought to Trump’s strategy. They’ve been too busy covering a decade-old affair that Trump may have had with a porn star, too preoccupied obsessing over and misinterpreting every word that Rudy Giuliani says and writing hit-pieces to try to discredit America’s Mayor, and too enamored with Robert Mueller’s never-ending investigation. At one point, some even suggested that the entire North Korean peace process was a deflection from the Stormy Daniels story. Many are convinced that Trump’s days are numbered and that he will soon be removed from office and they are all too happy to try to speed the process along. But as they run hit-piece after hit piece, Trump’s approval numbers inch closer to fifty percent.
Few normal Americans care much about Stormy Daniels. Many are increasingly disenchanted with Mueller’s investigation. And most are happy to see progress with North Korea. Even if no deal emerges from the summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the safe return of three of our citizens is a victory in itself —and those in the media worrying that a meeting with the President of the United States will somehow legitimize Kim should take comfort in their belief that Trump isn’t a legitimate president in the first place.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the media will never give this president a break. If the economy gets better, they will attribute it to Obama’s policies. If it gets worse, they will blame it on Trump. If a North Korea deal works out, they will write glowing profiles of State Department careerists. If it falls through, they will talk about Trump’s terribly temperamental foreign policy. Even for those not paying much attention, it is clear that the media is biased and is hell-bent on destroying Trump. The incessant negative media coverage isn’t hurting him—if anything, it is turning him into a martyr. It has immunized him to the media. There aren’t many ways for the media to become more hysterical than it already is.
So, Mr. President—send out Rudy Giuliani again. Throw out some more red meat to a frenzied pack of journalists. Let them play Woodward and Bernstein for a little bit longer. We aren’t tired of winning yet.
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Photo credit: Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call