Journalists have just given voters a terrific reason to re-elect Trump...to watch their hilarious angst. Jeremy Barr in Saturday's Hollywood Reporter has chronicled the whining by the press at the prospect of being forced to cover four more years of Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
It is obvious, though they lamely try to hide it to no avail, that most of the Washington press corps suffers from extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome and the idea of continuing to cover Trump for another term has sent them into complete despair. So for many voters, casting their ballots for Trump would be an act of very pleasurable schadenfreude knowing how it would send so many members of the press into a deep, deep depression.
Barr reveals just how tortuous another four years of Trump could be for much of the press in "Four More 'Exhausting' Years? Trump Reporters Mull Covering a Second Term."
"I don't know anybody who wants to do another four years of this news cycle," a senior CNN producer says. The first year of the Trump presidency was a year of calibration for the nation's top journalists, who learned to keep up with a politician who revels in exhausting the press corps, launching news cycles with early-morning, late night and weekend tweets.
The next two years, 2018 and 2019, were even more exhausting, as journalists scrambled to cover government shutdowns, congressional hearings, a Supreme Court nomination, the president's flirtation with North Korea, the Mueller Report and impeachment.
And who's fault was that? Wasn't it the mainstream media that for two solid years was constantly hyping the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory until the Mueller Report revealed it to be nothing but fake news?
A senior CNN producer tells The Hollywood Reporter that the network's journalists are not rooting against the president in November but guessed they would welcome a return to a more "normal" presidency and accompanying news cycle.
"Not rooting against the president?" Apparently what we have here is a CNN producer who does not even watch his own network's broadcasts.
"As journalists, I don't think anybody cares about what party the president of the United States is," the producer says. "What they care about is being able to live their lives normally again. I think there's mental exhaustion around this presidency, and I don't know anybody who is enjoying it. I don't know anybody who wants to do another four years of this news cycle."
The producer continues: "It's not a matter what his political beliefs or his ideological beliefs are. The exhaustion comes from his behaviors. That's it. His behavior is exhausting. ... I don't I think have ever run into anybody who says they literally hate Donald Trump the man. They're just exhausted by his behavior, and I think that's fair. Nobody I know is openly rooting for him to lose."
Notice how the press only becomes "exhausted" when a president doesn't follow the liberal playbook? The reality is that it most definitely matters to the liberal media "what his political beliefs or his ideological beliefs are." As to having never run into anybody who says they literally hate Donald Trump, perhaps this CNN producer's ears are as in bad shape as his eyes that can't see anybody on his network slamming Trump.
Maggie Haberman, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and the journalist who has most embodied the Trump presidency, expressed doubt about her ability to cover another Trump term — logistically — in a previously unpublished interview with THR in late February, before the coronavirus was officially declared a pandemic.
So voters should deny Trump a second term in order to prevent poor Maggie from suffering a mental meltdown?
