When Donald Trump is POTUS, he’s likely to get deferential, even helpful, media coverage, the blogger Atrios predicted Monday. After all, he explained, that’s been the pattern for Republican presidents since the 1980s.
When Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Atrios alleged, “members of the press knew that [he] had some form of dementia, that he was not actually fit to run the country, and they covered it up because the feefees of America would be hurt because Reagan was the most popular president in the history of the universe. Of course he wasn't the most popular president by any reasonable measure, but the press loved him so America loved him and they added 10 extra points to his popularity rating in their minds. They did that for [George W. Bush], also, too.”
Atrios concluded, “I don't expect Trump will ever be an especially popular president for a variety of reasons, but with the 10 bonus points traditionally granted to Republican presidents, who knows what must be kept from America. Because of our feefees.” Also on Tuesday, Atrios characterized in a tweet the supposed mindset of the Trump voter: “If I gotta eat shit, then those other people had better be eating worse shit.”
Unlike, for example, Daily Kos, Atrios’s site, Eschaton, is a small-scale operation (Atrios himself writes the vast majority of its posts) but it’s influential on the left. Both Eschaton and Daily Kos started in the spring of 2002 as part of the pushback against the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies.
