Here’s a suggestion. Instead of treating Trump’s rhetoric seriously, wouldn’t America be better off if we did ignore it? What if instead of going nuts over a half-baked Trump tweet for a week, we all just recognized that the tweet is what it is: a half-baked Trump tweet? What if we returned to the notion of the president as a constitutional officer with prescribed duties?
In fact, that’s happening on a practical level. Most Americans don’t care about Trump’s rhetoric any more. He and the media have been shouting at each other so long that it all sounds like white noise now. Instead, many Americans have been treating Trump as a guy to ignore except when he bothers them, an approach that seems pretty reasonable at this point.
Americans are almost instinctively tuning Trump out. His domination of the modern media landscape is making people treat him as background noise. Effectively, that means that his rhetoric makes about as much difference as James Monroe’s.
The media don’t know what to do with Trump because they’re still operating based on the model of the last eight decades: We ought to pay attention to the things a president says because he’s the president. When President Trump gives a controlled, well-calibrated address before a joint session of Congress, Americans feel comforted and relieved; when Trump tweets, half of Americans shudder. The media can’t simply ignore Trump’s tweets, as though they don’t matter.
But here’s the thing: They don’t matter.
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