President Trump is going to win re-election in 2020.

I won’t be so bold as to predict the exact scenario that will take him over the finish line, but I will say this: The national press will again be a key factor in his victory.

Trump dominated the 2016 election with more than $5 billion in free media, and that was even before he had proven to be a financial blessing for the news industry. The 2020 earned media numbers are going to dwarf current records because there’s no way the press surrenders its current, lucrative model of wall-to-wall Trump coverage to make equal time for his inevitably far less exciting opponent.

National newsrooms are not going to pay the same attention to someone as tightly scripted as, say, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. The same networks that gave 30-plus minutes of uninterrupted coverage to Trump’s podium are not going to break away from one of his campaign rallies to cover even Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., latest initiative to reel in corporate greed.