That said, I think we have to admit an inescapable and uncomfortable truth about the Trump presidency more generally, which is that the media that covers him is almost unrecognizable from the media that covered every previous president. He’s just right about that.
I’m not talking about the weirdness on cable channels. I’m talking about the best newspapers and websites in the country, which present almost every mundane act by this administration in dramatic tones beyond all proportion, as if the mere act of Trump trying to govern constituted an existential threat.
There are days now — a lot of them — when I open the up the homepages of the New York Times and the Washington Post in the morning, scroll down a bit, and have the odd sensation that I’m reading the organ of an opposition party, with one headline after another trumpeting the moral depravity of the administration.
Even last weekend, as news broke that Mueller wouldn’t be recommending any further charges against the president or his aides, the front pages pivoted instantly to other, ongoing investigations and breathlessly assured us the scandal would not go away. After two years of innuendo, Trump couldn’t be allowed his due for a day.
