What was Rachel Maddow thinking? That is the question that media watchers have been asking themselves and one another ever since she took to the airways to announce that she had Donald Trump’s Tax returns with the same breathlessness as if she had the secret Nixon tapes. The returns, as it turned out, actually made the president look good as a man who made a lot of money and paid a lot of taxes. Despite her hyperactive musings about Russian oligarchs, that was all there was. Even the folks at Hot Air are scratching their heads.
One theory is that Maddow and the folks at MSNBC have become so consumed by their hatred of trump that they have become unhinged.
The far left network is one of the centers of the Trump as Manchurian Candidate for Putin. They saw something in the tax returns, therefore, that just wasn’t there.
People have driven themselves nuts about presidents they don’t like before. A number of people were pretty sure that President Barack Obama was a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya and was deliberately trying to destroy the United States. The difference is that none of these people worked for the mainstream media or, for the most part, the alternate conservative media. The nuts have taken over a major cable news network and have blown up what threadbare credibility it once had.
The question arises, have crazy conspiracy theories become mainstreamed because they are about a president much of the media detests?
If so, which will be more harmed, Trump or the media? Noting the president’s master of the press, one had better not bet against him.
The irony is that there exists much to criticize President Trump for. Some of his decisions, particularly the first version of the travel ban, have been newbie mistakes. He still has a tendency to take to Twitter and post alarming things.
But one can call him on such things and still not believe that Trump will turn all glassy eyed and suggestible if one tells him, “Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?” That is too bad. Every president, no matter how great or how venal, needs a credible media to keep him on his toes. Trump may be the first chief executive to lack that.
