Several media companies are struggling with how to deal with Donald Trump. He can’t be ignored on ideological grounds—many actual elected Republicans have said far worse things about undocumented immigrants. He can’t be ignored because of paperwork, because for once he filed with the Federal Elections Commission. So now some news outlets, from The Huffington Post to The Wall Street Journal, are trying to disqualify him on the basis of style. This is the silliest excuse of all.
A presidential candidate chainsawed the tax code in a cheesy stunt on Fox News on Tuesday morning, and it wasn’t Donald Trump. It was elected senator and real presidential candidate Rand Paul, boldly going where many many prop comic politicians had gone before. Trump will do appalling things to get our attention—like announce Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number—but it would be shocking to see him stoop so low as to wear dad jeans and saw stacks of printer paper in a weird gesture toward manual labor. That’s the problem with trying to find a clear line between a fake candidate like Trump and a real one like Rand. The ideal presidential candidate is a gifted entertainer—one with swagger like George W. Bush, or chill like Barack Obama. There’s not enough time in a cable news hit to say much about policy, so you’ve got to say it with style. Or a chainsaw.
Donald Trump is not some twisted, deformed version of the Republican Party. He’s the purest version of the Fox News-Tea Party incarnation of the GOP. And one of the most amusing things about watching him on the campaign trail is that he obviously is a fan of Roger Ailes’s creation. He repeatedly paused during an interview with Washington Post reporter Robert Costa to gaze at Fox News, muttering about an “animal” undocumented immigrant accused of murder. “Look at that guy, look at what he did, killing that beautiful girl. [Expletive] animal,” Trump said. It is exactly what the audience is supposed to think after watching a Fox News segment on undocumented immigrants.
Just as a generation of tormented liberals, media pundits, and late-night comedians devoted themselves to proving Fox News borrows more from entertainment than journalism, a movement is afoot to fight Trump through recategorization. Last week, The Huffington Post announced “we won’t report on Trump’s campaign as part of The Huffington Post’s political coverage.” Trump would be covered as “entertainment” instead. “Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait,” Huffington Post said. But it’s not like HuffPo is sending a theater critic to cover the candidate. Trump’s comments andcampaign strategy are still being covered by the site’s political reporters. There’s just a little “Entertainment” banner sitting over the headline. No SEO was harmed in the statement of this principle.