The Washington Post doesn’t agree with Huffington Post on where the coverage on Donald Trump should be. The newspaper reports (Chris Cillizza): The Huffington Post made a big (okay, big in my world) decision about its Donald Trump coverage on Friday. Here it is:
After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president, we have decided we won’t report on Trump’s campaign as part of The Huffington Post’s political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you’ll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette. I agree with almost all of what Ryan Grim, the D.C. bureau chief for HuffPo, and Danny Shea, editorial director for the site, write above. But, I also think it’s a major mistake to relegate Trump to the “entertainment” section of the site. Here’s why.
Trump is, without question, an outlandish figure. He says lots of things, many of which aren’t true, as loudly as possible. He has shown in the past a willingness to use the media to further his own interests — whether they are in the business or political worlds. (Trump wrote all about how he manipulated the media for his benefit in “The Art of the Deal.”)
It’s hard to imagine him in the White House — particularly given that the same polls that put him at or close to the top of the Republican primary field show him losing badly to Hillary Rodham Clinton in a general election. President Trump? It feels more like a sort-of-funny joke than a serious thing, right?
What we in the media need to be doing is asking questions about what is behind the Trump surge — not dismissing it as a joke or totally meaningless or, even, using his candidacy to pull the sort of publicity stunts that we tut-tut at Trump for.
But. But, but, but. Trump IS at or near the top of most national polls on the Republican field; our Philip Bump found that Trump’s polling average in the last five national surveys trails only Jeb Bush.
Sure, lots of that is name ID, which Trump has lots of. But, there’s another poll number — this one from a WaPo/ABC survey — that suggests Trump’s rapid rise isn’t solely due to people recognizing his name. Almost 6 in 10 Republicans said they had a favorable opinion of Trump in WaPo-ABC numbers released earlier this week, an almost total reversal from polling done in late May when 65 percent of GOPers had an unfavorable opinion of The Donald.
The totality of Trump’s poll numbers suggest that he is tapping intosomething within the Republican Party — that he has, almost certainly by chance, hit a nerve with his rhetoric. What that nerve actually is — and how long Trump can hit it — is a point of much debate. I’ve suggested a bunch of theories — ranging from Trump as a product of our Kardashian culture toTrump as the symbolic middle finger the party base wants to extend toward the party establishment. Lots and lots of other people have offered their own theories. But the point here is not why Trump is rising. It’s that he is (and, really, has.) There is something there for Republican voters when it comes to Trump. I don’t really get it. The HuffPo people seem not to either. But, not totally understanding someone’s appeal is not any reason to believe it’s not really there.
