It appears that after all the negative influence the media, particularly the TV news (MSNBC, CNN, FOX etc.), has had on this election, the end result may be where it should have been from the beginning. At least I hope so. For a year and a half, we have been, and are still listening to the ravings of a seriously disturbed candidate. The only thing lacking in Donald Trump’s resume is a term in a mental institution. One can only wonder why not.
The evolution of candidate Trump can be considered a perfect storm. The failure of the republican party to be a serious opposition party gave rise to what it is now, i.e. a predominately white, racist mob rallying around a demagogue who is using them, running against a serious, well prepared candidate, whose career had been misrepresented with calculated venom.
The republican party could have prevented the 17 candidate clown car from persisting, and stopped the lunatic Trump from jumping into the forefront. The TV media, ever since becoming a profit center instead of the public service entity it is licensed for, jumped onto the Trump lunacy to increase ratings, hung onto his every outrageous pronouncement and nurtured them to the conclusion, his nomination. To have treated him as a normal candidate, instead of an incredibly deficient personality was, in my mind, an indelible stain on the media. Having put their revenue ahead of their country, for me, they will never again be trusted.
Mr. Trump has a reputation as a tightwad and it’s been speculated by some who know him, that he has greatly exaggerated his wealth. Many have postulated and I have always felt, that without the free public media coverage, he would have ended his candidacy long ago and the American electorate might have had a rational choice. Consider that his every idiotic rant was on the 24/7 news channels all day long, repeated ad infinitum. No one from either party got any significant coverage. He literally sucked all the oxygen from the entire news spectrum.
We are fortunate that his news dominance is finally functioning to his disadvantage. It didn’t have to be that way. The media that greedily created Trump is, in spite of itself, destroying him. I still lose sleep over the possibility, however remote it might now be, that we could still be damned by a Trump presidency.