NY Times Writer Calls for Media To Work Together To Take Down Trump
In an op-ed published Wednesday afternoon, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asserted that the news media should work together to focus on Trump’s personality over his economic influence.
He claimed that the goal of this would be to diminish Trump’s popularity with Republican voters, according to the Washington Examiner.
This, in turn, would possibly discourage GOP voters from voting for Trump and supporting him, which could possibly benefit the Democrats.
“Some healthy soul searching is taking place in newsrooms across the country these days over whether the mainstream media should be covering President Trump’s every tweet and rally,” Friedman stated in his op-ed.
“My answer: Absolutely! It’s the right thing for us to do professionally, and, as last night’s election results indicated, it’s the right thing to do politically if you want to see a check on Donald Trump’s power.”
Friedman then provided a strategy to achieve this goal.
“No question that the press should not allow itself to be props at Trump’s rallies, and that can be dealt with by using a single pool camera that feeds all the networks, or reporters just sitting among the rally attendees, not in a special pen,” he wrote.
“But the whole country needs to see every tweet, every rally, every word and every reaction so that they can ask themselves: ‘Is this who I want my kids to see as our president? Are these the people with whom I want to be aligned?’ It’s too late to move Trump’s core base on these questions, but I would not give up on his passive supporters.”
According to his New York Times op-ed piece, Friedman writes about Trump’s bullying and toxicity that he claims is bound to drive away the types of voters he needs.
“So bring on the coverage,” he said.
He continues to speak generally across the Republican board.
“It turns out that there are thinking Republicans for whom character, decency and truth-telling still matter in a president,” he wrote.
“It turns out that there are thinking Republicans who have watched Trump’s twitter rants, his disturbed performance at Helsinki and the unrestrained bile that he emits at his rallies — and the blind, ecstatic response of his core base — and found them unnerving and unworthy of their support. That is what the polls and polling stations last night are telling us.”
Even further, Friedman ends his piece by offering a legitimate strategy for the media to accomplish this.
“No question that the press should not allow itself to be props at Trump’s rallies, and that can be dealt with by using a single pool camera that feeds all the networks, or reporters just sitting among the rally attendees, not in a special pen.”
According to RealClearPolitics, Trump currently has a 43 percent job approval rating.
President Trump has a 90 percent approval rating among just Republicans.
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