By: Allysia Finley – wsj.com – October 27, 2024

Unhinged attacks on the candidate and his voters helped him win in 2016. They may do so again.

Democrats are having a panic attack as Donald Trump pulls ahead in national and battleground polls with a little more than a week to go. Three surveys in the past week show that voters rate him more favorably than Kamala Harris, and Gallup found that his positive rating has hit 50% for the first time in his three campaigns.

Consider some headlines featured on the New York Times’s homepage Thursday evening: “Harris Packs Star Power as Trump Rails Over Legal Trouble,” “Oy, This Ad: Jewish Stereotypes in Service of Trump as a Safer Option,” “Sweeping Raids and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s Immigration Plans” and “As Election Looms, Justice Dept. Tries to Steer Clear of Politics.”

The last one is hilarious considering the Times on Wednesday reported on a Justice Department letter to Elon Musk warning that his $1 million sweepstakes for registered voters who sign a petition to support the First and Second amendments could violate federal law. Election interference, anyone?

Such left-wing bias has caused many Americans to tune out the press. A Gallup survey this month showed trust in the media has hit a record low (31%), principally owing to a decline among independents and Republicans. The media can shout that Mr. Trump is a threat to democracy until the cows come home, but how many Americans are listening? Former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet summed up the media’s credibility problem in an essay last year for the Economist magazine: “The reality is that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.”

Americans don’t like being condescended to by a media that denies everyday realities. Until Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate in June, the media insisted the president was sharp as ever. Ms. Harris still does.

One-sided “fact checks” fuel the distrust. The Washington Post last week gave four “Pinocchios” to Mr. Trump’s ad saying Ms. Harris “supports EV mandates, killing Michigan jobs.” Writer Glenn Kessler declined to address the substance of the claim, ignoring that the Environmental Protection Agency has imposed rules requiring automakers to produce increasingly more EVs and that Michigan has lost 9,500 auto- and parts-manufacturing jobs in the past five years amid ramped-up EV production. Mr. Kessler relied on statements from Kamala Harris and the United Auto Workers, which has endorsed her.

Or consider a USA Today “fact check” this month of an Instagram post about a Biden administration broadband program. “Kamala Harris and Joe Bidenpromised to use $42 billion . . . to expand internet to the entire country and not one single house or business received service,” conservative strategist Joey Mannarino wrote. That is accurate, but fact-checker Chris Mueller labeled it false because some money has been spent on “planning.”

Many Americans who dislike Mr. Trump also dislike the media’s disparate treatment. When Ms. Harris fumbles or dissembles, the media covers for her. When Mr. Biden exceeds his presidential authority, the media cheers him on. Such slanted coverage engenders sympathy for Mr. Trump even among skeptics, as the federal and state prosecutions of him have done.

It’s comical to hear the press warn that Mr. Trump will target his opponents while ignoring how Democrats have used lawfare against him. Their warnings have a boy-who-cried-wolf quality, since they said the same about Mr. Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush before him.

“Bush is a dullard lacking any moral constraints in pursuit of partisan gain, loyal to no principle save the comfort of the very rich, unburdened by any thoughtful consideration of the national interest,” Jonathan Chait wrote in the New Republic in 2003. Mr. Chait has been among the most strident and simple-minded voices decrying Mr. Trump as a fascist.

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson mused in 2003 that what Bush haters like Mr. Chait “truly resent is that his popularity suggests that the country might be more like him than it is like them. . . . On one level, their embrace of hatred aims to make others share their outrage; but on another level, it’s a self-indulgent declaration of moral superiority—something that makes them feel better about themselves.”

The same could be said of those who loathe Mr. Trump. It’s true that the former president often exhibits a lack of restraint and self-awareness. But so do Democrats and left-wing media. Their attacks on Mr. Trump and condescension toward his supporters in 2016 helped propel him to victory. They could do so again.

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Source: Press Bias Bolsters Trump, Again – WSJ