Some of us are old enough to remember when the press dubbed Ronald Reagan the “teflon President.” Reporters meant by that to express their puzzlement at the fact that most Americans didn’t share their hatred for Reagan. They attacked him viciously, more viciously than any president since Herbert Hoover, but when he ran for re-election he carried 49 states. His victory was a massive repudiation of the liberal media.
Countless distinctions could be drawn between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, but we seem to be living through another teflon moment. The liberal press attacks President Trump even more viciously than it did Reagan. The news consists of little else, day after day. No doubt reporters and editors expected this non-stop assault to destroy Trump’s presidency, and it might yet do so. But up to this point, the Left’s attacks have failed.
Pretty much anyone will tell you that President Trump has just endured an awful couple of weeks and a terrible month of August. Recent days have featured, among other continuing dramas, the conviction of Paul Manafort and guilty plea entered by Michael Cohen. If you Google “Trump’s terrible week,” you get 12,900,000 results. It is easy to see why.
Yet Rasmussen Reports finds that for the month of August, the president’s approval rating rose by a point, from 46% to 47%. There must be wailing and gnashing of teeth in “news” rooms all across America.
How can this be? The short answer is that half of all Americans have tuned out the liberal press. It isn’t true, as Trump once asserted in typically hyperbolic fashion, that he could shoot someone on a public street and his supporters wouldn’t care. But it is true that half of Americans have figured out–correctly–that President Trump is on their side, and the liberal media typified by CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press, is their enemy. So they don’t much care what the Washington Post et al. think of their president, and they don’t believe the daily attacks on him. Much more often than not, their skepticism is justified.
Actually, President Trump is the ally of far more than one-half of Americans. A 4.2% GDP growth rate–alleged to be impossible by Obama’s economists–and record low unemployment lift a heck of a lot of boats. If voters see through the endless smoke screen of media hate and vote their interests, the GOP will win a historic victory in November and Donald Trump will be re-elected in a landslide in 2020. Maybe even a landslide of Reaganesque proportions.
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