Trump’s comeback

Yesterday I came across Megyn Kelly’s video of her full one-hour interview with Frontline for “Trump’s Comeback” (broadcast January 21 and accessible at the link). Frontline has also posted background on the episode here. Amid the voluminous listed credits I wondered who wrote the show. Was it “reporters” Vanessa Fica and Brooke Nelson Alexander? No! The credits attribute the writing to producers Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser.

Megyn Kelly, by the way, posted her interview here. I watched it in its entirety and found it all of interest. Many of her comments are based on professional experience with Trump and she is a perceptive observer. (All of the show’s interviews are collected here.)

Before seeing Megyn’s post with her interview I was unaware of the Frontline episode. If you want to understand Trump’s historic comeback, you will not be surprised to hear, this show is not the place to go.

The show follows Frontline‘s documentary format. We have the narrator with the sonorous voice of God. Vox Will Lyman, vox dei. When you hear the voice of God, think Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser.

Just about every Frontline episode strikes me as a parody of itself, but this one might jump the Monty Python shark. Most of the talking heads — there are a few exceptions, like Megyn Kelly — could be stand-ins for the elite left that Trump has sought to depose. They tilt heavily toward the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. The show is therefore full of contempt for its subject and those of us who supported him.

I’m not recommending the show, but it can be filed under Laughter Is the Best Medicine. It charts Trump’s business rise and fall and political rise and fall through the first 52 minutes or so. The contempt expressed is akin to the contempt expressed by the Frontline crowd for Ronald Reagan during his campaigns and his presidency. They viewed President Reagan as a creation of show business. The gist of “Trump’s Comeback” is that The Apprentice was the key to Trump’s political success.

Entirely left out of the episode are the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden as well as the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I’m not complaining — if they had been included, we would have been instructed in the contributions of racism, “sexism,” misogyny, and other faults of American voters to Trump’s political success — but both Trump’s rise and Trump’s comeback are given an essentially apolitical treatment. The talking heads from the media axis not only read Trump’s psychology, they also read the psychology of his supporters. The teachings and governance of the PBS left and had nothing to do with it.

Newt Gingrich appears briefly. I learned something from him. Newt recommends Trump’s The Art of the Comeback. Now out of print, it was published by Times Books in 1997. I hadn’t heard of it. If Trump were Hitler, Times Books would be required to publish a new edition and every home would have a copy on display. Case closed.

It should be noted that “Trump’s Comeback” spares us any mention of Hitler and fascism. The closest it comes is likening Trump to Napoleon. Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena. Trump moved to Mar-a-Lago. There you have it.

The Russia hoax is mentioned at about 32:00 of the show. Unmentioned is the fact that it was brought to us by the Clinton campaign, by James Comey and the FBI, and by the media (including PBS). Trump prevailed against it because the Russia hoax was, well, a hoax, but you wouldn’t know it from Frontline or from PBS.

In this respect as well this episode is classic Frontline/PBS parody. The New Yorker’s pathetic Jane Mayer is the talking head in the matter of the Russia hoax. Perfect!

Covering Trump’s first administration, the show arrives at Charlottesville in the same abridged fashion. It gives us “very fine people on both sides.” The same old same old is still the news according to Frontline. Two Washington Post reporters are the talking heads in this case. Again, perfect!

The historic 2024 election referred to in the title of the episode is treated in approximately eight minutes. The Democrats’ lawfare is discussed — but let us not be so bold as to consider the merits. Frontline‘s voice of God intones that Trump was “armed with grievances.” A talking head adds that his campaign was “a revenge tour.” To adapt the line from Keats, that is all ye at PBS know on earth and all PBS thinks ye need to know.

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