Getty Fourth Estate Trump's 'Strange New Respect' Moment You saw it here first: The media is coming around to the mogul.

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

Having survived public thrashings from his political foes and the press for his policy proposals, his increasingly outrageous speeches, and his personality, Donald Trump now finds himself receiving strange new respect from unexpected corners.

If you’re not familiar with the “strange new respect” trope, a short primer. The American Spectator’s Tom Bethell introduced the concept in a 1992 article to ridicule the practice of liberal journalists who would reward conservative politicians who migrated from right to left by commenting in print on how they were now commanding “strange new respect” in Washington, showing “growth,” “maturity,” “wisdom,” and “thoughtfulness.” Bethell’s initial example was Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was appointed by conservative President Ronald Reagan but soon became a quasi-liberal, and was rewarded with praise by many in the liberal media. Kennedy has only continued to add to his strange new respect stockpile, the Weekly Standard commented in 2005.


Another steady recipient of strange new respect has been Sen. John McCain, in compensation for having parted with his right-wing Republican kin on so much—tax cuts, campaign finance law, immigration, stem-cell research, treatment of Al Qaeda prisoners, and so on, as the American Spectator complained in 2008. In 2014, Michael Kinsley busted the Washington Post for granting strange new respect to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who was in the process of rebranding himself by expressing newly found centrist views.

Over the years, the trope’s meaning has warped and expanded to include any shift by an establishment from disdain to approval, especially if the shift conforms to a particular herd’s sensibility. Last summer, in a piece about the press corps’ laudatory treatment of the pope, the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto asked if religion was now receiving strange new respect from the press. (No, he concluded.) In the fall, the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel explored the strange new Republican respect Jim Webb was getting for his failed run for the presidency as a Democrat.

As accolades go, the generous comments being directed at Trump aren’t grand, but you can feel them starting to gain momentum. Taken together they mark a slow swing from his status as a near-universal pariah to a devil with whom Republicans, at least, might be able to make a deal. In a Time cover story this week, David Von Drehle records top Republican Ed Rogers saying that “perhaps he wouldn’t be so bad” as president. Rick Scott, Florida’s Republican governor, commended Trump in a USA Today op-ed this week (“Donald Trump Has America’s Pulse”). Although Scott explicitly labeled his piece a non-endorsement, he extolled Trump as someone who has captured “the frustrations of many Americans after seven years” of Barack Obama’s presidency. He’s the sort of can-do guy who could trim the economic garden of burdensome regulations and taxes, Scott concluded.

Ben Carson’s former campaign manager, Barry Bennett, added a growth ring or two of respect to Trump this week by predicting he would win the nomination. Over the holidays, Republican strategist Curt Anderson extended backhanded respect to Trump in a piece he wrote for POLITICO by stating, “Trump is not the most self-absorbed Republican running for president—[Ted] Cruz is.” Anderson wrote, continuing: “Trump makes no effort to hide his narcissism. In that sense, Trump is oddly genuine.” Even Jeb Bush, who previously called Trump a “jerk,” just conceded at a New Hampshire campaign event that he admires the man’s rejection of political correctness.

Strange new respect has traditionally been dispensed to right-wingers as a doggie treat for having veered left. When politicians dole out strange new respect for a fellow politician, as Gov. Scott and Barry Bennett have, it’s always wise to check the paperwork to see if it was submitted in tandem with a job application. Sometimes it gets doled out to undeserving ex-presidents like Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush when a writer overpraises them for the one thing they didn’t totally screw up. Reagan, originally viewed as a servant of the military-industrial complex, ends up being reassessed as the prince of peace.

Other times, the dispensing of strange new respect is more about journalistic exhaustion than anything else. In the case of Trump, reporters who have written countless stories about Trump’s demagogic showboating eventually turn desperate to write something new rather than continue to work the exhausted vein. A reporter can hardly go wrong writing a strange new respect story, as they always command attention from readers and the competition.

Sometimes winning strange new respect is all about timing. Last September, the Washington Post’s Weigel filed a piece about all the unexpected liberal love Trump was winning from liberals like Jonathan Chait, Paul Krugman and Sen. Elizabeth Warren for his tax policies. Weigel, no stranger to the strange new respect trope, doesn’t use the phrase in his piece—perhaps because Trump was still a campaign novelty. If Trump had saved his tax talk for a later phase in the campaign, the commentariat would be shouting “strange new respect” at the top of their lungs.

As journalists and others begin to view as inevitable—or at least genuinely possible—a Trump victory at the Republican National Convention, we should expect a rise in Trump coverage that expresses strange new respect for him. A vestigial example of the genre appeared today in POLITICO. Titled “Donald Trump’s Big Tent,” the piece suggests Trump may be deserving of strange new respect because his “appeal has spread over seven months so far beyond a rabble-rousing, anti-establishment rump to encompass the very elements of the American electorate the GOP has been eager to reach.” Trump isn’t weird, the story implies. He’s the new normal.

Trump is growing. He’s maturing. If his numbers stay big and he does well in the early caucuses and primaries, you can anticipate a surplus of stories documenting his new wisdom and courage.

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I can’t get no respect, strange, new or any other kind. Send props via email to [email protected]. My email alerts don’t respect you, my Twitter feed has grown, and sign up for my RSS feed, which has recently come off its deathbed to show real courage.