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They could not function or exist without Trump as their obsessive, singular, manic focus

Mainstream media is dependent on Trump, but for the raucous cable channels, he is their very lifeline. They could not function or exist without Trump as their obsessive, singular, manic focus.

There might be some virtue, however petty, in their stalker-like attentions, if all the panels and specials and “breaking news” marathons offered some glimpse or glimmer of insight, freshness of observation, coherence of interpretation or solid analysis. But all is channelled through an outraged filter of shallow contempt and a haze of intellectual and moral condescension toward their target, the American president.

Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Where the anchors of CNN and CNBC, their lemming panellists and their house partisan “experts” got the sense that they are superior of the person they are covering, where they discovered that they are the anointed arbiters to deliver minute-by-minute judgment on Trump’s fitness for office, his intellect and his executive skills, is a riddle never to be unravelled.

This struck me with the greatest force this week after President Trump revealed he was asking the networks and cable for eight minutes of broadcast time to speak to Americans on the decades-long border crisis.

Now he wasn’t, like the freshly interred Fidel Castro was wont to do, commandeering the public airwaves for some 10-hour marathon eructation. Considering it has only been weeks since an invasion of thousands of migrants was threatening the territorial sovereignty of the United States, and considering there is talk now of other “caravans,” surely a president could legitimately ask for a mere eight minutes of air time to speak to his own citizens on this topic — a subject that has also occasioned a government shutdown.