His comments were mentioned in passing in a recent Connie Schultz article in The Nation and during a handful of cable news segments. This is a president who shows contempt for people who didn’t vote for him and who views those who criticize or oppose his policies as enemies. But as CNN’s John Avlon -- who was critical of Trump’s language -- said, it “wasn’t normal” and shows that “we are becoming accustomed to this kind of vicious, horrible rhetoric from an American president.” It speaks to the kind of generous curve Trump is regularly graded on compared to other politicians.

For all the outrage emanating from the right-wing circles aimed at the left for its supposed disdain of red America, why don’t they -- or at the very least, mainstream media organizations -- hold Republicans to account for promoting a disdain for Americans who live in big cities or vote for Democrats?

Media aren’t holding Trump to the same standards as past presidents, and it’s not entirely clear why.

Following the news in the Trump era is a lot like trying to drink from a firehose. It’s a near-impossible task that can leave those who try to do it worse off than when they began. As Trump has inserted himself into the news more than any other president -- whether by tweeting his way into a new controversy, setting a new record for spreading false information, or whisking the country into dubiously justified conflicts -- it leaves journalists in a position where they simply cannot cover every single thing he says or does with the same attention they’d have done with past presidents. This means that some stories don’t get the focus they probably deserve. One thing is for certain though: A Democratic president would have been excoriated for weeks on end for some of the things Trump has said without much fanfare. And that’s a problem.

Perhaps Trump’s words were brushed off at the start of his first presidential campaign because most people saw him as a sideshow candidate without a real chance of winning the Republican nomination. Perhaps he was then given a pass because many believed that even after the nomination, he’d lose. Perhaps criticism was held off in hopes that he’d pivot and find a more traditionally presidential tone once in office. But journalists are out of excuses now. They must either start holding Trump to the same exact standards to which they’ve held past presidents and presidential candidates, or they need to admit that those past standards were arbitrary.

During an April 6, 2008, fundraiser, then-candidate Barack Obama addressed one of the most common questions he faced during his run for president: How could he, a first-term senator and a Black man, connect with white, working-class voters? How could a campaign centered on optimism reach people who’d been failed by their government time and again? In explaining why simply ticking off a list of bullet points about policy wouldn’t be enough, he said something that nearly 12 years later is still pointed to as evidence that he was an out-of-touch elitist, even though that’s precisely the opposite of what it shows (emphasis added):