LAWRENCE O'DONNELL (HOST): If the news media treated the Trump campaign the way it has treated every presidential campaign prior to Trump, and the other presidential campaign that is going on during the Trump campaign, the Clinton campaign, if the news media treated the Trump campaign like it treats every other campaign, Donald Trump, by now, would have been forced to retract his statement about going to war over a gesture. And Rudy Giuliani would have been forced to apologize for his comment, justifying everything that has ever been done in war anywhere in the world, including everything that Nazi Germany did.

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But, with 55 days left before the election, the American political news media still has not figured out how to deal with the Trump for President campaign, and Donald Trump knows that, and he exploits it every single day. He exploits the American news media's most basic weakness, and that is the news media's unbreakable attraction to whatever is the simplest thing to talk about that day. And a candidate getting sick is much simpler to talk about for the American news media, especially when they have video of that candidate struggling to walk into a car to take her home. That's what the news media is going to go for. Every moment that the news media has spent talking about Hillary Clinton's health, and every moment it has spent pretending that Hillary Clinton should say nothing but praiseful things about Donald Trump's supporters, the news media has been ignoring the real issues of this campaign.