MT

The most recent iteration of this is the Washington Post’s slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” which is particularly loathsome for me. I spent two years covering the Trump campaign, and speaking as a journalist, we could not have fucked up that story more. Not only did we get every single prediction wrong, we actually helped elect the guy. Trump was of course great for television, and while we were putting him on the screen we pretended we were just being objective. People were not adequately warned about the political reality.

When the media realized Trump was a serious danger, people made a decision to change course and say that being objective was not enough. We told ourselves we had a responsibility to protect people from Trump by telling them he was not an appropriate political candidate. We started going around calling ourselves the tribunes of Truth, the defenders of democracy, and we got high on our own fumes.

By this time it was too late, and we sounded like the boy who cried wolf. I remember being behind the rope line at Trump rallies, and he would literally point to us and say, “Look at those bloodsuckers — they didn’t think I could come this far.” He made us the representatives of the condescending elite, and anyone who’s watched pro wrestling knows that the baby-faced good guys in the room are the people you want to see hit with a chair. Trump instinctively understood that, but we in the press didn’t, because we all watch The West Wing instead of WWE.

We bore primary culpability for helping Trump get elected, and then what did we do after 2016? We rebranded ourselves, once again, as the defenders of democracy. This is one of the reasons I wanted to do this book. We had an opportunity for a real change in our posture. There should have been a “come to Jesus” moment. But instead we compounded the problem we had with the public.