If you thought that the media would have a come-to-Jesus moment in light of the debacle that was their coverage of the Biden presidency, think again. 

A recent study by the Media Research Center shows that President Donald Trump has received 8% positive coverage during his first four months in office, while 92% has been negative, if looking at the evening newscasts on ABC, NBC, and CBS. 

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Yes, you read that correctly. 

And look, if Trump had a horrific start to his second term, or faced a Nixonian-level crisis, that would be one thing. But Trump 2.0 has been, by almost all practical measures, a profound success. The numbers back it up.

Inflation has fallen for three straight months and currently sits at 2.1%, 7 points lower than it was under then-President Joe Biden in 2022. Biden, without almost any scrutiny from the press or any questioning of his mental state at the time, claimed he inherited high inflation when he took office. 

“No president has had the run we’ve had in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation,” Biden said in a May 2024 CNN interview with Erin Burnett. “It was 9% when I came to office, 9%.”

Burnett didn’t push back on that ludicrous claim. 

More Trump 2.0 numbers:

– Consumer confidence is at a four-year high 

– The S&P just had its best month since 1995 

– Unemployment is at 4.2% 

– GDP is now forecast to grow by 4.6% in the second quarter (source: Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank) 

– Gas prices are down more than 50 cents per gallon compared to one year ago

– Border crossings are down 95% compared to one year ago 

So what exactly is warranting this 92% negative coverage? Two things: First, liberal bias is in the DNA in every newsroom and studio, and second, as Axios’s Alex Thompson awkwardly explained during what feels like a never-ending book tour with Jake Tapper, reporters are intimidated not by their readers but by others in the business who will not stand for any scrutiny of any Democrat, especially of the presidential variety. 

“I do think in some cases, some reporters let their ideological leanings, like, affect their reporting,” Thompson told Bari Weiss on his podcast. “But I do agree that, sort of, I think the groupthink that sets in among Washington, and the self-reinforcing, and the intimidation by the White House, and by feeling like you’re ostracized — not just by potential sources, and potentially losing access, but also by, like, your peers and colleagues who are like giving you side eye — I do think is like — I mean, listen, I mean, it made me doubt myself, right?”

We saw this intimidation take down then-CNN President Chris Licht in 2023 after he attempted to bring CNN out of Crazytown in its coverage of Trump to a more neutral place, prompting overwhelming blowback from within his own ranks. The final straw came when Licht had the audacity to invite Trump on for a town hall with Kaitlan Collins, which was totally justified considering Trump was well ahead of his competitors for the Republican nomination at the time. 

“This thing was madness, total madness,” said media “reporter” Bill Carter of the New York Times. “Like giving a microphone to Drunk Uncle and saying: go for it!” 

“This is CNN’s lowest moment as an organization,” the Atlantic’s James Fallows argued. 

“THIS is the 2024 Republican presidential primary,” CNN media critic Brian Stelter wrote. “Look away if you choose, but this is what it’s going to be like. Should news outlets sanitize it or stare it in the face?” 

Stelter was part of a cabal inside CNN that was aghast over Trump being given a platform on the network. “Anchor” Anderson Cooper took it two steps further with this doozy of a monologue the next night that, in another era, would have had him fired during the commercial break. 

“I get it. It was disturbing,” Cooper said directly to viewers. “The man you were so disturbed to see last night, that man is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president,” Cooper said. “You have every right to be outraged today, angry and never watch this network again, but do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?”

Yep. He actually said that. No reprimand. 

Licht, however, would be fired less than a month later. 

Meanwhile, when comparing coverage of Trump’s first four months to coverage of Biden over his four years overall, the 46th president clocked in with 59% positive coverage versus 41% negative. That’s a 102-point swing upward for a president some regard as the worst of our lifetimes, given his record on inflation, crime, energy prices, spending, the border, education, and foreign policy. Yet the media found a way to provide positive coverage nearly 60% of the time. 

But here’s the good news if karma means anything: Despite all the negative coverage Trump received throughout his third campaign for president, despite two assassinations attempts, and despite a lawfare effort resulting in 94 felony charges, he still won the popular vote and every swing state while Republicans took back the Senate and held the House. 

So what does that tell us? 

Legacy media influence is a fraction of what it once was.

We saw this play out during the 2024 campaign in real time after then-Vice President Kamala Harris was installed as the Democratic nominee without one vote from the public. Trump’s strategy was to embrace new media through podcasts and attending MMA fights, which produced viral clips of Trump entering to roaring crowds and rubbing elbows with Dana White. 

“MMA fights. Joe Rogan. We think of them as very specific things, but the symbolism — It says something about him that she couldn’t capture,” explained Tony Fabrizio to Politico after the election. 

“Where she’s doing the big speech or having the big debate, the conventional warfare, traditional campaign tactics. Donald Trump goes to the McDonald’s drive-through. But in the year 2024, when we’re all living on our phones, a big speech at the Ellipse vs. Trump at the drive-through, which is going to break through?”

It’s a great point in retrospect: Which will live on in infamy? Trump in an apron, smiling and waving goodbye to customers in a McDonald’s drive-thru in photos and videos that were among the most viewed of any campaign? Or a speech by Harris at the Ellipse that no one can quote even one sentence from? 

Nevertheless, outlets such as the Drudge Report, which has morphed into some kind of weird version of the Bulwark meets the Lincoln Project, mocked the strategy. 

“One fry short of a Happy Meal!” and “Felon Finds Work” were the headlines at the time. 

“Trump serves fries and falsehoods at McDonald’s,” was the Washington Post headline. 

“There is scant evidence of Mr. Trump cooking for himself,” a somber New York Times reported. 

Meanwhile, Harris’s speech at the Ellipse received glowing reviews, with Time magazine slobbering so much over it that the campaign’s PR team couldn’t dream it up better. 

“The iconic columns of the White House glowed behind her. In front of her, thousands of supporters held ‘USA’ signs and wore bracelets that lit up red and blue across the grassy acres of the Ellipse,” the magazine “reported.” 

“In a forceful, 30-minute speech, Harris asked voters to elect her and ‘turn the page’ on Trump,” it added. 

In the end, it all didn’t matter. Trump won, and Harris lost. And the Democratic Party has been lost ever since. 

A CNN poll just released underscores the fact that despite legacy media still largely in the Democratic Party’s corner, just 16% of respondents say Democrats have strong leaders, and only 19% say they could get things done. 

That’s horrific. 

A REFORMED VOICE OF AMERICA IS WORTH SAVING

For the next 42 months of Trump’s presidency, expect more of the same from our hopelessly biased legacy media. They will show they learned nothing from the embarrassment of “missing” the Biden story (they missed nothing — they just wanted Trump defeated by any means necessary). 

Ratings will continue to fall, as will readership. But most importantly, so will trust. And without that, old media’s impact will continue to lose out to new media, in which Democrats are way, way behind. The players there don’t seek to serve as their stenographers.