Trump Helped Create the Media That Created Trump

Jack Shafer: “If this makes the media complicit in Trump’s rise, so be it. But the media didn’t create the Trump political phenomenon. The real origin is far more interesting: Trump artfully created the media that in turn created Trump the presidential candidate.”

“There’s something truly original in all of this. Trump may yet turn out to be a fairly conventional American populist when it comes to his policy views, but he’s already proved revolutionary in his ability to create—and then manipulate—the media platforms that enable his politics. His breakthrough idea was to cash in on his four decades of media exposure with a political message that uniquely combined victimhood, bragging and patriotic obfuscation. To invert Marshall McLuhan’s most famous dictum, when it comes to politics, it’s the message—not the medium—that matters most in pushing a candidate to the top. But you can’t deliver the message unless you have the medium at your disposal.”