How the news media failed to prepare Americans for Trump

As far as I was concerned, last Tuesday’s presidential election was a contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton where, no matter the outcome, the only loser was going to be America.

Having said that, I had faith in most of the news media reporting and public polling — not even the news media wants to be proven so hopelessly inept and wrong. I fully expected to go to bed Tuesday night amid rapturous delight on TV and online by the political left that we had elected our first woman president.

I was prepared for four years of efforts to overturn the Supreme Court’s Heller and Citizens United decisions that reaffirmed Second and First Amendment rights, respectively. I was prepared for an effort to “fix” the Affordable Care Act by moving it to the same single-payer model that has worked so well at the Veterans Affairs — secret waitlists and dying patients as bureaucrats get bonuses.

I was prepared for Clinton to follow in President Barack Obama’s footsteps and issue more illegal executive orders on immigration, gun control and environmental regulations.

The one thing I wasn’t prepared for is President-elect Trump.

During the primary, talk radio, Fox News, MSNBC and all the rest relentlessly promoted Trump to Republican voters.

During the general election campaign, much of the news media turned on him. The news media did the vetting they should have been doing months earlier.

What the news media didn’t do, at any time during the campaign, was take a serious look at the issues and the people outside New England and the West Coast affected by them.

The news media failed to identify a large swath of middle America that was dissatisfied with an economy that felt as though it had never really recovered from the recession.

They didn’t focus on the continuing problems at the Veterans Affairs or with “Obamacare.”

They didn’t focus on what was going on in the Middle East and Obama’s laughable “red lines” or huge cash payments to Iran’s mullahs.

They didn’t focus on the hypocrisy of Obama’s call for increased gun control laws while he pardons hundreds of prisoners convicted of violating existing gun laws.

For the past eight years, and continuing right up to Election Day, the news media has been on a crusade not to inform or hold the powerful to account, but to impose the views and values of coastal elites on a “benighted” heartland. The news media hasn’t been reporting the news, they’ve been crafting propaganda.

The shock at Trump’s victory — both on the left and large swaths of the right — was a direct result of the insularity, political and ideological conformity, and groupthink of the news media nationwide.

Make no mistake. Trump’s victory Tuesday night has done nothing to change my assessment of the man who will inhabit the Oval Office in two short months.

I hope that President Trump will nominate one of the individuals in his list of potential Supreme Court nominees released during the campaign to the open seat created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

I hope President Trump will work with both Republicans and Democrats to come up with a better, more affordable fix to the health insurance marketplace than “Obamacare.” Something of the breadth and importance of health care requires buy-in from both sides.

I hope President Trump uses wisdom and discernment in the foreign policy arena. I hope he finds a way to re-win Iraq and defeat the Islamic State after Obama impetuously threw away a hard-earned victory there.

I hope President Trump’s economic policies increase the growth rate of the U.S. economy, lead to more jobs and fewer able-bodied people on welfare.

I hope President Trump keeps his hands to himself. (In this, at least, all you Democrats who defended President Bill Clinton in the ’90s have no right to criticize.)

I think if President Trump does things that I, as a conservative, approve of, it will just as likely be the result of accident as conscious decision.

I think Trump will say and do things that, at times, will delight liberals.

I have little confidence Trump will be an effective president.

For the last, I hope I am wrong.

This story was originally published November 12, 2016 at 8:36 PM with the headline "How the news media failed to prepare Americans for Trump."