Now that we've seen the numbers behind the fraudulent business "success" of incompetent Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump, Karen Tumulty goes into the wayback machine to see how the myth of Trump as a golden boy was nurtured and promoted by the media early in his wealth- destroying career:
In the 1980s and 1990s, the media conspired to perpetrate a vast fraud on the American people. So-called journalists and their complicit editors colluded — yes, that’s the word — to convince an unwitting public that Trump was a spectacularly successful businessman.
The scale of the ink-fueled myth has been exposed at last, thanks to 10 years’ worth of his tax information obtained by the New York Times, which revealed Trump’s enterprises were flopping on an epic scale. [snip]
You wouldn’t have known any of that from a December 1987 People magazine cover that featured the 41-year-old tuxedoed “tycoon” under a headline pronouncing him “TOO DARN RICH.”
“Almost everything he touches turns to profit,” the magazine marveled, adding: “He says he’s too busy to run for President right now, but in a few years, well, who knows?” [snip]
“He is the man with the Midas fist,” Newsweek wrote a few months before the People cover.
The years- long run of Trump's "The Apprentice" on NBC is not mentioned, although it's arguably the most egregious example of the media lionizing this hyena and playing a large role in creating the Trump myth. This and uncritical reporting for the last 30 years has culminated in the disaster we see today. Tumulty is just scratching the surface, of course; but the examples cross from entertainment media to "news" outlets, who were all too happy to buy into Trump's flimflam.The Times wrote the earliest classic of the genre with its first profile of Trump back in 1976. The story by society reporter Judy Klemesrud began: “He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford. He rides around town in a chauffeured silver Cadillac with his initials, DJT, on the plates. He dates slinky fashion models, belongs to the most elegant clubs and, at only 30 years of age, estimates that he is worth ‘more than $200 million.’ ” (our emphasis)
Tumulty concludes,
During the final debate of the 2016 campaign, Trump vowed to “run our country the way I’ve run my company.” As we are learning, that is one campaign promise he’s on track to keep.One might also observe, as we are learning, too much of today's media is on track to commit the same malpractice -- this time in reporting how Trump's running the country.
