Hey, Mainstream Media – Stop Feeding Trump’s Ego With Your Presence

Well, this is a great idea, actually. I’m just shocked it’s coming from Fox News.

Ok, to be fair, Fox News’ actual news department tend to be rather fair minded. It’s their opinion shows – the Sean Hannitys, Tucker Carlsons, Jeanine Pirros – that are unbearable toadies to Trump.

Today, Fox News’ politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, spoke directly to the news media about the treatment they’ve been receiving from President Trump and his uncivil supporters.

Specifically, the president has been using social media and his rallies to promote the very authoritarian idea that only he holds the truth, and that the media is the “enemy of the people.”

The press gathers, filming the bizarre and grotesque that makes up the typical Trump rally, and with every rally, the petulant man-baby singles them out for abuse.

Stirewalt says enough is enough.

“We should stop having reporters at those Trump rallies,” Stirewalt said on Fox News’s “Outnumbered.” “Everybody should stop having reporters penned up like veal in the back of those things for the president to use as a prop, and then some of the reporters exploit that for their own personal benefit.”

Stirewalt added that “this is not helping anybody. Get out of the hall. Leave the cameras, get the reporters out of the hall. Quit letting him use you as a foil.”

Quit filming the freak show.

The issue came to a head earlier in the week, when CNN’s Jim Acosta was shouted at and harassed by Trump supporters at a rally in Tampa, Florida.

Acosta filmed the debacle with his phone and posted it to social media, saying that he felt that at some point, the raging, anti-press rhetoric by the president would eventually end up getting someone hurt.

He’s a bit of a princess and he gets a lot of heat for it, but I’m not prepared to say he’s wrong. For someone to support Trump in the first place, at least on the level of some of what we’re seeing at these rallies, they have to be a bit “unwell.” We’ve seen them go to extremes before. If Trump keeps painting the press as “enemies” and a hinderance to his master MAGA plan, how long before one of them acts in service to their liege?

Stirewalt wasn’t through giving advice.

Stirewalt also suggested an end to televised White House press briefings, calling them “counterproductive” and “showboat theater.”

“It has become a forum of personal achievement and political utility for the administration,” he said.

President Trump is a narcissist. He needs the spotlight. He needs adoration. And he needs to feel like a hero, fighting against a common enemy. In this case, he has weaponized his followers against the First Amendment and just common civility.

What you see at the Trump rallies is not patriotism. It is not America. It is a cesspool of the ignorant, vain, hate-filled, and destructive, no matter what their red caps or campaign signs say.

I get that this is a train wreck and it has become the media’s job to rubberneck and film the wreckage, but if they want to start regaining their power, they need to stop allowing Trump to put them in front of his nasty, nasty base.