Ever since former President Donald Trump rode the golden escalator down to the announcement of his first presidential bid in 2015, he has stolen public attention away from more worthy politicians and from issues of far greater import than his daily screeds, petulant whining and extreme narcissism.
The news media – particularly the cable news channels – have been fixated on Trump as if he were the human equivalent of a catastrophic nine-year hurricane. Occasionally, a war or a school shooting will butt in to steal a few hours of prime TV time, but the cable hosts and pundits always return to the mendacious man from Mar-a-Lago.
Even MSNBC, the liberal news channel, has given itself over to ceaseless examination of every wrinkle in the legal cases being prosecuted against the ex-president. On MSNBC, there are more lawyers and legal analysts than working reporters, and their focus is invariably on Trump.
Now that a real trial has begun in Manhattan, where Trump faces criminal charges related to his hush money payment to a porn star, the cable news operations are giddy with their good fortune. A trial featuring a world-famous celebrity is the perfect venue for them. It is like a low-budget, limited TV series with new plot twists dribbling out each day. It is a story that is easy to cover with a couple of reporters and a camera or two, and it provides steady fodder for the talking heads to chew on hour after hour after hour for weeks and weeks and weeks.
And if you happen to be the current president of the United States, it is just tough luck that the chattering cable personalities find you far less fascinating than Trump’s legal problems. Even as they lecture Joe Biden about the need to get his message out to the public, the TV commentators largely ignore or block Biden’s message themselves.
It is almost certain that Trump will continue to dominate news coverage from now until Election Day in November, while Biden will often seem to disappear from view, no matter how hard he tries to be heard and seen. Arguably, that could benefit Biden, since much of what we will see of Trump will be him glaring and sullen at the defense table and talking nonsense on his way in and out of court. Still, it means that this year’s contest for the White House could be as strange and stunted as the last one when the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed campaigning.
As a result, the election will be less a contest of competing visions of America’s future than a referendum on Trump, the person we love or hate with intensity and find impossible to ignore.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
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David Horsey
is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for The Seattle Times. His latest book is “Drawing Apart: Political Cartoons from a Polarized America.”
