The News Media’s Covid/Lockdown Narrative Has Checkmated Trump’s Re-Election Bid

Thanks mostly to massive fragmentation, which then facilitated a forfeiting of their credibility in order to artificially juice a badly broken business model, the news media generally has remarkably little impact on public opinion in this modern era, especially in the realm of politics. However, in situations where there is a panic, the subject in unfamiliar to the masses, and they speak with a generally uniform voice, the news media can still be a very formidable force.

Obviously, the Covid pandemic situation is one of those exceptional circumstances where the news media has enormous power to influence public opinion, partly because many people are not only scared, but they also inherently very poorly equipped to evaluate the facts and data for themselves. Consequently, the narrative in which the vast majority of the news media has become invested has effectively framed the presidential election for at least half of the voting population.

By defining the “rules” and setting the goalposts, the news media has created a prism on Covid through which it is nearly impossible to see that President Donald Trump may

deserve to be reelected. As a result, it is becoming increasingly clear that such a result, while the election still could still be and seem rather close, this is simply not going to happen.

As I predicted at the outset of the pandemic, the coronavirus story, largely because everyone immediately got deeply invested in a particular viewpoint, is uniquely suited to the news media only telling one side of it. In short, Covid is so dangerous that it justifies a complete destruction of the foundation of American life, and that such governmental impact, if done properly, has a direct/net positive effect of the medical damage caused by the virus, no matter how long life is constrained.

Under this narrative of the virus, we are still living under the very worst-case scenarios of March with regard to what it means to get the coronavirus, which allows the media to make their most fundamental and decisive alteration to how the public views the state of the virus’ impact. When this all began, “flatten the curve” was supposed to be about hospitalizations, but somehow that metric got almost completely dropped in favor of the far more impactful “case” numbers, even as the statistical danger of being a “case” has decreased.

Currently, the news media is obsessed with a major increase in the nationwide number of people who are testing positive for the virus on a daily basis, and it is cementing the perception that the response to Covid, supposedly led by

Trump, has been a disaster, with circumstances showing no signs of ever getting better. However, this increase is largely due to a huge surge in testing, with our national positivity rate barely moving, while hospitalizations and deaths (which are influenced by increased testing because more asymptomatic people enter the “with Covid” pool should they be hospitalized or die for other reasons) have gone up slightly, with one high-profile prediction for looming doom in California turning out, just two days ago, to be completely wrong.

Because of the focus on positive tests and a blatant shifting of the goalposts, the perception that the coronavirus is indeed as bad as the media originally advertised has now been successfully embedded in the minds of much of the population. This makes it far easier to justify the continuing lockdown of most of the nation, thus eliminating any negative blowback for Joe Biden for strongly implying that he will further increase Covid-related restrictions once he is elected.

Here is where Trump’s legendary ego allowed himself to be caught in the media’s web of biased reporting about the pandemic. Because, in the media’s mind, a virus which has greatly impacted the entire world could have somehow been stopped cold by a competent president, Trump got blamed for the seemingly enormous death toll which is officially now over 230,000 people in less than eight months (while, weirdly, New York Governor, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, leader of the state with by far

the most deaths, is somehow a media hero).

In response, Trump chose to latch onto the narrative, ironically created by Dr. Anthony Fauci and other allies in the medical community who are perceived as the president’s enemies, that, since well over two million Americans were projected to die by some early models, he must have single-handedly “saved” about two million lives. This assertion is not only a fantasy, it is not at all helpful to Trump politically.

After all, if governmental lockdowns are really that impactful and effective, why the heck wouldn’t we do them all the time, and why wouldn’t Biden be right to pull the shutdown trigger again since things at least seem to possibly be spiraling out of control? Therefore, thanks to the news media, no swing-voter is going to buy that Trump saved two million lives, and claiming that this is what happened actually renders his meek attacks on Biden’s potential lockdown, at best, impotent, and likely counter-productive.

While the polling data can be interpreted in almost anyway someone wants it to be, there seems to be an interesting phenomenon emerging. One where Trump is actually getting hurt by the perception of Covid in key states, regardless of what their governor’s policies have been.

In places like Michigan and Pennsylvania, two critical states that Trump won in 2016 and that have Democratic governors who have seemingly emulated California’s Gavin Newsom in an attempt to be the architect

of the most punitive lockdowns, Trump is doing very poorly (especially in Michigan). It appears that the lockdown, which Republicans have been anticipating would backfire on Democrats, is actually harming Trump, perhaps because a portion of the population there, thanks to the media narrative, has determined that their governor’s punishing actions were required due to Trump’s ineptitude.

Conversely, in “freer” states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas, all with Republican governors, Trump is struggling mightily partly because people who don’t like him, or the lockdown, see no real need to keep Biden out of office, under the assumption their state leadership will protect them from a federal lockdown. Essentially, in response to the position he was put in by the news media, Trump has picked a path which leaves him politically checkmated.

As a conservative who has always loathed Trump, I find his demise being finally facilitated by a virus to be extremely unsatisfying, and, frankly, unfair. In a rational world, Trump actually has a solid story to tell about his Covid response.

Statistically, we are almost exactly like the United Kingdom, a country with obvious similarities to ours, only the USA has a far better rate of deaths per cases. When it came to opening schools and playing football, it is now obvious that Trump was correct, while liberals were very wrong (eventually, I believe he will also be largely vindicated on mask mandates, another topic on which he has unsuccessfully tried to have it both ways)

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However, we now live in a world where perception is reality, and facts mean almost nothing. The pandemic created the opportunity for Trump’s enemies to finally facilitate a view about him which was politically deadly, and, while it has taken a LOT of effort, and unnecessarily cost our children very dearly, they have taken full advantage of it.