Why don't we just ignore Donald Trump?

The impossibility of looking away.

(Donald Trump/ Reuters)

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Any time I write about Donald Trump — and I write about him pretty regularly these days — someone in the comments section or on Twitter will inevitably ask some variation of this question: Why don’t you just ignore him?

After all, it’s indisputably true that Trump cares little for facts. Most of what he says at this point is false — rants about how the 2020 election was stolen from him (it wasn’t) and how the investigations into him are hopelessly compromised (they aren’t).

The argument goes that amplifying that stuff only further injects it into the public’s bloodstream, poisoning dialogue and eroding democracy.

It’s a fair criticism — and one I have thought a lot about not just in writing this newsletter but in the time I spent at CNN and the Washington Post too.

I have a few thoughts on why ignoring Trump just isn’t an option:

1. Trump is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination. We can debate forever whether Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (or anyone else) will seriously challenge Trump for the Republican nomination. But what is totally beyond dispute is that, as of today, Trump is as big a favorite for the Republican nomination as he has ever been.

   Polls make clear just how big an edge Trump has. In the last 5 national polls on the race, Trump’s lead over DeSantis has been 37, 33, 33, 31 and 24 points. In the Real Clear Politics polling average, Trump’s lead is 26.7 points.

   

   Why does that matter? Because, you simply can’t ignore the frontrunner for the presidential nomination of one of the two major parties. Especially one with the demonstrated sway over his party that Trump has shown over the last 8 years.

   Consider that a week ago Trump was arrested on charges that he committed financial fraud in paying hush money to a porn star to cover up their relationship in advance of the 2016 election. And that NONE of the Republican leadership in Congress or his major challengers for the nomination condemned him! In fact, most of them sprinted to his defense!

   Trump is more than just the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024. He is the prime mover in GOP politics. He acts and everyone else reacts — nearly always in support of him.

   To ignore him would be to ignore the broader Republican party. And, like it or not, you can’t do that.

2. Trump has his own communication channels. Look, Truth Social is not Twitter. And Fox isn’t ABC or NBC. But both Truth Social and Fox (not to mention One America News Network and Newsmax) are powerful megaphones and mouthpieces for Trump’s message.

   That fact puts to lie the argument that if we just ignored Trump he would go away. That, if starved of oxygen, he would shrivel up.

   The reality is that Trump has developed his own ways to communicate with his supporters — mediums that are not at all dependent on what we would typically classify as the “mainstream media.” While he once regularly engaged with the mainstream media, you’ll notice he no longer does. No interviews for NBC or CNN or the Washington Post or the New York Times.

   Instead Trump talks exclusively to enablers like Sean Hannity and the New York Post. And, because of the information environment we live in, his interviews get plenty of attention within his base. He doesn’t need the mainstream media for affirmation or attention — and he knows it.

3. Fact checking still matters. Trump, as I mentioned above, says a whole lot that is simply false. Allowing all of that to flood the public consciousness without providing context and, well, facts would be a disservice to the mission of journalism — not to mention democracy.

   I am under no illusion that fact checking done by mainstream media outlets changes the minds of Trump’s base. I know it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s pointless!

   Trump’s constant repetition of his false claims — “witch hunt!”, “Russia, Russia, Russia” — has a cumulative effect on our collective consciousness. It bores itself in and, without facts and figures to directly dispute it, finds a home — whether we like it or not.

   It’s important then to note that Trump said more than 30,000 untrue things during his four years in office. Or that his claims about being spied on or being targeted by biased prosecutors are just not born out by facts.

   
   That they won’t change EVERYONE’s mind doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing them.

With ALL of that said, I do think the media needs to be very careful about how we cover Trump.

The reality is that he is a potent drug for news organization because, well, he rates. Put him on cable TV relentlessly — or on your homepage — and your numbers are going to be better than if you go with some other politics (or non politics) content. That’s just a fact.

And, like or or not, ratings and page views matter — a lot — to media outlets.

But, that’s not an argument to ignore Trump. That’s both impossible and irresponsible.

Instead, it’s a call to cover him contextually. You can’t just run his rallies without any fact checking. You can’t report on every one of his Truth Social posts. You can’t put his defenders on and just let them lie about established facts.

Trump presents a unique challenge to the news business. In 2016 he successfully exploited the desire/need for ratings to dominate coverage of the presidential race. He is going to try to do that again — just look at the speech he gave after his arrest last Tuesday.

He will try to turn everything into a circus, with himself as ringmaster. The media needs to take back that control from Trump, dictating the terms of how and when he is covered.

But what the media can’t — and shouldn’t do — is ignore Trump. He’s not going to disappear. He’s here to stay — at least through 2024 — and the media needs to intelligently grapple with that fact.