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A Local Problem Before It Became a National One

Philip Bump contends The only information Trump supports is information that makes him look good:

Trump highlighting [conservative-leaning pollster] Rasmussen isn’t quite like putting your best friend as a reference on a job application, but it’s not as though he’s going out of his way to list former employers. He also goes a step further, though, disparaging all of those other surveys as not having “honest” polling. The only “honest” poll, it seems, is the one that has consistently differed from other polling to the Republicans’ benefit.

CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS are “dishonest” media outlets that are worried about the “quality of Sinclair Broadcast.” Sinclair is the media conglomerate that overlaps heavily with Trump’s political base both literally and rhetorically. It’s overtly conservative, featuring (and promoting) commentary that casts Trump in a positive light. (It has regularly mandated that its 285 stations air opinion segments from former administration and campaign official Boris Epshtyn, for example, and similarly insists they air segments called “Terrorism Alert Desk.”) Sinclair attracted viral attention over the weekend after Deadspin published a video showing its anchors reciting a mandated screed against the lack of objectivity at other media outlets.

For Trump, this pro-Trump and pro-Trump-rhetoric mechanism is the right way to do things. Not like the fake news at outlets that ascribe to objectivity without interference from the business side. None of that matters as long as the result is positive news for Trump.

Trump’s technique would be familiar in countless small towns where boosterism has meant dodgy data and sketchy studies in support of a false (but rosy) outlook.

Trump didn’t invent cherry-picking like this – it was around long before him. The prevalance of that approach is, in part, that which paved the way for Trumpism.

An immune system weak from many small illnesses struggles to resist a greater, worse malady. These smaller illnessess afflicted many communities, year upon year, for thousands of days, after which the very worst on offer seemed, for too many, like palatable fare.

 

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