Aaron Sorkin and the problem with Trump coverage

Media offers a lot of sand and little water.

For my National Journal column this week, I wrote about the early polling data we have back on the Trump indictment. None of it is surprising, and all the caveats of reading it carefully still apply. It is going to take a while to know how it all plays out. But I found it interesting to contrast the proportion of Republicans who said Trump should be indicted (about one in five) with the proportion of Republicans who say Trump did nothing wrong (also about one in five, presumably a very different group).

“…Today is also a good time to remind ourselves that a clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower.” -Charlie Sykes

There’s a lot of space between “did something wrong” and a criminal indictment, to be sure. But it’s an interesting example of splitting hairs - so go read the column while it’s unlocked.

I do have to admit, though, the only reason I wrote about Trump again is because I knew that with a Tuesday 6pm Eastern publish time (it’s published at the same time every week), nothing else would get much air time. I don’t like feeling like I’m writing out into the void, and I very much like writing things that get clicks and shares, so I found an angle I thought was at least somewhat insightful and stuck with Trump.

I was reminded of my own writing attitude when I read Clare Malone’s tweets about the media scene outside the courtroom today. Particularly this:

“Listen, I was there, I was participating in the let's-cover-the-scene madness. But I think after eight years of this, I wonder what the point of it is.”

We’d all do well to think about that. The constant coverage of Trump’s plane going from Florida to New York was just nutty. I’m sure the scene outside the courthouse was wild. Who benefits from this?

The answer to that is media trying to generate content for their audiences, of course. Trump clicks. He also draws eyes. It’s a train wreck — or as Charlie Sykes wrote this morning: "All of this will have a circus-like quality. But today is also a good time to remind ourselves that a clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower."

We’ve got to find a way to do better. Because when we don’t do better, people are still absorbing it. Borrowing from Aaron Sorkin, (via via Lewis Rothschild in The American President):

“People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.”

Maybe someday we’ll figure out how to reduce the sand content of our news. In the meantime, don’t wait around for Andrew Shepherd to fix it with a fantastic press conference speech. He’s fictional. And his gun bill probably didn’t pass.