This is when legacy media still had a modicum left of influence. So, they immediately went to work misrepresenting literally anything Trump said or did.
Though the press did ultimately misrepresent every single thing that Trump did, I must point something out: constant scrutiny by the media was a huge reason why some (ie myself and some others I know) voted for him despite having reservations about the man.
Hillary Clinton was running on a platform of continuing Barack Obama’s policies. The media was on an unrepentant “I’m With Her” bender, and this was at a time when she was publicly advocating for a no-fly zone in Syria, right after Obama got the USA involved in the civil war following Russian intervention that beat back American-funded rebel groups like the FSA.
If you don’t know why that’s such a huge problem, Joseph Dunford as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said flat-out that implementing a no-fly zone in Syria would mean getting into a war with both Russia *and* Syria. This was during the same time frame that Clinton was publicly proclaiming that a no-fly zone in Syria would save lives.
That entire incident, and the limited press coverage it received outside of CSPAN and motherfucking Russia Today, told me quite clearly that Hillary Clinton could quite literally spark WW3 and the press would either ignore it like they ignored Obama destroying Libya, *or* try to run defence by vindicating her.
Donald Trump’s first term was pretty fucking weird all things considered, and the lügenpresse levied tons of fallacious accusations against him. Having said that, they *did* audit his presidency from start to finish. Obama never got that kind of coverage throughout all 8 years of his administration, and in fact, the opposite was true when there were crickets chirping over how his intervention in Libya turned a repressed but prosperous military dictatorship into an anarchy-infested hellhole where black people get sold in open air space markets.
Considering the sheer volume of defence that the lügenpresse ran for Biden during his administration, it’s quite clear that they have a vested interest in keeping silent when their preferred ruler is in power. I don’t know how the rest of Trump’s second term will play out, but constant media coverage *is* a good thing.