Last month, when asked what new goals he would accomplish in a second term, President Trump rambled so incoherently his allies responded with public distress. The answer was so bad that his unofficial spokesperson Sean Hannity offered him a second chance to answer the question, and Trump performed only slightly better. (His also-rambling answer focused on completing the border wall he had once promised Mexico would finance, even more judges, along with the 2014 Veterans’ Choice Act and the Second Amendment to the Constitution, neither of which are things Trump did in the first place, let alone will do in the future.
But now, finally, Trump has an agenda for his second term that he can credibly commit to:
It is almost certainly true: Under a Biden presidency, cable news ratings will probably sag. Fox News will be fine, inventing new ways to whip its audience into hysteria. But CNN and MSNBC, deprived of Trump’s unprecedented stream of scandal, mismanagement, crisis, leaks, and racism, will suffer. The pre-Trump routine of watching people with good hair and no face mask stand in front of buildings waiting for officials to make anodyne statements will feel intolerably dull after four years of chaos. People will start watching movies, perhaps even reading books, rather than binge-watch hours of cable news to see former officials warning the public that the president is dangerously unfit.
If Trump wins a second term, on the other hand, the norm-breaking will accelerate, mass discontent will boil over, and the continued decay of the federal government’s ability to handle basic functions will result in more mass disaster events. Many of them will probably be more camera-friendly than the coronavirus pandemic. Without Trump to supply the programming our hard-working cable news personalities have come to depend on, the industry could suffer a devastating setback.
Trump 2020: Because Jake Tapper Needs That New Beach House.
