The US corporate media created Donald Trump.
Yes, the Russians certainly worked to elect Trump, a man they rightly judged to be unstable and easily fooled.
And yes, the GOP has worked for many years to suppress and disenfranchise groups that they see as trending Democratic.
And yes, James Comey deliberately tried to influence voters with his last minute announcement about HRC's emails.
But Trump, the person, the so-called, self described business genius, was, in fact, created by the US corporate media.
If the media had not uncritically covered and presented Trump as entertainment, he would have been exposed as the fraud that he always was. His many bankruptcies, his thousands of lawsuits for non-payment of bills, his predatory and nearly pedophilic behavior toward women would all have been common knowledge.
Trump is not the first GOP President to be so treated by the US media. Reagan was also treated as more celebrity by the media. Like Trump, Reagan was an open racist, and an idiot, but Reagan was enough of an actor that he could pretend to be normal.
And this media bias must be accounted for when looking at the way that the US media will cover the 2020 race.
The US media has no interest in actually covering the real economy that working people live in.
One example: Coverage of unemployment numbers presents a false picture because so many people are employed at sub-living wage jobs that the mere fact of being employed is no assurance that one is making a living wage. But the media prefer the simple narrative that the "official" unemployment numbers indicate a healthy economy.
As to the why of Trump's support:
Trump, like Reagan before him, won by appealing to fear. The fear, of course, is fear of the non-white other.
And the corporate media, with its endless focus on violence, especially violence involving non-white actors, feeds that race based fear. It does not matter that violent crime rates have declined. Fear sells, and fear is what will be presented.
And the corporate media, by the way that they cover campaigns, will avoid talking about policy and instead focus, when covering Democratic candidates, on who is more likeable.
The actual results of Trump's insane policy decisions will be ignored and the media coverage will allow Trump to frame his opponents with no criticism from the media personalities that we call reporters.
On a positive note:
in spite of all of what I wrote above, Trump actually lost the popular vote. The US media can claim that the economy is robust, but an increasingly indebted population knows that this is a lie.
The challenge is to show people that the 1% prefer a debt economy, and prefer that workers have no expectations of a better life. The 1% who actually own the country want people to be afraid because a frightened population is easier to control.
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