White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently tweeted, “Which is the more underreported story of @POTUS year one? Defeat of ISIS. Booming Trump economy”
Sanders asked the question for a good reason. The good news of Trump’s presidency hasn’t received much attention.
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According to the Media Research Center, coverage of Trump on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts in September, October and November was more than 90% negative.
Granted, the president is partially at fault for the lack of positive coverage. At times, he has stepped all over his message. Plus, attacking news reports as “fake news” is not the way to win friends and influence the press.
Trump supporters cry foul, but just like a coach who throws a chair or blasts the media in a news conference, the outburst tends to get more attention than it does wins.
Trumpsters aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed how the media treat Trump.
Surprisingly, 93-year-old former president Jimmy Carter said, “I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about.”
Speaking with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Carter continued, “I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.”
But is the White House press secretary right? Are Trump’s wins underreported?
On Dec. 16, Ross Douthat, writing in The Times, called the ISIS defeat “a case where the media is not adequately reporting an important success because it does not fit into the narrative of Trumpian disaster in which our journalistic entities are all invested.”
Besides defeating ISIS, what are Trump’s wins this year?
