How Trump Won — and How the Media Missed It
To many, the constant string of campaign events — up to seven states in one day — was something of a death march. Up early and in bed late, at each stop, the journalists were herded into the “pen” in the center or the back of the arena; in each speech, they were Trump’s rhetorical foil, forced to play the Washington Generals to his Harlem Globetrotters, jeered by the crowds.
To many in the media, it was all a pointless ordeal, leavened only by the apparently gratifying task of catching Trump in a (perceived) gaffe, or noting audience misbehavior.
.. But I was surprised at how few of them ventured beyond the “pen” and into the crowd, how much time was spent on Twitter at Trump rallies rather than listening to real, live, flesh-and-blood Trump supporters.
.. On occasion, mainstream media reports of events I attended bore no resemblance to what had actually happened — such as when NBC turned a happy speech in Las Vegas in Dec. 2015 into a kind of Nuremberg Nazi rally.