For the past year and a half Trump has masterfully outsmarted the mainstream media at every twist and turn on his road to the White House. Who can forget the time back in September when the mainstream media thought they had finally cornered Trump on the birther issue? Thinking they were going to get an apology from Trump on pushing the Obama "birther" controversy, the mainstreamers piled into the brand new Trump International Hotel in D.C. in eager anticipation of his statement and the opportunity to blast him with patronizing questions. But, what the unwitting media actually got was 30 minutes of endorsements from decorated military generals and medal of honor recipients that was broadcast out to millions of voters.
CNN was so furious they actually cut their coverage of the event while Jake Tapper declared that Trump had pulled off a "political Rick roll."
And CNN finally pulls out of live coverage of Trump event while these other folks are speaking. Jake Tapper calls it a political Rick roll.
— Zuri Berry (@zuriberry) September 16, 2016
Meanwhile, Politico's disgraced Glenn Thrush had a nervous breakdown over twitter blasting the cable networks that had allowed Trump to "hijack them for free airtime" calling it a "f--king disgrace."
18 months into this cable networks are still letting Trump hijack them for free airtime -- ad time -- by promising a "major announcement'
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) September 16, 2016
This is a f--king disgrace... https://t.co/YtSjlt57Os
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) September 16, 2016
But the more frustrated and angry the elitists of the mainstream media became, the stronger his base grew. As Michael Moore so eloquently pointed out, the people of the Midwest saw that corporate America hated Trump, that wall street hated Trump, that establishment politicians hated Trump and that the mainstream media hated Trump which only served to confirm for them that "the enemy of my enemy is who I'm voting for on November 8th."
And while the mainstream media promised some internal reflection following an election they got horribly wrong, in reality, absolutely nothing has changed. They can't help but publicly display their contempt for the president-elect with several "journalists" pushing the boundaries of on-air nervous breakdowns recently over the "Russian hacking" of the election.
That said, as Joe Concha of The Hill points out, while they hate him, the media can't help but to endlessly cover every single tweet he sends out, every person that walks into Trump Tower, every rumor about a potential cabinet appointment and every rally he attends because the ad revenue he generates demands it.
Because here's the thing: Trump knows he has traditional establishment media wrapped around his finger. He got a fresh reminder of his control during the past two weeks, when much of cable news would run coverage of every Trump Tweet and analyze and speculate about every person entering Trump Tower. The coverage in most places would — as it always has been — was overwhelmingly negative and hilariously hyperbolic.
But then at night, everyone would drop all regular programming to cover Trump rallies wall-to-wall. The president-elect would oftentimes speak for more than an hour. The ratings he would bring in — as always — would dwarf said regular programming. Every journalist or those pretending to play the role would stop everything they're doing to Tweet every quote from Trump they could from these speeches, pouring even more gas on the fire.
No president-elect before him — even the current president — was bowed down to in this regard. Not because the media loves Trump, of course, but it loves the ad revenue he generates via boffo ratings.
And that's why Trump treats the press like he owns them.
He knows this.
So, as Concha concludes, "welcome to the post-election media world...if you haven't noticed any difference in the way the media goes about its business, it's because it hasn't changed a bit."