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October 4, 2019 - 1:39pm
OK, so the device of an imagined dialogue between a typical ‘urban guy’ and a typical ‘flyover man’ is a bit silly. But today’s David Brooks column in the New York Times has the ring of truth about it.
‘Urban guy’ is beside himself about Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanours, but ‘flyover man’ isn’t interested in the impeachment story. This passage struck me as particularly on point:
Listen, do you remember those months just after the election when people like you were briefly curious about people like me? You sent your reporters out on wild safaris into the hinterlands to interview Trump voters. You read “Hillbilly Elegy.” Back then it was fashionable to say that Trump is just a symptom of real problems in America. He’s the wrong answer to the right question.
It didn’t take you long to lose interest in all that. Now we’re just a block of concrete you call “his base.” Now, all you care about is Trump, not his supporters or the issues driving us. Your whole media is Trump-O-Centric.
The inability of the US media to see past Trump to his supporters remains his biggest asset.
Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.
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