The Media Mocked Candidate Trump And Missed The Story

Donald Trump, the real estate mogul mocked and minimized by the media and political establishment, has stunned the world with a death-defying campaign that has captured the presidency, writes Howard Kurtz at FoxNews.com.

The real estate mogul, mocked and minimized by many in the media and criticized by his own party’s establishment, wound up doing far more than avoiding the landslide loss that so many prognosticators predicted after the conventions. The man who had never run for public office, who had supposedly alienated so many women and minorities that he had no serious chance, somehow captured the highest office in the land.

It was not until 2:30 am that first the AP, then the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, then Fox News, declared Trump to be the 45th president.

There was a sense of disbelief, even shock, among journalists on and off the air as states like Ohio, North Carolina and Florida fell into the Trump column and Clinton failed to put away the big blue Midwestern states.

Some media figures lashed out on Twitter. ABC's Martha Raddatz choked back tears as she discussed the Trump presidency.

It was a version of what has gone on since the billionaire came down the Trump Tower escalator last year, when he was treated as an entertaining figure but not as a plausible president. The Huffington Post was less than gracious at the end: "Nightmare: President Trump."


According to Maragaret Sullivan at The Washington Post, the media missed the story. In the end, a huge number of American voters wanted something different. And although these voters shouted and screamed it, most journalists just weren’t listening. They didn’t get it.

They didn’t get that the huge, enthusiastic crowds at Donald Trump’s rallies would really translate into that many votes.

Journalists — college-educated, urban and, for the most part, liberal — are more likely than ever before to live and work in New York City and Washington, D.C., or on the West Coast. And although we touched down in the big red states for a few days, or interviewed some coal miners or unemployed autoworkers in the Rust Belt, we didn’t take them seriously. Or not seriously enough.