Howard Kurtz On Life Beyond The Media Bubble

Robert Leonard

If you live inside the Beltway hothouse, you’re practically fainting from all the Trump taunts against the media, from the CNN faux-wrestling video to the cosmetic slap at Mika Brzezinski.

But out in the rural heartland, it’s a different story, according to Media Watcher Howard Kurtz at Fox News.

That viewpoint snuck onto the New York Times op-ed page courtesy of Robert Leonard, News Editor at KNIA, KRLS Radio in Knoxville, Iowa who talks to plenty of Trump supporters in his part of the state.

And guess what? They don’t much care about wrestling videos and insulting cable news hosts. They think the president is doing just fine, that the media are out to get him, and that most of what obsesses the press is just noise.

He writes: “What I do hear from my conservative friends — most still ardent Trump supporters — is a collective yawn at the Washington maelstrom. Few care about his tweets — even about Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough and the CNN body slam. The whacking of James Comey? About time. President Obama’s appointee anyway. Mr. Trump’s asking if Mr. Comey could drop the Michael Flynn investigation? It was a simple question, not obstruction of justice. The Comey testimony? Vindication for Mr. Trump! Mr. Comey is a leaker, he lied under oath, and he’s going down. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t serve prison time.”

And then Leonard gets at an underlying reality that many media folks miss:

“For many conservatives, they support Mr. Trump because he’s their de facto leader in a cultural war. Liberals mock Christianity and demean Christian morals. Conservatives respect our police and military, while liberals romanticize street thugs. Conservatives’ tax dollars help pay for public schools and colleges that indoctrinate liberal values.”

That doesn’t make them right, but it’s a point of view that isn’t terribly popular in New York and Washington, and which must be reckoned with."