Thanks, media, for shoring up Trump's base

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
SEP 01, 2018 | 4:10 AM

... Oh, the inanity. “Ahead of schedule?” Sure, bud. No wall built. No Clinton jailed. Your inner circle en route to the supermax ...

... The base says something loony tunes — like that Trump has “kept his promises” — and the media, without correcting anything, reports on the misperception with a note of defeated irony ...

It’s often said that Trump holds these rallies to “shore up” the base. But the media does much of the work of consolidation, too.

Every time we even use the word “base,” we reinscribe its solidity. An idiosyncratic American minority becomes the uncrackable concrete foundation that’s somehow “under” the Trump presidency, immortal and unchanging. “Base” also conjures the basement — our country’s long-disavowed racism, spite, greed and violence, locked in the cellar like a monster ...

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-heffernan-trump-base-20180901-story.html