Donald Trump’s media boot-lickers: Joe Scarborough, Howard Kurtz & other useful establishment idiots

Donald Trump’s media boot-lickers: Joe Scarborough, Howard Kurtz & other useful establishment idiots

The GOP candidate does not have many media defenders. But shockingly, he has more than zero

JIM NEWELL

We write about Donald Trump a lot over here at the Salon Dot Com web magazine. Have you noticed? He’s a character. Rarely does it occur to us, though, to treat anything he does in either the political or entertainment arenas as laudable. He is a joke on the political system and the Republican Party that, inexplicably, some portion of the United States population has yet to pick up on. That’s why it’s such a great joke.

Some media figures — a small portion, to be sure — take a different approach to Trump’s campaign. What they do is bend on their knees, pucker up, and kiss his ass. Why put themselves through this indignity? Perhaps for access: kissing up to a public figure is a tried-and-true way to retain good relationships with that figure and his or her handlers. If you’re going to be so blatantly unethical in your professional duties, it might as well be with Donald Trump, who gets very big, very bigly classy ratings, the biggest ratings in history. The scarier explanation for why some media figures kiss Trump’s ass is because they genuinely believe that Trump is a laudable human being. In other words, because they are dumb.

The Trump ass-kissers fascinate us. But which of them is the worst? Let’s share several recent, comical instances of the media kissing Trump’s ass recently, and you decide which of them is the most egregious.

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity loves Donald Trump. Has him on his show like every night. Hannity may one of the figures who just does this for the ratings, but maybe he does it because he is dumb, too. Who’s to say?

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Howard Kurtz

Howard Kurtz appears willing to discard whatever shred of integrity he still possesses as an arbiter of journalistic ethics on defending Donald Trump against the reporters his campaign terrorizes. He has both appeared on Fox News and written on FoxNews.com arguing that the Daily Beast’s story was unfit for publication.

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“Morning Joe”

Trump has appeared on Morning Joe a lot recently. Its hosts have begun to enjoy his company, and might like to have him on again.

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Matthew Boyle

Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News writes nice things about Donald Trump because Donald Trump trashes immigrants, and in turn, Donald Trump gives Matthew Boyle all sorts of EXCLUSIVE interviews. Boyle typically introduces Trump as either “billionaire real estate magnate Donald Trump” or “real estate magnate billionaire Donald Trump,” much like how Donald Trump might introduce himself. Or here’s one about “real estate magnate, reality television star, billionaire and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.” Emphasis ours:

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more:
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/donald_trumps_media_boot_lickers_joe_scarborough_howard_kurtz_other_useful_establishment_idiots/