Trump Is More Fun to Write About)

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United States President Joe Biden speaks at a meeting with governors and mayors about … [+] White House infrastructure bills.

The AFP via Getty Images

In the opening pages of Frankly, Did We Win At Elector Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Benders new book about the shambolic last year of Trump’s presidency readers was thrown up in the driven, frightening turmoil that took place in Washington DC on January 6th of this year. The book-opening scene: A secret hideout, protected by armed Secret Service agents, in which Vice President Pence fights with his wife and eldest daughter after a mob rushed to the U.S. Capitol. Pence was on the phone with top military officials at the Pentagon. I want them to come down here and I want them to be here below, he commands, a reference to the National Guard. It reads like a scene from one of those pulpy thrillers you’ll find in airport bookstores. No need to guess how this one ends.

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The eccentricities and extremes of the 45th president and his administration may not have been conducive to solid management, but they still seem to have made a copy of the revelation. In fact, the book publishing industry is in the throes of a new Trump explosion, as a wave of new hit titles stands in an attempt to unpack the hurricane of madness that has given us all the following last year: There was a disastrous coronavirus response, of course, followed eventually by Trumpworld refusing to accept the outcome of the November election. We also get the unfounded rhetoric from Trump himself that has inspired his supporters to violence, including Trump’s ban from social media as well as all the unfavorable lawsuits challenging the November election results. The lawsuits, by the way, accuse the kind of conspiracy operational theories that are typically born in the darker corners of the web.

President Trump is preparing to speak during the CPAC in Dallas on July 11, 2021.

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At the same time, it’s also worth pausing to consider the corollary to all the revelations circularly packed in new books like Michael Wolffs newly published Landslide: The Final Days of Trump President . As well as the upcoming I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trumps Catastrophic Final Year, published on July 20 and written by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.

To cover the Trump administration, which is suffering from one crisis to the next, took a 4-person ride on a packed train to where. The one that still, somehow, ended up in derail. Trumps successor, no matter who it is, will always be the same as the dictionary definition of boring, compared to what came before. Turning the page, however, somehow indicates that we, if nothing else, have four years of political altimeter leveling again. The reality show is over. Or, at least, no longer focused on the Oval Office, right?

So, it’s not necessary, because you won’t know it right on cue, the media is doing that thing again. That’s where its practitioners offer a Very Serious Punditry about wrapping paper, rather than what’s actually in the box.

Basically, Trump seems to have done such a thing to some members of the Stockholm Syndromed of the Fourth Estate, that now they can’t answer the more amusing POTUS (which is to say, the more fun one to write about). And now, just six months into the new administration, some are openly complaining that President Biden is too impatient.

The White House press briefing room, pick a recent WaPo story, has become a bit more boring in the last six months.

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And, this headline from The New York Times: Voters Chose to be Boring With Bombast. They got the Bidens Penchant for Pontificating. Heck, the story even begins with Biden himself judging one of his own speeches to be too boring. From the piece:

I know that’s a tedious speech, the 46th president said at the end of 31 minutes and 19 seconds full of statistics (2,374 bridges in Illinois), academic studies (child care in site increases productivity), global total domestic product comparisons (previously China became No. 9, but is now No. 2) and predictions of 7.4 percent economic growth.

Elsewhere, that piece adds these similar lines: What could be such a high -stakes drama to those inside the Washington Beltway that often feels like PBS documentary stuff the rest of the country. Which seems to accuse everyone else you know, there’s been so consumed with how politicians look slipping on the DC catwalk. Because those people aren’t worried enough about, you know, serious things.

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It was, not surprisingly, a line of attack that Trumplandia as well as the former president himself happily used as a cudgel. For example, in Wolffs Landslide, moments at a time where Trump figured they would all come back in four years and beat this sleepy wife.

The people of Biden, at least some of them, lean on this narrative about the president, as if it were a badge of honor. The reaction of Biden White House chief of staff Heres, for example, to the effect that the loss of the Trumpian controversy in DC is having more partisan news media outlets:

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More illuminating than all of this, however, are the anonymous comments shared by some journalists recently with Julia Ioffe, whom she recounted in a recent episode of her amazing newsletter Tomorrow Is Worse . Some excerpts from this particular edition:

The reporting mechanic has changed significantly, a reporter told Ioffe. This is really the only abusive time where you can almost be sure that, with enough effort, you will know what is going on in the Situation Room. Now you won’t be annoyed and irritated.

I mean, it’s not just the fact that Trump is a gravy train. It also corresponds to the most boring administration in modern history. You go from a circus with blazing chainaws to what? An old man guarding his dog?

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I would love to cover Trump. This is a great and fascinating story. It’s not just about him; it is about his movement and institutions and America. The story is always very intense and it has more than the characters in life. The stakes are often felt to be very high. I want to cover Biden, too, but it doesn’t feel as dramatic.

Media critic Eric Boehlert, who writes his own newsletter Press Run, rightly draws attention to all of this as criticism of theater pretending to be political journalism.

To consider the Venn diagram intersect of politics and media today would eventually lead you to the notion that reality is not as much sunshine around certain categories of journalism as it is a giant MacGuffin only. This is the difference between talking about something, and actually interacting with that thing. The way reporters cover up Trump is certainly the apotheosis of this phenomenon. But, as seen, seen now up to Biden, too. The stories about the new president thus became the story about the story about the new president. Which is why many Americans eventually lose interest in the reality show altogether, and wonder what else there is.

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