Trump’s Lesson for the Media and Ron DeSantis

NYT OPINION: Trump’s Lesson for the Media and Ron DeSantis
By Ross Douthat
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: May 13, 2023 at 03:00AM

What two groups — network producers and executives as well as rival Republican presidential candidates — can take away from the CNN town hall.

Just before the South Carolina Republican primary in 2012, CNN’s John King opened a presidential debate by asking Newt Gingrich what he probably considered a tough question, about Gingrich’s ex-wife’s claim that the former speaker of the House had once sought an open marriage.

Gingrich’s response dripped with dudgeon. “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media,” he told King, “makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.” To make the “personal pain” of divorce into “a significant question for a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”

The crowd erupted. Gingrich swept to victory in the primary, lapping noted family man Mitt Romney. And though the Gingrich campaign faltered soon thereafter, it was a moment that anticipated an important part of the Donald Trump phenomenon, by offering proof that Republican voters will forgive a multitude of sins, or else disbelieve in those sins’ existence, for a candidate who’s eagerly, even zestfully at war with the establishment media.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/13/opinion/trump-desantis-town-hall.html