There are volumes that could, and should, be written about the media’s role in all this. In short, “mainstream” media portrayed Trump as racist, misogynist, revanchist and cruel, and spent an enormous amounts of time covering dysfunction and place intrigue. But, and it’s a big but, they also portrayed him as to be trusted implicitly on the economy, crime and national security…in short, things that matter to the average voter. We see that in the repeated fetes of the “Trump economy” as “roaring” etc., something that has been repeated far too often by some of the Bulwark editors. In doing so, they simultaneously gave Trump ammo for biased media as the “enemy of the people” while also reinforcing his bona fides on “kitchen table” issues. It was a toxic brew and much of it persists to this day.