Back in 1992 in the race against President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton’s campaign manager/political guru James Carville made clear what the Arkansas Governor’s main campaign issue was to be. Said Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
And so it turned out to be, with Clinton victorious over the sitting President by using the economy as his main campaign issue.
Now here we are a full 34 years later and it might be said that the issue to be used by President Donald Trump as he campaigns across the country in the 2026 midterms is this: “It’s the media, stupid.”
Indeed, as he criss-crosses the country campaigning for the various GOP candidates in different state races the President is doing his own version of just that: making the media the issue of the 2026 campaign.
Here are but a few of the many headlines from over the last two years of Trump’s latest White House tenure:
From the left-wing Huff Post:
Donald Trump Unloads On CNN’s Kaitlan Collins With Yet Another Bizarrely Personal Attack
From The Atlantic:
Trump’s Attacks on the Media Are Self-Defeating
From The New York Times:
Trump Sharpens Attacks on a Favorite Foe: The News Media
From Variety:
How Donald Trump News Media Attacks Undermine the First Amendment
From the UK’s The Guardian:
Trump complains the US media aren’t bending to his will. Aren’t they?
From Reporters Without Borders:
Trump’s war on the press: 10 numbers from the US President’s first 100 days
From The Hill:
The media is under attack — man the barricades
And on and on-and on and on - go a veritable grab bag of similar headlines as the President races around the country campaigning here, there and everywhere for GOP candidates in the 2026 mid-terms.
Suffice to say the media writ large is growing stir crazy at all of Trump’s targeting.
The inevitable question - which, until the November elections - has no answer is: Will this work for the President and the legion of GOP candidates he is campaigning for?
It’s safe to say there are those in the media who feel, with a considerable sense of being un-comfortable, that the Trump attacks are working when it comes to undermining the media’s credibility. And there is little doubt various media members are feeling compelled to speak out.
Perhaps most glaringly over the top was this from The Hill’s liberal opinion contributor Bill Press, the former CNN and MSNBC host, who took to the pages of The Hill to headline:
The media is under attack — man the barricades
Fumed Press:
Check out any bookseller online. There’s a “how-to” book for everything you might want to imagine, including: how to bake bread, knit socks, draw calligraphy, set up a wood shop or grow food anywhere.
And somewhere, I’m convinced, there’s also a “how-to” book on becoming an autocrat. First step: silence and control the media. It’s the playbook successfully used by Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin. And it’s the same playbook used today by Donald Trump.
Got that? Bill Press is, seriously, comparing dealings of the President of the United States with the media of today to the use of the media in their day by “Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin.”
Right. Talk about over the top!
There is a central fact here, however. In a 21st century of a very powerful electronic media with instant global reach through television, the Internet, and radio not to mention old-fashioned newspapers, any American President must deal with the fact that his political adversaries are not only willing to smear him but have a blink-of-the-eye electronic capability of doing both just that and doing it whenever they choose at any time of day or night.
Safe to say, the job of being a candidate’s or office holder’s press secretary has long since ceased being the slow motion “I’ll get back to you” routine that was once the hallmark of a bygone era. Today, for a press secretary to take the time to blink can mean a landslide of bad PR for their candidate or elected or appointed official/boss.
All of which has created the unintended political fact of life that the media itself has become an issue for a media-savvy President like President Trump to zero in on.
Which is not to say that other, past Presidents didn’t target the press of their day. In the closing weeks of the 1992 campaign, President Bush pushed a popular bumper sticker with Republicans read: “Annoy the Media, Re-Elect Bush.” Alas, amusing as the sticker was, Bush lost his re-election to Clinton.
But the considerable difference in today’s political world is the instant, global reach of today’s media. Running stories that any computer-savvy 10 year old can find and spread in a blink. And that’s before you get to the reality of talk radio.
All of which can make it easier for, in today’s political world, President Trump to target his media adversaries and win political support and sympathy for doing so.
Safe to say, Americans are going to learn over the next pre-election month just how the media is treating the President - and absorbing what the President has to say about the media.
Suffice to say whether Americans like politics or not, whether they like the President or not, and whether they like the media or not, they will be getting a major dose of media controversy and headlines for October and early November of the 2026 midterm elections year. The media itself may be seen as an issue in the campaign.
So as is occasionally said in this corner: Buckle in.
