The Media Is 'In Love With Being Unable to Understand' Trump

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Saturday, New York Times bestselling author Eric Metaxas explained how mainstream media outlets are destroying themselves in their viciousness and hatred of President Donald Trump.

“I can no longer take The New York Times or CNN seriously, because it’s a steady drum-beat. CNN has gone mad, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Metaxas told PJ Media. “The only time they’re not criticizing Trump is on some of the commericals.”

Metaxas, author of more than 20 books including biographies of Martin Luther, William Wilberforce, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (as well as two inspiring books about the lives of 7 men and 7 women and the “secrets of their greatness”), declared himself finished with the mainstream media. “I have to say that there comes a time when you just say, ‘I’m out. I’m like ‘Shark Tank.’ I’m out.”

The bestselling author called Trump “the victim of what used to be genuine news organizations, like The New York Times and infamously, CNN, and NBC. He’s the victim of their having become something other than journalistic organizations.”

Metaxas said these mainstream media outlets have become more like propaganda machines, but aimed against the sitting president as opposed to for him. “They feel a moral compulsion to show that he’s evil, that he’s morally unit, whatever. So the narrative always goes there,” the author explained.

He argued that the media has essentially given up the fundamental job of reporting news. “Even if [Trump] does something like bring unemployment way down (which he did), or create a ton of jobs (which he did), or get us talking to the head of North Korea using China to put pressure on North Korea — whatever it is that he has done is not really reported.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this, when there is great news and it’s not reported,” Metaxas added. “I’m not talking about it’s not reported enough or it’s not reported in the right way, I mean it’s essentially ignored. In a sane world, that stuff would lead news cycles for days.”

The author described the Trump presidency as “bizarre times” because “you actually have to be an informed citizen to appreciate whatever good this president has been able to accomplish. And if you aren’t an informed citizen, you would think that he’s Hitler 2.0.”

Metaxas argued that the media’s hatred toward Trump comes from willful misunderstanding.

Trump “has a way of communicating that, if you understand his language, if you can read him and read between the lines — which I think most American can — then you can get him. But if you’re used to parsing every syllable of a politician and what they say in this ex-cathedra statement, he is a nightmare.”

“I think that the secular mainstream media has willfully insisted on reading him that way, which is bizarre because they are almost not enabling themselves to make sense of him,” Metaxas said. “They’re almost in love with being unable to understand him.”

This willful misunderstanding drives dangerous polarization, and blinds Americans to the good things Trump has achieved. Even so, Americans can see through the media’s twisted narrative, the author said.

“You have this incredibly strange disconnect in the culture, where most American hear him. They know he brags and uses hyperbole, and they go, ‘So what? We know, he knows we know, it’s all part of the game here,'” Metaxas explained.

He compared Trump to the famous boxer Mohammed Ali. “When Mohammed Ali would trash talk brilliantly, poetically, nobody said, ‘That is not true. He is in fact not the greatest. Blah blah blah.’ When Donald Trump trades in that kind of language or expression, people refuse to take it as such,” Metaxas said.

This kind of braggadocio turns the president into “this folk hero, like Davy Crockett.”

Even so, the author did suggest Trump goes too far with his Mohammed Ali-like style. “I do think that there are times when he stoops to a level that is in fact unpresidential, when he hits back at Alec Baldwin,” Metaxas admitted. “I think that’s unworthy of him. He is the President of the United States. He doesn’t need to do that. He can remain above the fray.”

The author predicted that the president will learn how to subdue that “at some point in his two terms — which I’m sure he’ll have.”

Metaxas said he has faith in the American people, that they will be able to see through the anti-Trump narrative. Citizens have the common sense to see that if the media is so set on demonizing Trump all the time, they cannot trust mainstream outlets to tell the truth.

“I remember the viciousness toward Reagan — it was vicious! — I remember the viciousness toward George W. Bush,” Metaxas explained. “None of that can even compare to the way Trump has been treated by the media.”

Despite the efforts of CNN and the New York Times, the truth will out. Trump is far from a perfect president, but he’s no “Hitler 2.0,” and most Americans will accept that.

Watch the video of Metaxas’s interview with PJ Media’s Tyler O’Neil below.