Put the Media Out of Its Misery and End These Sham Primaries | Opinion

Legacy media keeps getting it wrong. Breathless coverage of a foregone conclusion—the presidential primaries—makes The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and everyone else look foolish.

Months ago, the headline should have read:

Trump Wins Republican Nomination, Squares Off Against World's Oldest Man

Instead, we get coverage of former President Donald Trump's "landslide" in the Iowa caucuses, and manufactured suspense in New Hampshire.

And all of it is wrong.

No landslide, but no opposition worth the cost of coverage, either.

The political Pips tried to stand in the way of the oddly groomed, 800-pound gorilla in the room: Vivek Rama-who? Ron DeWhere? Asa Hutchinwhat?—all fallen by the wayside, the Iowa caucuses (where 7.6 percent of Republicans in the state "landslided" for former President Donald Trump) the final, killing hurdle.

Now, Nikki (What Am I Doing Here?) Haley has put her neck underneath New Hampshire's ax. And the media (of which I've been a part for 30 years) is falling for this sham. There are reporters freezing to death for a quote that will say what everyone is thinking: Trump won long ago, now why don't you morons get some cocoa?

The Donald is the Dude. Always has been, always will be. He speaks the language of grievance and offers hope for revenge: against the so-called—and ill-defined—elites who have made American suck; against the Libs—tarded and otherwise; against the government, upon the largesse of which they depend; against the fall of whiteness and in fear of brown-ness.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have arrived early to the party and the home's old owner is desperate to shut the door before they get in.

It's not nonsense. People dislike the Thought Police, however well intended the force may be. And fairer distribution of everything is unlikely to benefit the ancien regime, unless somehow it brings about double-digital economic growth with it, thereby floating all boats.

So, it was Trump, always Trump. A heavy presence to which gravity does not apply. Indictments? Schmindictments! The law means nothing to him—and may mean nothing to the rest of us either, if some legal theories are true and the man can be elected and govern from prison just long enough to pardon himself.

If what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol wasn't a suckers' putsch with an orange hand playing puppeteer, then guilt and innocence have lost their meaning in the United States. But would anyone ever be brave enough to use the 14^th Amendment of the Constitution against a popular candidate? Probably not, and with the Supreme Court set like a dinner table with a well-done steak before the defendant, it's all moot, anyway.

The old media is playing by the old rules, trying to keep us in suspense, with analyses that read like they had been written in another time, about Harry S Truman and Tom Dewey, maybe even Ronald "Roll Back the Clock" Reagan and surprisingly still alive Jimmy Carter.

Reality is playing by different rules entirely. In fact, it's trying to hide itself under the covers never to emerge again. Almost a third of U.S. citizens believe Trump should be sitting on his throne right now, the only legitimate king of America, denied only by a stolen election and evil doing by the Deep State.

If Trump wins, it wouldn't be the first time a democracy voted itself out of existence. Probably not the last, either.

In the end, the media sounds incredibly naïve every time it mentions Trump as anything other than the Republican-in-Chief. Let's give it a rest before any more money has been wasted on covering a race that was won before the starting pistol fired. (With all the layoffs in the news business, there have got to be better uses for it).

And let's hope we don't look back in November and see the same thing.

Jason Fields is a deputy opinion editor at Newsweek.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.