Three major outlets ran simultaneous personality pieces on President Trump this week — calling him humorless, blame-shifting, and marriage-troubled — while the actual stories buried inside their own reporting include a war in Iran driving up oil prices and an economy still squeezing working Americans.
This is the establishment press playbook: make the man the story, not the policy. The Chicago Tribune devoted ink to whether Trump laughs enough; the Atlanta Black Star gossiped about his marriage; and the Los Angeles Times actually had real substance — inflation, an unpopular Iran war, border enforcement — but framed the entire piece around Trump's character rather than the outcomes hitting ordinary people's wallets.
The Chicago Tribune leads with the claim that Trump's White House Correspondents' Dinner speech was "the opposite of funny," then spends paragraphs comparing him to Lincoln, Kennedy, FDR, and Obama — all of whom, the Tribune assures readers, were much funnier. The piece asks what it says about "a man who thinks 'lock her up' is a classic one-liner." What the Tribune never asks: what does it say about a press corps that would rather psychoanalyze a president's comedy chops than cover what he's doing to the country?
The Atlanta Black Star went even lighter, running marital gossip sourced to former communications director Anthony Scaramucci — whose chaotic tenure lasted 10 days in 2017 — and author Michael Wolff. Scaramucci claims Trump got angry at a dinner seating arrangement that placed him next to Melania: "He looked over and looked down at me and he's like: 'Why are you sitting next to my wife?'" Wolff suggests Melania's absence is because Trump "can't stand anyone else being the center of attention." This is tabloid material dressed up as political analysis.
The Los Angeles Times, to its credit, actually reported on matters affecting Americans: inflation remains high, a war in Iran has kept oil prices elevated and sent "shock waves through the global economy," and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool revamp is plagued by shoddy workmanship — not vandalism, as the president claimed, according to a prosecutor's office. But the entire frame is "Trump deflects blame," not whether the policies themselves are working. The White House, via spokesperson Taylor Rogers, pointed to tax cuts, prescription drug price efforts, border enforcement, domestic energy production, and stock market gains as accomplishments Republicans can run on. The LA Times treats this as spin rather than interrogating whether any of it is true.
What's buried across all three pieces: Americans are paying more at the pump because of an Iran war the LA Times itself describes as "increasingly unpopular." The paper notes Trump's approval rating is low and the conflict has sent shock waves through the global economy. That's a story worth covering on its own terms — who wanted this war, what's the U.S. interest, what's the exit strategy, and who's profiting. Instead, it's a supporting detail in a character hit.
The press would rather tell you Trump isn't funny than tell you why your gas costs what it does. The question isn't whether Trump can take a joke — it's whether the American people are being told what they need to know.
