The establishment press is publishing demands that someone "rein in" Donald Trump while working Americans can't afford groceries, can't secure the border, and can't walk safe streets.
The Portland Press Herald ran a letter Tuesday from a reader appalled that Trump hosts Ultimate Fighting Championship matches at the White House and "seems to be obsessed with putting his name or getting his mark onto everything." The letter demanded "someone in the White House who has enough influence on the Donald to slow him down." HuffPost, meanwhile, spent its ink pressing CNN commentator Scott Jennings on whether Trump has a "corruption problem" — pushing meme-coin dinner stories and Russian oligarch wedding payments. Neither outlet had much to say about what's actually hitting American families.
HuffPost highlighted Jennings' several-second hesitation on "The Fifth Column" podcast when asked directly about corruption. Pressed with specifics — pardons, the Binance figure, World Liberty Financial coins, and a Russian oligarch bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding — Jennings called it "a very generic question" before eventually saying his "general expectation of them is that they should follow all the applicable laws and ethics regulations, and I believe that they are." He acknowledged Democrats "are going to dig into all this" if they win a chamber.
Co-host Kmele Foster called the $148 million that $TRUMP meme coin investors paid for a dinner with the president "kind of gross" and said "there's some taint to it." Jennings, reportedly being considered for White House press secretary, replied that it's "not my social world" and cast himself as "just a son of a garbage man from Kentucky."
The Press Herald letter writer, by contrast, was concerned with sacred grounds and dancing — insisting the White House isn't Trump's "private playground" and that "even he must remember that 'this, too, shall pass.'"
Here's the pattern: one outlet runs reader mail griping about UFC matches on hallowed ground; the other chases podcast gotcha moments about meme coins. Both frame the presidency as a decorum and ethics seminar. The Portland Press Herald published a letter about vibes; HuffPost chased viral clips. Neither touched what voters actually sent Trump to fix.
Jennings' hesitation is a story — a potential press secretary struggling to defend his own side's conduct is newsworthy. The meme-coin dinner and the oligarch wedding payment raise real questions about who's buying access. But the press corps treats these as the only story, because acknowledging that Americans voted for this agenda would require admitting the establishment failed them first.
The question isn't whether Trump's critics can find material. It's why the same outlets that ignored working Americans for years now have endless energy for palace intrigue — and none for the price of eggs.
