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The legacy media’s tepid coverage of the recent huge No Kings protests once again demonstrated that the old guard consistently fails to acknowledge the extent to which ordinary Americans are fed up with Donald Trump — and the existential threat he represents to American democracy.

At the same time, Trump continues to take advantage of a reality gap in public perceptions. That in itself should be a story, but somehow it isn’t. Trump has used his bully pulpit and digital ministry of deception to keep his angry base sequestered in the dark, while characterizing the growing anti-Trump uproar as utterly inconsequential.  

He dismissed crowds estimated at 7 million showing up for 2,700 No Kings events in 50 states as a “joke,” “very small, very ineffective.” 

The participants were “whacked out … not representative of the people of our country.”

Moreover, he appeals to his followers’ relish for a “hidden hand” behind it all:

The signs were all made professionally in a printing shop. Looks like on Madison Avenue someplace.

Warming to his counterfactual theme, Trump went on: 

Some guy is paying for all that stuff. … These people are going crazy, they’re going crazy ‘cause they’re getting paid. ‘Cause there’s no reason for them to be going crazy, but you watch some of them, and they’re professional agitators and we are finding out who’s paying them. Yeah. We have a lot of information about who they are. You’re gonna be very surprised when you find out.

Because the leading news organizations cannot interrupt their constant “reporting” on Trump’s bloviations to provide the kind of meaningful context the electorate so badly needs, it is easy to forget that Trump has been allowed to get away with such nonsensical claims for years. 

The claim that protest against him is artificially manufactured is almost word for word the language he employed years ago in the so-called birther “scandal” that he helped launch against President Barack Obama: 

They are finding out a lot. We’ve got people right now in Honolulu. You’re going to be very surprised by what we’ve learned.

Of course, the promised “revelations” that Obama is not a natural-born American citizen never surfaced. But the real irony here is something else inadequately highlighted by legacy media: The shows of “popular” support at Trump’s public appearances reveal precisely the kind of fakery he ascribes to the other side. 

If you look at TV coverage of Trump’s rallies going back years, the through-line is the obviously professionally prepared signs — Blacks for Trump, Women for Trump — always visible right behind the candidate. There have even been verified admissions by people saying they were paid to attend the 2016 Trump rallies and create the appearance of diverse support that hardly existed. 

Meanwhile, anyone attending No Kings protests (or watching from afar) could confirm with their own eyes the wealth of witty homemade signs and other indications that Americans are increasingly finding their voices against the unfolding catastrophe. 

About the author:

Jonathan Z. Larsen was Time Magazine’s Saigon bureau chief; he has been an editor for The Village Voice and New Times; a contributor to Manhattan, inc., New England Monthly, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He is a Nieman Fellow, Harvard University; a Clarion Award recipient; chairman of the board at Sterling College; and was a 30-year board member of Cambridge College, and a longtime board member of Real News Project, the nonprofit parent of WhoWhatWhy