Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Two comments should continue to haunt us with regard to the 2024 election and the fate of democracy. Donald Trump memorably said while campaigning in Iowa in 2015: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”

And from then CBS executive chair and CEO Les Moonves, in assessing Trump’s 2016 campaign and TV coverage and revenues: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” 

In that vein we may opt for presidential candidates grappling with one another in a cage match, instead of grappling with the issues.

REPUBLICANS SHRUG AT FELONY CONVICTIONS

Those comments, which distressed so many of us, have renewed relevance and poignancy in the wake of the recent so-called presidential debate, and the prevailing news coverage of the current presidential campaign.

Let’s first consider Trump’s prescient line about getting off scot-free for a despicable act. His quip about Fifth Avenue happened more than nine years ago, but it could be updated along these lines: “I could be convicted of fraud committed to boost my election prospects in 2016, and wouldn’t lose any voters today, okay?”

That seems to be the case, considering how prominent Republicans reacted to Trump’s felony convictions in New York, from Iowa’s U.S. Senators Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst to Governor Kim Reynolds, Attorney General Brenna Bird, and the billionaires who continue to donate to Trump’s campaign or super-PAC.

Not to mention the reaction from rank and file MAGA voters: according to last month’s Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom, 56 percent of Republican respondents said Trump’s conviction didn’t affect whether they support him for president. Another 34 percent said “they are more likely to support Trump after the verdict,” while only 9 percent said they were less likely to vote for him.

Given their reactions to the Trump fraud conviction, one wonders whether Grassley, Reynolds, Bird et al would reject any charges against Trump for shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Perhaps they would consider the episode a matter of self-defense, an attack on Second Amendment rights, an official act immune from prosecution, or the result of a legal system rigged against the GOP standard-bearer.

TRUMP AS A FRIEND AND MARTYR

Fintan O’Toole, an advising editor of The New York Review of Books, provided a good assessment of our sorry state of affairs. In the July 18 issue of the publication, he writes about the imaginary friendship that many MAGA supporters believe they have with Trump.

That’s the thing with imaginary friendship — even when the friendship is patently false, the imagination can still make it feel real. Trump as president…failed to keep his promises [to supporters whom, he said, he loved]…

Most of his voters did not, in reality, have a friend in high places. But that has only sharpened their belief that “the Boss will take care of it.” The more Trump suffers for his own crimes, the more his voters need to believe that he is suffering for them.” (emphasis added)

Consistent with the fantasy is the false and illogical belief that unlike other politicians, Trump “says what he means.” When presented with some of Trump’s bizarre or self-serving lies, supporters may wave it away: “Oh, he didn’t mean that.” The frustrating reality is that MAGA voters may back Trump because he “has the courage to say what he doesn’t mean.”

News reporting alone cannot shake such reasoning.

Nevertheless, to make democracy work and to use press freedom as the First Amendment intended—that is, to provide for an informed electorate capable of self-governance—the media must do better than how Moonves approached coverage of Trump’s first campaign: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

DEBATE OR A “CAGE MATCH”?

Perhaps Moonves would consider it “damn good” to depict Trump’s debate against President Joe Biden debate as a “cage match,” like an event from the surreal world of TV wrestling.

Steve Bannon, now serving time in prison for serving Trump illegally, reportedly urged the former president to turn the debate into a “cage match” by refusing to shake Biden’s hand. I found that Bannon reference after seeing a TV channel encourage viewers to tune into the “cage match.”

A Wall Street Journal headline before the debate reflected Bannon’s preferred framing:

A Trump-Biden Cage Match?

A presidential debate on the issues is what most voters want. Don’t hold your breath.

Do we want a debate on the issues? Or are we focusing on opinion polls and who won or lost the debate, waiting for one candidate or another to make a gaffe that will top the news coverage?

One newsworthy story escaped the Iowa media’s attention lately: how our state’s four Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives view the ban on mentioning Trump’s conviction on the House floor.

On that topic, I appreciated a phone call from an aide to Representative Zach Nunn of the third Congressional district. He said most House members were not involved in imposing the ban, which seemed to be a matter of preserving House decorum. I asked whether GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s frequent attacks on President Biden were a matter of decorum, and he said no one had challenged them.

Back to the “cage match” approach: perhaps journalists treat presidential campaigns as a spectator sport, thinking that voters are bored by the process, or not up to the responsibilities needed for self-governance.

Fortunately, there still is time to make the system work.

---

Top image shows the WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by WWE on April 3, 2016, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Photo by Miguel Discart,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license and available via Wikimedia Commons.