trump himself became newsworthy. His more extreme statements, contradictions and mutability were all part of what made it so. trump, all the while playing jujitsu with the media, early on taunting them and blaming them for “unfair” coverage, feeding them with something to run with, often blatantly false (another example, Cruz’s father).

Competitively, the msm couldn’t ignore it.

trump’s operational theory seemed to be that if he could keep his name in the news, for good or bad, he’d take the oxygen out of the news cycle from his competition.

He was right.

However, some of the worst coverage after the convention wrt trump were from his own words and actions. His gratuitous and unnecessary attack on the Muslim parents who spoke at the dnc convention. His “grab her p*ssy” because he felt empowered to do so. Etc. Etc.

This stuff was sensational, well beyond the usual manufactured “gotcha” news from the msm, but a whole lot more tangible.

One can see the poll response on each of them.

The msm couldn’t forego the ratings, but, even with material like this, they couldn’t box him in, either. No he wasn’t toast, afterall, trump could shoot someone on 5th Ave and enough voters would still love him.

Perhaps there was too much, too quickly to really do so. A media “shock and awe” so to speak.

trump kicks it up a notch (could almost hear a Lagasse “BAM!”), the msm / left kicks it up in response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2pcWSsvMs

Rinse and repeat, with each pointing to how bad the other is for the latest news / escalation.

Much of that “head wind”, to the extent is was above what any “normal” GOP candidate would have received in years past, seems as much a product of trump’s media “strategy” than it was some independent decision across all the individuals in the media to decide “this time” they need to escalate things.

I’m not denying the msm / left have escalated, but it is an escalation that trump has been more than a willing player in, and not some innocent bystander.

Symbiotic? Or, being played?

Actually, to get nitpicky with you, Trump was only given a headwind for part of the time prior to his winning the nomination.

At first, he was ridiculed, although given a lot of coverage. The coverage was very very negative, treating him like a bigot (about the Mexican rapists) and a clown. Dangerous and stupid and foolish, all it once. They thought he’d be a flash in the pan and then out.

However, once they realized that was not going to happen (it took maybe 2-3 months to realize that, I think), the coverage became even heavier, and it was heavy to begin with. But the tone changed somewhat; now it was more respectful. They saw him as a twofer for them. First, he was ratings gold. Secondly, he had a chance for the nomination, which in their minds meant a sure win for Hillary. Win/win for them.

He got the nomination, and then the coverage got far more negative again. They thought he was toast. He wasn’t.

Perhaps an apt description of what we are facing wrt trump.

trump wants us all to hold certain beliefs about him.

Simultaneously, many claim that he is deliberately trying to be “unknowable or unpredictable” so as to not reveal his “real strategy or intentions”. His extreme statements are then articulated to be his “negotiation positions” (forgetting for the moment that trump has proven mutable).

Now, you cannot have both be true – to be believed and trusted while being “unknowable”.

I’d say that he is taken “seriously” in the sense that he represents a real risk.

But he is not taken “seriously” as a man that can be trusted.

Well, see, right there.

I can point to recent articles elsewhere, and even Neo herself has pointed out that the msm had given trump a free ride up to the convention.

Getting $2B worth of publicity is NOT a “head wind”.

The rest of the opposition you point out would have been there regardless of who the GOP candidate was.

Secondly, it was well discussed here how trump says so many contradictory things, and outright provable lies, that he was effectively mutable.
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“Very little of what Trump says should be taken literally but it all should be taken seriously”

Sounds very much like someone else’s thinking and rationalizing.

If nothing can be taken as the truth, then there is no accountability.

To be taken “seriously” must, as a condition, to be taken for your honest “word”.

Tax Returns?

Furthermore, if one continues to make outbound statements, one has to be prepared to back it up, if challenged.

Mexico pays for the wall.

Lock her up!

Drain the swamp!

A clever slogan does not represent the whole reality.

Also, what I took Trump to mean when he said “Lock her up!” was that we need to start holding the ruling elite accountable for breaking laws that they enforce against people who are not favored members of their group. It never even occurred to me that he might mean it literally.

Very little of what Trump says should be taken literally but it all should be taken seriously as an indication of the direction in which he plans to govern, and so far I really like that direction.

That was the precipitation to “Lock Her Up!”.

He let that impression stand without giving folks reason to think he’d back down on what he said in the debate.

Was he just lying in the debate?
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Keep in mind, this is just one example of many contradictions and lies in trump’s campaign.

It was so bad, we had discussions here at great length about how trump was so mutable.

Even recently, he bragged about how he had “the most EVs since Reagan”, and now claims that he was “given the wrong information”.

It’s a pretty good bet that the guy was effin lyin, as it follows the same pattern of the lies we saw in the campaign.
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And this all hits at the point I was making.

trump needs to come from a position of credibility when he wants to talk about eveyone else’s bad behavior.

He needs to walk his talk.

That he is not means we won’t really ever “Drain the Swamp” as people keep repeating here.

What may well happen is trump places his own “alligators” in the “swamp”, while publicly clearing out the old ones and declaring “victory”.
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I’d much rather see a radical reduction in the size and scope of government, with trump working with Congress to tighten presidential powers, so the next POTUS (especially if dem) doesn’t have as free a reign as obama and trump.

These are the things that could be lasting changes, but trump needs more than his base of support to make it all happen and be locked in.

“Not one person I knew took it seriously”

Thought you meant yourself.

My argument about that line of thinking still stands.

I thought I was pointing to a known popular thought, and you’d understand where I was coming from. Instead, you take me too literally and attempt to deconstruct a connotative reference.

And HE LIED: knowingly and repeatedly.

Even Politifact admitted that.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/
It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.

“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” President Barack Obama said — many times — of his landmark new law.

But the promise was impossible to keep.

So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.

Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.

For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” the Lie of the Year for 2013.

— Donald Trump spawned a rallying cry, as a candidate, stating a position which, unlike Obama’s, had no legal authority and little chance of obtaining it — it was an opinion, remember what those are? —