On Wednesday, journalist Carl Bernstein had a hot scoop.
President Trump “is behaving and conducting himself in a way that Republicans themselves, especially talking with reporters privately, are questioning his sanity and his stability,” the Watergate reporter claimed.
“[@realDonaldTrump] is behaving and conducting himself in a way that Republicans themselves, especially talking with reporters privately, are questioning his sanity and his stability.”
Carl Bernstein says GOP is privately questioning Trump’s sanity.https://t.co/lXCGagisMI pic.twitter.com/Csb1dmeKDt
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 24, 2019
Do you feel that? That is called déjà vu.
If Bernstein’s remarks sound familiar to you, that is because they are. You have heard this exact line, or some approximation of it, about Trump’s mental fitness repeated since even before he took office in 2017. Indeed, Bernstein’s comments are merely the latest iteration of one of the handful of media-hyped Trump stories that get repeated every so often, as if on a continuous loop.
No, really. It is easy to miss if you are not paying close attention, but pundits and reporters alike have been repeating essentially the same stories about Trump since Trump jumped into the 2016 GOP primary. The thing that is really frustrating is that more than half of these repeated news cycles end up not even being true or are horribly overblown, yet we seem doomed to hear the claims again and again.
Arc Digital columnist Varad Mehta has been cataloging these greatest hits since January of this year, carefully tracking the repetition in the press’ supposedly “bombshell” news cycles. It is really quite a sight, when you see it all in laid out, the press’s addiction to the exact same narratives. Stop me if you heard this one before:
“Trump rages,” he is “unraveling,” he is “fuming“:
November 2016: “Trump rages as Clinton helps recount”
May 2017: “We May Be Witnessing the Unraveling of Donald Trump’s Presidency”
March 2017: “Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations”
October 2017: “Upstairs at home, with the TV on, Trump fumes over Russia indictments”
Oct. 2018: “The unraveling of Trump”
July 2018: “Spotting CNN on a TV Aboard Air Force One, Trump Rages Against Reality”
January 2019: “Trump Is Screaming”: Giuliani’s Fate Uncertain After Botched Interviews”
Sept. 2019: “Carl Bernstein: Trump is unraveling”
Oct. 2019: “Trump Rages Over Republican Defections as Democrats Press on Impeachment”
“Trump is isolated”:
Feb. 2017: “The very peculiar isolation of Donald Trump”
May 2017: “Trump isolated as world unites on Paris climate deal”
August 2017: “President Trump Is More Isolated Than Ever”
March 2018: “Raging, isolated Trump can’t bluff his way out this time”
August 2018: “People who have known Mr. Trump for years pointed out that he has never been as cornered — or as isolated — as he is right now, and that he is at his most volatile when he feels backed against the wall.”
September 2018: “But President Trump has never been more isolated from allies he needs most.”
December 2018: “Trump increasingly isolated as aides leave, friends flip and investigations advance”
Jan. 2019: “How Trump’s Rhetoric Against Allies Has Often Isolated Him”
Feb. 2019: “DONALD TRUMP IS THE ‘MOST ISOLATED’ PRESIDENT SINCE RICHARD NIXON, WATERGATE JOURNALIST BOB WOODWARD SAYS”
Oct. 2019: “Donald Trump isolated as Republican allies revolt over US withdrawal from Syria”
This is the “end” for Trump:
June 2016: “The beginning of Trump’s end”
June 2016: “The beginning of the end for Trump?”
August 2016: “Will Trump’s Attack on the Khans Be the Beginning of the End for His White House Hopes?”
October 2016: “Is This the Beginning of the End for Donald Trump?”
February 2017: “This is the Beginning of the End for Donald Trump”
February 2017: “Is General Flynn a Sacrificial Lamb, or the Beginning of the End for Donald Trump?”
March 2017: “In the White House things are looking bad. This could be the beginning of the end for Trump”
March 2017: “If CNN’s New Russia Report Is True, We May Be Seeing the Beginning of the End of Donald Trump’s Presidency”
May 2017: “It’s the Beginning of the End for Trump. Even Elected Democrats Can Feel It.”
May 2017: “Is the Comey Memo the Beginning of the End for Trump?”
December 2017: “Will 2018 Be the End of the Trump presidency?”
February 2018: “John Dean warns Gates’s testimony may be ‘the end’ of Trump’s presidency”
March 2018: “Is This the Beginning of Trump’s End?”
April 2018: “Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency”
August 2018: “The beginning of the end of the Trump presidency”
August 2018: “Donald Trump may have finally reached the beginning of the end”
November 2018: “The end of Trump”
December 2018: “Trump’s Latest Meltdown Shows Even He Knows This Could Be the Beginning of the End”
January 2019: “This looks like the beginning of the end for Trump”
Sept. 2019: “Could this impeachment inquiry end Trump’s presidency?“
If you say it enough times, it will come true. It’s in the Constitution.
