[Hoot Gibson]

The press was against Romney and McCain, but in those cycles, they at least put up a pretense of objectivity. The magnitude of misrepresentation, distortion and out right lies from the press in this cycle have no comparison in any cycle in my lifetime. The entire political press has descended to the level of tabloid journalism. They are overt propaganda tools that have been purchased by the 1% ers and establishment interests that Trump threatens.

There was no pretense of objectivity in 2008 or 2012. I recall that in one of the elections, MSNBC had Chris Matthews and Keith Obermann as co-anchors of its election night coverage. For at least the past 44 years, the media has always been strongly biased against whomever the Republican nominee has been. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, the media suddenly discovered homeless people and ran nightly stories about the "crisis" of homelessness, despite the fact that the economy was booming and there was much more misery, unemployment and homelessness during Jimmy Carter's term.

No Republican in my memory has ever received the amount of free, positive publicity during any campaign as Trump has received from the Fox News and Business channels. Not only that, once Jeb Bush and Rubio faltered, Fox's news coverage of Ted Cruz was as vicious as Trump's coverage was positive.

Trump and his supporters were fools to think that the mainstream media would cover him fairly during the general campaign. They were also foolish to think that Trump would be competitive by relying so much on "earned" media, instead of airing paid ads.

I canceled my subscription to the Lexington-Herald Leader in 1988 when I saw major front page stories about the failing Massachusetts economy under Michael Dukakis in the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets not even covered by the H-L.

The media has served as the propaganda arm of the Democrats for many years. Trump needs to stop whining about it and stop denying press credentials to reporters because he is only making things tougher on himself. Whining does not produce votes. Neither does attacking members of his own party.