Coverage of primaries changes U.S. television

This summer has been an interesting one. There hasn’t been a summer this politically charged in recent memory. From Greece’s financial crisis to the presidential race in the U.S., it has been a lot to keep track of. Lately, entertainment and media have focused on the presidential race, especially the Republican primary race. Although we are still 6 months away from the actual primaries, every single news channel has been hyper-focusing on one special person in the primary race. No, it’s not the old man from the Northeast that calls himself a “democratic socialist,” it’s also not the former First Lady running for President for the third time, not even the son of a former President, and brother of another one, and it’s not even the neurosurgeon. Yes, it’s Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is a genius, but only when it comes to manipulating media to his advantage and how to become the most annoying person in all of television. Otherwise, though, he’s terrible for America. I have been devoted to understanding American politics for the longest time, so a lot of my friends constantly come to ask me about how I feel about the current political scene and how they are portraying Trump lately.

In the past few weeks, Trump has been ubiquitous on every television screen for yelling racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic remarks, to just being good old Donald and hating on everybody for everything always. Media and news outlets revere him as king for leading early polls among Republicans, but they have failed to produce any true political analysis of his campaign and what it means for the future of the Republican Party and the nation. Podcasts, however, have been a bit more critical of his campaign and most of the ones I have been listening to, even the conservative ones, agree on the same scenarios: One, he wins the primary and then only gets 20 to 35 percent of the general population’s vote, securing the election for the Democrats; two, he loses the primary, goes as an independent and “steals” around 15 percent of the vote from the Republican candidate, securing the election for the Democrats; and three, he steps out of the race, leaving the rest of the election to the Democratic and Republican candidate and letting them battle it out.

The other two most important things about Trump that I am excited for are his contributions to SNL (this will be great for Saturday Night Live; all of the late night people have taken their jabs at Trump — he’s proven to be comedy gold), and how this will impact Miss Universe (NBCUniversal and Univision are not broadcasting the event, and several Latin American nations have dropped from the race — they tend to win these pageants, so it should be an interesting year)

For the rest of this semester, all of these topics will continue to come into fruition as they develop and are covered by many outlets.