Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
Trump is the president people said they wanted. Then when Trump came along, those same people hated him because the media convinced them to hate him as well as convinced them that they came to that opinion on their own.
1) It has long been the wet-dream of the Joe Schmoes to get a politician who cuts through the bullshit and political correctness and just says what's on their mind and has no special interests, etc. The most common trope is a comedian (eg: Colbert's bid for nomination, that Robin Williams movie "Man of the Year," Lewis Black, etc). Even within the political spheres, both sides have their favorite no-frills folk (Bernie Sanders was this year's flavor for the left). I really didn't think what we'd been asking for one of the most notoriously self-interested billionaires to be that person, but I guess it's a "hero we deserve, not the hero we asked for" sort of thing.

2) The public distaste for Trump is independent of bias. There is no politician I feel more comfortable using personal attacks (he's an asshole, he's egotistical, etc) against because I'm so confident that these things transcend political affiliation. He has literally been America's quintessential asshole business egotists for 30 years, well before he was on The Apprentice, much less entered the political sphere. My dad met him in person in the 90s and wanted to spit on his face (for what very very little it's worth, my dad was a registered republican).

The idea that the liberal media invented the idea that he's an asshole is so retconned that it frustrates me more than relatively tame political narratives should. There's a generation of voters just before us who missed the boat on his days when he was building up the AC empire and he'd cameo as himself on after-school specials and whose opinion of him as a person is wholly wrapped up in his political persona, but most voting-age people knew who Trump was and already had an opinion of him as a person before he ever put an R in front of his name.

Granted, that generation probably significantly overlaps with /pol/ ...