Mainstream Media Sifts Through Wreckage of Trump Victory: ‘A Lot of Journalists Wanted Harris to Win’

It was the biggest Republican presidential win since 1988 — and the media didn’t see it coming.

Now, mainstream journalists are grappling with Donald Trump’s decisive victory, with many questioning how they could have missed the Red Wave that was about to come crashing down, while others are taking it as a moment to reflect and determine the best path forward.

Here’s a taste of the post-election reactions: 

• The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. said he “missed the signals and frustrations” of Trump voters “that were in plain sight.” 
• CNN’s Brian Stelter said there’s an “undercurrent of doubt and disillusionment” privately among reporters, with one telling him it’s hard to not see the election “as just a national repudiation of what we do.” 
• Former senator and current MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill said, “We have to acknowledge that Donald Trump knows our country better than we do.” 
• The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote: “I will try to understand why so many Americans disagree with me,” adding that conservatives regularly accused “liberals like me of suffering from Trump derangement syndrome, and perhaps they had a point.” In the years ahead, Kristoff said he’ll try to keep his cool and find a way to “unflinchingly proclaim” his values, while also listening to the other side. 
• Van Jones, Stelter’s CNN colleague, said the media was “making fun of” Trump for doing podcasts with people like Joe Rogan. “We thought they were idiots,” Jones said. “Turns out, we were the idiots.” 

So how did the mainstream media miss it this badly? 

The recriminations among reporters, editors, producers and media executives follow weeks and weeks of reporting that the election dangled on a knife’s edge, and that the election was too close to call. In the days leading up to the vote, reports of a dead heat gave way to indications that Kamala Harris had gained the edge in Iowa, and was closing well in the crucial swing states. 

In the end, Trump took all seven swing states. He won by 13 points in Iowa. And he solidly won the popular vote, the first time for a Republican in more than two decades. 

Olivia Reingold, an election reporter for The Free Press, said the election “broke [mainstream reporters’] brains” because they failed to understand what mattered most to voters. The media’s coverage of Trump’s myriad legal and personal issues, like his conviction on 34 felony charges for paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels, didn’t resonate with his voters, according to Reingold, who covered the campaign trail for more than a year. Voters are more swayed by practical concerns than moral and ethical problems, she said. 

“It’s a luxury to be able to vote simply based on morals instead of things like the cost of milk or eggs,” Reingold said. “Inflation has been crushing, and I think that a lot of people in the media are shielded from that.” 

Exit polling backed up her claim. CNN’s showed the economy was the most important issue for 51% of voters, followed by immigration, which was the most important issue for one out of five voters. 

This came as a surprise to some mainstream pundits. The day after the election, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was shocked when his wife and “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski told him butter cost $7 at the grocery store. 

“What, is it framed in gold?” Scarborough said incredulously. 

Bill Grueskin, a journalism professor at Columbia University, echoed Reingold’s take. Reporters routinely pointed to the low unemployment rate as a sign the economy was strong, without realizing that fails to account for people who have dropped out of the workforce or who are working two jobs to get by, Grueskin said. 

“The truth is, if the unemployment rate goes from 4% to 6%, that’s very terrible for a certain small portion of the population, but most people still have their jobs,” Grueskin said. “If inflation goes from 2% to 7%, it literally affects every single person in the country.”

He added: “I do think it would behoove journalists to understand more about how the economy works and how people parse the economy.”

The media’s use of particular economic terms isn’t the lone factor here, though. Reporters have been thrown off by Trump winning both the popular and Electoral College vote for a simple reason, Grueskin said: They were pulling for his competitor. 

“Honestly, what I think is happening here is a lot of journalists wanted Harris to win,” Grueskin said. “Harris didn’t win, so journalists see that as a failure of journalism.” 

Blame the voters 

Some journalists, on the other hand, have seen the election as the public’s failure. MSNBC’s Joy Reid, for example, used her platform to rip certain demographics, like Latino men, who voted for Trump in large numbers. 

“Despite the utter disrespect shown by Trump and his promise to deport some of your mixed-class, mixed-status families, most of them voted in a 55% majority to make the deportations happen,” Reid said. “Y’all voted with Stephen Miller and David Duke and against your own sisters who chose Kamala Harris with 60% of their votes. So you own everything that happens to your mixed-status families.” 

This approach may appeal to MSNBC’s audience, 67% of whom are white, according to 2020 Pew Research data. But in future elections, it would be unwise for reporters to fixate on demographic solidarity, Reingold said. (Trump gained support among both Latino and Black voters this year when compared to 2024, CBS’ exit poll showed.) She said this was obvious on the campaign trail, where many reporters assumed Trump’s hardline immigration stance would turn off Latino voters. Reingold recalled one Latino voter stressing to her, “We’re American,” when asked why Trump’s plan to deport violent illegal immigrants appealed to them. 

“A huge lesson of this election is that identity politics are for the white people — the white people who are the most rabid believers of that ideology,” Reingold continued. “It kind of made their heads explode, that all of these ideas that are supposedly in service of BIPOCs (Black Indigenous and People of Color), actually didn’t mean enough to minorities in the end to warrant a vote.” 

There was already a disconnect between the media and the American public heading into Election Day. An October Gallup poll found America’s trust in the media is at an all-time low, with only 31% of respondents saying they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence the news was being reported accurately. 

Looking ahead, will the mainstream media be able to win back some of those disenchanted readers and viewers during Trump’s second administration? Both Grueskin and Reingold are skeptical. Legacy media’s grip is losing strength by the year, as people turn to YouTube and other platforms for their news. Grueskin said this decline is exacerbated by the “sad evisceration” of local news outlets, leaving most people to think of cable news, The Washington Post and The New York Times when they think about the media. 

If there is going to be a mainstream media renaissance, there’s one thing outlets can do in the years ahead: put a premium on ideological and class diversity. 

“They talk so much about diversity in media, and yet it’s very rare,” Reingold said. “These are people — Trump voters — who [reporters] don’t know.” 

A 2022 survey from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications found 96.4% of journalists had at least one college degree, compared to one-third of all Americans. That same survey found 3.4% of reporters identified as Republican, compared to 26% of Americans. Building on that foundation is what led to the shock many mainstream reporters expressed post-election. 

“It’s important to have a pretty wide ideological spectrum in a news organization,” Grueskin said. 

“This is not 2008 or 2012, where [Barack] Obama was running against more of the standard-issue GOP presidential candidates,” he said. “You’re running against the guy whose values are antithetical to everything journalists represent …  I don’t think we’re prepared for what we’re going to see.”

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