Trump Refugee in India Scores The 2016 Election

In 1958, the author Aldous Huxley gave an interview on U.S. television in which he sagely forewarned the inevitability of a media-savvy personality like Donald Trump inveigling his way to the highest office in his adopted homeland.

To see just how prescient his warning was, you only need to consider that it came well before the age of cell phones or personal computers, let alone the internet or Twitter.

The media effectively declared the election over after the second presidential debate.

When I stumbled upon the Huxley clip earlier this spring, I knew instinctively that Trump was destined to win the U.S. presidential election — this was his moment. I wasn’t going to bet the house on it, but I confess I wanted him to win. Yes, as an Indian American, I knew his policies on immigration went directly against my self-interest, vis-a-vis my H-1B visa. It’s another story that I ended up leaving the United States to return to India in September for personal reasons, which I jokingly referred to among friends as “Srexit”! So, why support Trump, you might ask?

The reason I cheered Trump on — aside from any comic relief or desire to support the underdog, both perfectly respectable reasons — was perhaps the single biggest reason Trump ended up winning in November, in my view.

Yes, he was a novel, if unpopular candidate, an outsider in a change election and a self-proclaimed champion against a borderless nation, endless wars and political correctness. And yes, he was running against an equally unpopular Democrat, the quintessential insider with a history of secrecy and ethical questions, but then Hillary Clinton came with the most impressive resume and the promise of a historic first-ever female presidency.

In the end, overriding everything else, the principal and indeed definitive difference came down to one thing: MSM — mainstream media.

As an Indian who lived in the United States for over a decade and has taken more than a passing interest in the American political scene, I have seen first-hand how the U.S. media has rightfully earned the scorn of the masses, especially the political right. While both television and print media in the past had only gingerly put their fingers on the scales for or against political candidates, the last couple of presidential cycles have witnessed an increasing and near-explicit bias in the media’s coverage of elections. Arguably, this has only served to exacerbate the already deep polarization in American political discourse into irredeemable fault-lines and divisions. As @realDonaldTrump might say: SAD.

In 2008, like many of us, the U.S mainstream media fell in love with Obama, the candidate — at once so gifted, so original and mysterious — but over time, as their infatuation wore off, the fourth estate gradually began to do greater justice to its responsibility to treat Obama the President more even handedly, even if the coverage still remained largely friendly in tone.

But during the current presidential cycle, the establishment media met their match in Donald Trump, a man who cultivated his personality and built his brand and fortune leveraging the media for over 30 years. During the primaries, the major cable news channels were too busy playing their ratings game, happily obliging Trump with billions of dollars worth of free airtime covering his rallies, giddily egging on his candidacy with his controversial statements and what that might mean for the Republican Party, while not even remotely considering his prospects seriously to warrant a vetting of his background, to the chagrin of other Republican primary candidates. Just ask Jeb Bush!