The TV people are in a bind. Or at least so I imagine.
Never has the nation been this intensely divided about a President.
- Intense devotion in the cult, people who would be furious if the TV coverage didn’t honor the President’s presence.
- Equally intense hostility toward a President who is acting in scarily illegal ways.
Presidents always get some camera coverage in such situation. TV can’t ignore him. But putting the camera on Trump wouldn’t be like showing Taylor Swift celebrating in the VIP box when Travis Kelce catches a pass in the endzone. It’s not an apolitical feel-good moment. The intensely divisive politics distract from what people have tuned in to enjoy.
So I imagine the TV people will try to calibrate how much attention to give the visiting President, who is almost a God to some and almost the Devil to others.
My guess is that they will lean more toward treating Trump better than he deserves both because the NFL crowd probably went heavily for Trump and because the networks have already shown that they don’t want to anger Trump by treating him less well than he thinks he deserves.