You know, trust in the press, polls show - from Pew and other places - have gone down significantly over the years. Maybe the press doesn't have that much ability to frame people's decisions.

Trump's - has great negatives, enormous negatives, a lot of people say they simply won't vote for him. So if he's gotten media, maybe it hasn't done him so much good.

After all, the reporters are the ones who get to ask the questions.

You know, trust in the press, polls show - from Pew and other places - have gone down significantly over the years. Maybe the press doesn't have that much ability to frame people's decisions.

Near counts more than far, familiar more than different. Such is the indictment against the press, that it fails to treat similar tragedies with equal dignity.

I think it's very important to be able to hear from our public leaders in ways that they can't entirely orchestrate, seeing them speak live and unscripted and take questions that they themselves haven't arranged ahead of time. I think this is a way in which citizens who are deciding what they think of their leaders who govern in their name, this is one of the ways in which they can evaluate how they feel about the quality of the leadership.

The paid Trump surrogates help CNN keep his supporters engaged with their shows, but it also sends their own reporters busy chasing after many of their false claims. That's not a virtuous news cycle. It's an insidious one.