MSNBC contributor claims mainstream media tried to make Trump seem 'not so bad': 'Cleaned up' his rhetoric

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MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin said Saturday that the mainstream media tried to make Donald Trump seem "not so bad," and claimed the media "cleaned up" his rhetoric to normalize him.

Rubin, a Washington Post columnist, responded to MSNBC host Ali Velshi, who said "people don’t even want to watch clips of Donald Trump on our shows," citing feedback they received. Velshi added that Trump has been treated as a "quirky abstraction," rather than a threat to democracy.

"Well, I think two things are going on. One, this speaks to how badly the mainstream media has covered him. They have normalized him, they have cleaned up the rhetoric so he sounds in a clip or he reads in print much more coherent than he actually is. It’s only very recently that the mainstream media has been reporting on his really shocking totalitarian claims. But of course, he’s been this way all along," Rubin said.

"And I think because they have done such a bad job, because they have made an effort to treat the Republican Party like the Democratic Party, this notion that he’s not so bad, that he’s just kind of a cartoon character has set in. And that’s on the mainstream media, that’s on the failure to be honest and to side with truth rather than having this false balance," she continued.

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Rubin