The shift in the media since Trump took office has been dramatic and jarring.

That’s actually probably an understatement. The veracity with which they go after Trump over every little thing is only matched by the laxness with which they treated Barack Obama’s numerous scandals. Sell arms to drug cartels leading to a CBP agent being murdered? Meh, they won’t even mention it. Get two scoops of ice cream at dinner? Well, that’s front page news. At one point CNN actually did an investigative report on how many Diet Cokes the President drinks.

Well, brace yourselves because we’ve got a new scandal on our hands and this one is a doozy.

Trump hustled Mulvaney out of the Oval Officr for coughing during the interview. #leavetheroom #mulvaneycough pic.twitter.com/kE8oRBJY70

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 17, 2019

Here’s CNN’s report. Yes, they wasted actual bandwidth on their website doing a full write up on this.

Washington (CNN): President Donald Trump chastised his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney for coughing during the taping of a TV interview, ordering the aide out of the Oval Office while he was in the middle of an answer.

Trump, during an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that aired Sunday, was in the middle of telling the journalist about releasing a financial statement when Mulvaney sounded off a cough that can be heard during the President’s remark.

“Let’s do that over. He’s coughing in the middle of my answer,” Trump said, pointing toward Mulvaney.

“Yeah. OK,” Stephanopoulos said.

Scintillating. I got chills reading that hard hitting journalism. You can find similar write ups at places like USA Today and The Washington Post. It really made the rounds.

The point of even putting this story out there is to paint Trump as an abusive, mean figure who treats his subordinates badly. Maybe he does? But this is a pretty ridiculous example to latch onto. The President got on unlikely assist on this point from liberal journalist (but usually fair) Yashar Ali.

POTUS is right. And if you’re going to stay in the room, at least make an attempt to do something about it…

*this does not apply to people with a chronic condition. So don’t waste your time Dming me about the rare Luxembourg cough syndrome you have. I’m not talking about you https://t.co/CKg4KmKnVl

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) June 17, 2019

Ali actually took heat in his mentions for that take. That’s 2019 for you.

Would I have asked Mulvaney to leave? Probably not, but that’s not my personality. Trump is a notorious germophobe, so it’s not surprising he’d have a bit of a complex over people coughing. In this case though, a taped interview was going on. It’s kind of a normal thing to ask people coughing to leave the room during filming of just about anything.

The coughing isn’t really the story here though. The most relevant part of all this, which is admittedly soaked in irrelevancy, is the media’s absurdity in even covering this as even newsworthy. It tracks in a long line of ridiculous, pointless stories that have been pushed over the years. There are no standards or rules anymore. If it can be used to paint Donald Trump in a negative light, it’s fit to print.

I’m not sure Trump can survive this latest scandal. We’ll keep you updated.

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