This is what so many people fail to grasp. Trump used some major judo on the media. They thought they were totally trashing him (and they were), but he levera

This is what so many people fail to grasp. Trump used some major judo on the media. They thought they were totally trashing him (and they were), but he leveraged the massive negative media attention to his benefit in a way I think the media and Democrats still largely don't understand. The biggest problem, I think, is that the media still think that people find them objective, when they are trusted at rates comparable to Congress' approval ratings. Trump tapped into this distrust and played the media like a fiddle, and in doing so, he was not only able to win a Republican primary that few people expected, but a general election that even fewer people expected.