Last summer, in a bit of grandstanding masquerading as satire, HuffPo announced it was putting all of its Trump coverage in its “Entertainment” section, rather than its “Politics” section. That didn’t take, obviously, and HuffPo in December bowed to the fact that Donald Trump was a genuine presidential candidate with a large following.
On Thursday, HuffPo announced another attention-grabbing Trump initiative that will also probably have zero effect on the general election, Trump’s supporters, or their readers. From now on, until they decide it isn’t working, every article about Trump will include an editor’s note at the bottom reading, “Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims—1.6 billion members of an entire religion—from entering the U.S.”
Donald Trump does enough racist, xenophobic, bullying things that you can just incorporate his past racist, xenophobic, bullying behavior into whatever article you’re writing about him—if anything, this waters down genuine criticism, which Trump routinely attracts and deserves. But even that’s probably overthinking things: This is just another gimmick and it’s silly to treat it as anything else.