Why the Media Thinks Trump Is Indestructible

And why they may be right.

This June, it will be seven years since I assumed we were done with Donald Trump. I had been covering the 2016 Presidential campaign for Bloomberg Politics, mostly on the intersection-between-politics-and-culture-beat — I covered things like the end of Letterman, and the hiring of Trevor Noah, and how Ted Cruz actually isn’t bad on talk shows — which meant I was spending a lot of time writing about the early days of Trump’s campaign. You will have to believe me — and forgive me — when I say that it really was kind of funny back then. It was downright absurd to have someone like this guy running for President, like inviting a snotty teenager on the debate stage with super-serious grownups; seriously, he got Marco Rubio to make a penis-size joke, in a Presidential debate. That’s incredible. I once spent a whole day going through Trump’s old Instagram videos. I will never forget how mad he used to get at Kristen Stewart, for some reason.

(Videos like that are insane to watch today, by the way.)

I regret this now: I should have taken him more seriously, and I didn’t. But there was one day, in June 2015, when I thought he was done. We all did. It was when Trump, in an interview at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, he famously hammered Sen. John McCain by saying, “I like people who don’t get captured.” I still sort of can’t believe a human being said that.

That next morning, I talked with my editor, the late great John Homans, who chuckled when I picked up the phone.

“Well,” he said. “It was fun while it lasted. Guess we better find something else to write about now.”

It wasn’t just him. The lede to a Politico piece about Trump’s comments? Donald Trump might finally have crossed the line.

It turned out: He had not, in fact, crossed the line. There ended up not being a line at all.

Donald Trump is going to get arrested soon. It may not happen Tuesday, but it is going to happen. He may get arrested multiple times; he has multiple cases against him, and thus multiple opportunities. And generally speaking, it is not a good thing to get arrested. It is awfully rare that anyone says, “Getting arrested caused me no troubles whatsoever. It was a net positive in my life.”

But if you are wondering why so many people in the media — people who have spent their entire careers writing about how bad it is for people when they get arrested — are hesitant to classify a Trump arrest as inherently a bad thing for him, that’s why. Trump has, really since that moment in June 2015, suffered no political consequences for behavior that would have destroyed any other candidate who has ever run for public office. Nothing for him has ostensibly gotten worse. Sure, his party is worse off, and certainly the United States (and, really, the global order) is not in a happier place because he decided to go down that escalator seven years ago. But him? He’s fine. He’s always fine.

He’s going to get arrested. And it still feels like he’s going to be fine. Perhaps someday skepticism about him actually facing consequences will no longer be justified. Certainly: Getting arrested is pretty serious! But it’s difficult not to reflexively assume that none of the bad things that happen to every other person when they get arrested will happen to Trump. He still has never, somehow, crossed that line. Forgive me for believing he ever will.

Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of six books, including the Edgar-nominated novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books, and the upcoming The Time Has Come, released on May 16, 2023. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.