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There are a lot of flaws in this approach—namely the deference it inherently shows to politicians, its general conception of journalism as a conduit for political parties, and its reliance on party apparatchiks for spin and drama—but it has been remarkably resilient even as American politics has grown more partisan and divided. Yet one flaw has become more and more apparent over the last decade: its reliance on both parties to supply vessels who can be counted on to provide at least a semblance of good faith. Ever since Trump came to power, it has been basically impossible to find anyone with any integrity who can defend him or act as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party that he is the de facto head of.

There was, for a short while, an attempt to find pundits and panelists who could act as his spin doctors after debates, elections, and other news events. CNN, in particular, filled its roundtables with loyalists like Kayleigh McEnany (who would go on to serve as Trump’s press secretary) and Jeffrey Lord (who was fired in 2017 after tweeting “Sieg Heil!”). Their efforts to spin Trump’s erratic behavior, xenophobic remarks and policies, and outright contempt for democracy were laughable—often literally so. Network and cable news spin rooms have never been places for nuanced debate or policy analysis, but they do require a shared sense of reality (even if that reality is one that only really exists inside the Beltway). Trump’s rise broke all of that. For most of the last five years, networks have adjusted their model somewhat, still balancing “liberal” and “conservative” voices but with the latter much more likely to be “Never Trump” figures (or at least Trump skeptics).

The major flaw with this approach is that it undermines the entire model, which is premised on featuring people who can speak, with credibility, on behalf of the leaders of the two parties. That has become impossible in the wake of Trump’s emergence as the country’s single most powerful political force, thanks to the Republican Party’s growing contempt for journalists and Trumpism’s reliance on lies and bigotry. After January 6, 2021, there was clearly a hope that this would all just wash away, that Trump would recede from view and the GOP would return to being a normal(ish) political party. Not only has that not happened, but Trump is now leading in the 2024 presidential polls, creating a huge problem for mainstream news organizations: How do you cover a political party that has lost its mind?