It's late so I don't have it in me to support this thesis, but it really seems that we're getting to a level of corruption and coverup that wouldn't even be close to being possible without sycophants in the media who enable it. And, yes, to some extent this is just a description of the past few years, but we've had a president essentially in the 30s in the polls (yes, some 40+ numbers appear occasionally) for over a year.
