Unpopular President

A small thing, but still emblematic, is that the press never really treated Trump as "unpopular." All those diner safaris treated Trump voters as the majority that Democrats needed to win over, when they weren't in the majority in the 2016, 2018, or finally 2020 elections.

The poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds Trump leaving office with a 38% job approval rating; 60% disapprove, matching (but not exceeding) his peak disapproval in August 2018. His career average approval rating is the lowest for any president in modern polling, back to 1939, and he is the first president in that time never to achieve majority approval at any point.

Obama wasn't super popular, and it was fair to portray him that way, but he was more popular than Trump and that rarely came through in coverage.

Of course Clinton was more/at least as popular as Reagan, and you know how that went, also, too.