Folks Donald Trump isn't some kind of savant who defies the conventional norms of politics. He's an asshole who is so unfit for his job that we just can't explain how someone so terrible got the job lest we admit what it says about us. People project onto him to deflect from them
It's like if you picked up a dog on the street, brought it home and nursed it to health, and then your neighbor looked at it and said, "Hey, that's a coyote." Your first reaction would be, "Nah. It can't be." Not because it isn't. You just don't want to admit you're that dumb.
So when the media equivocates or people act like Trump is some brilliant strategist playing 9 dimensional chess, they're trying to convince themselves that they weren't the dummies that brought the coyote home. That coyote was just displaying smart dog behaviors.
Even now, going into this election, people really believe Trump has some brilliant master plan at play. He doesn't. He's presiding over a depression and a plague after an impeachment and people are saying "He could win if...". Nah, stop petting the coyote and serve it up straight
Trump is and has always been an unfit boob and the reason why he got elected in the first place is because we're too afraid to confront racism and misogyny because too many people would then have to admit that they might be racists or misogynists. So we kept the coyote.
