One of the biggest divides in the United States is the one between Conservatives and Liberals. It is tribalism at its most extreme, with both sides refusing see things from the other’s point of view. With presidents and their scandals, this only becomes more apparent.

President Donald Trump has had an unusually large amount of scandals for a president, both before and after being elected.  From denigrating comments about women during the campaign, to allegedly paying off Stormy Daniels,  with whom he has been accused of having an affair, he conducts himself as a reality TV star rather than as the President of the United States. Despite all of his scandals, many conservative news outlets refuse to speak about the president in a negative light. Whenever he does something wrong, they try to cast blame on whoever is against him or anyone around him rather than assigning him any blame. The news outlets are unwilling to admit that they elected the wrong person into power and refuse to acknowledge their mistakes.

“I think it’s very important for people to receive their news from many different sources. Not only is the information less biased, but it can give insight into people who have opposing views,” said Donna Kim ’18.

Fox News is a repeat offender of reporting news in the most right-wing way possible. For example, when Obama was president and he wore a tan suit to a press conference, the news organization lost its mind. It called him a terrorist amongst other insults, simply for an outfit he wore once. However, the scandal involving Stormy Daniels hardly received any negative press coverage from the organization. Instead, Fox News has attempted to paint Stormy Daniels as the one in the wrong for violating their non-disclosure agreement (which might be invalid anyhow).

“I realize it can be hard for news outlets to be completely unbiased in such a bipartisan political climate, but it seems that some aren’t even trying anymore,” said Jenny Kim ’18. Even many relatively liberal news outlets did not have the scandal as front page news when it broke, because such behavior from our president is being regarded as the norm.

Donald Trump also paints many news outlets that disagree with him or report negative things about him as “fake news,” resulting in his supporters having less faith in legit news outlets. Many of his supporters refuse to watch and listen to other, more unbiased sources other than outlets such as Fox News or other Trump-approved media. Even if a news story has facts and figures supporting what they are saying, a huge population just will not trust the news anymore. They only trust their president and what he decides is the truth.

“I think it’s very important for people to receive their news from many different sources. Not only is the information less biased, but it can give insight into people who have opposing views,” said Donna Kim ’18. The cycle of people only receiving information that confirms their current beliefs is very dangerous and is leading to further divide in the political climate in America.