EDITOR: Why Trump is on the cover of InMaricopa

Some of you will be delighted to see MAGA zealots jubilating on the cover of this month’s InMaricopa magazine. The less adventurous, more stubbornly principled reader may have already thrown this copy into the trash in a loathsome compulsion.

Politics are a hard sell, especially in a hyperlocal newsmag, but InMaricopa doesn’t shy away from covering them. As a barometer of all things Maricopa, we can’t deny the shockwaves in Manhattan and D.C. have rippled into our far-flung little city during this historic era of paradigm turnabout.

Putting Donald Trump’s face on this month’s cover — although by indirect, vestiary means — was a decision I didn’t take lightly. I am not here to endorse any candidate or political party. Rather, to begin your monthly exercise in news literacy with imagery that, unlike many of our past covers, provokes an instant, strong and polarized reaction.
First Amendment exhibits elicit such reactions. As do displays of hypocrisy.

Donald Trump, with his history of sexual abuse and insults hurled at women, is the only American president ever convicted of a crime. Yet, here, he is exalted by “Women for Trump” devotees. He is cast as Captain America, a fictional war hero.

Questionable poetic justice of the U.S. Flag Code is taken in many gross alterations to the stars and stripes. And we see the recently vogue flags of Israel; that, from members of an Arizona GOP that endorsed neo-Nazis in just the last election.

On the other side of the coin, anti-Trump bias runs rampant in the mainstream media. Former Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz’s evenhanded and incisive study on the issue, Media Madness, found the mainstream media’s dogmatic hatred for Trump moved ostensibly objective journalists, alarmed by the president’s success, into the opposing camp.

This unsettling phenomenon is not, and never will be, InMaricopa . For us, this cover is an exercise in true objectivity. The overtness of Trump’s bipolar influence on Maricopa merits it a place on our cover. It’s topical, and topical events should not be minimized or ignored. They spark productive conversations about how we respond to the controversial images we see, in the media and in the world.

I believe you will conclude our coverage is fair. So, as you read the stories in this edition about conspiracy theories, first responders and electric vehicles, think about it — and let me know — how does this cover make YOU feel?

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