A mad mania had gripped the globe. Its daily cycle began pumping at approximately 10 a.m. local time in the editorial conference rooms across the planet. The meetings would begin with the same question: Did Trump say or tweet anything outrageous this morning?

The editorial staffs, regardless of their political vantage point, couldn’t get enough of the man they universally despised. This Orange Oaf was a danger to the status quo. And the status quo, of course, was largely composed of those self-important types sitting around the editorial tables, for whom he had no respect.

The more the media establishment tittered, harangued, lectured, gasped, finger-wagged, the more ordinary Americans were drawn to Trump. And the ordinary Americans who were repulsed by him couldn’t help but stare. Just three months into the race, Trump looked like the pick, as I’d told him when he held a rally in suburban Flint several weeks earlier.

The glass was half-empty in America. Less than half of American households were now considered middle class, and half the middle-class wealth had evaporated during the Great Recession. Rent was eating half their paychecks. This was not of their doing, or at least they didn’t think so. It was the establishment who had raped them.

The American Redneck was in full mutiny against his Republican master. He was not in the mood for gentlemanly debate or shrinking violets. He was angry and broke or close to it.

The only thing people despised more than the reporters were the politicians and bankers. And they wanted them all punched in the mouth. Fuck it if Trump didn’t know what he was talking about. Kick ’em in the balls, Donny boy!

Even Bernie Sanders, the curmudgeonly socialist from the hills of Vermont, was making a run of it against Hillary Clinton. And all the Bern had to do was take some windmill slaps at faceless billionaires, call for the return of Depression-era bank regulations, say no to global trade deals, and promise college to everybody without explaining how we were going to pay for it. It almost worked. Except the establishment had laid facedown, ass up for Clinton. She had the money and the superdelegates and the friends at the TV networks. Bern didn’t get the coverage—good or bad. He was disheveled, puckered, professorial, elderly. The camera didn’t like him.

Trump was a different duck. Whenever he would lie, exaggerate, mock, threaten, or compare a fellow Republican to a child molester, the captains of the sinking media ships would notice a bounce in their click count and ratings. Business was business. The boat was afloat. So they made a conscious decision to turn it into the Donald Trump Show.

To me, Trump rated as a prop. The lipstick and panty hose on the pig. The backdrop. He was important, no doubt, but we would not castigate him, just bat him around like a ball of yarn. We weren’t campaign beat reporters. We were street reporters. In our view, the story was and always will be the American people scratching it out from Ferguson to Flint. Certainly there was room for this in the vomit of continual political coverage.

So I thought.