Trump has already made America great again: Alicia Shepard

After only a few weeks in the White House, President Trump has done as promised during campaign rallies storming the country: He has made America great again. But not necessarily in the way he intended.

Trump’s polarizing personality, his ongoing battles with the truth, his unrelenting attacks on the news media, his sexist statements about women, and his promise to undo Obamacare have energized Americans across the entire political spectrum, revving them up in unprecedented ways.

In short, Trump has breathed new life into the freedoms in the First Amendment.

Let’s start with the once dying-on-the-vine journalism business. For much of this century, all the news about the future of news was gloomy. Newspapers were slashing staffs, subscriptions were declining, the Internet was killing the business. Prospects weren't much better for cable TV or the networks.

With the “Trump bump,” there’s a resurgence of interest in journalism. This attentiveness is certainly intensified by the president tweeting that the news media are the “enemy of the people.”

Those fighting words brought more than 80 journalism groups together to condemn Trump’s attacks on press freedom. The public is equally energized. News subscriptions are skyrocketing, non-profit news outlets are getting record donations and cable news, such as CNN, is enjoying impressive ratings, big digital audiences and record profits.

Even more unimaginable a few years ago, on a recent Sunday, First Amendment supporters marched from The New York Times to several other nearby news offices to demonstrate the need for a free press to ensure that democracy prevails.

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"Every time he tweets, it drives subscriptions wildly,” New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet said on CNN’s Reliable Sources. “The last several years as newspaper subscriptions sort of dwindled, as newspapers, particularly local newspapers, worried about their future. I think what's happened in the last couple of months, I have to say, has been tremendous for news organizations. Our mission is clearer than it's ever been.”

The Times and some news organizations are also beefing up staff and tapping into the hunger for factually accurate, fair contextualized information. The Times, for example, added 276,000 digital subscribers in the fourth quarter — the best quarter for the paper since 2011. It has added 25,000 on the print side — best since 2010. The figures are also encouraging for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica and others.

One new digital Times subscriber is Billy Marsden, 25, who admitted that for years he had read the newspaper pirating his mom’s subscription. “I started subscribing because I think it’s worth $200 to keep well-informed,” said Marsden, a San Francisco consultant with Bain & Co. “There’s never been a more important time to support an independent press than today.

As a Millennial, Marsden isn’t a typical subscriber. But there’s nothing typical about these Trumpian times. In addition to creating a greater demand for reliable information, Trump’s presidency has spiked record numbers of females interested in running for political office at the local, state and federal level.

Last month, New York magazine reported that more than 13,000 women were planning to run for office. That’s an incredible figure considering how few women are in office. Although they are 51% of the population, women hold less than 20% of seats in Congress: 83 of 435 in the House and 21 of 100 in the Senate. State legislatures are about 25% female, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Emily's List, a political action committee that supports pro-choice Democratic women, told me that since Nov. 8 it has heard from nearly 10,000 women who might run for office, almost 10 times as many as during the whole 2016 election cycle. VoteRunLead and She Should Run also report an uptick in interest.

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And women are much more vocal about not putting up with sexual assault after hearing Trump brag about grabbing women "by the pussy” on a recording shortly before the election. The incident provided an opportunity for discussions about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior.

Trump has unwittingly motivated people to get active and speak out — even if for different political reasons.

Notably, large vocal crowds filled his campaign rallies, revealing a new wave of political interest on the right — just as an estimated 3.2 million marching the day after Trump’s inauguration showed a commitment on the left. People are civically engaged. They want their voices heard, belying the much-maligned stereotype of an apathetic electorate.

The president’s promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has lawmakers facing angry crowds at once-ignored town hall meetings. On both sides, fear of losing health care coverage is evident.

This isn’t the same as the peace and love protests of the 1960s and 1970s that galvanized a generation and brought an end to the Vietnam War. But maybe it could be. What is significant is that Americans of all political persuasions believe they have a voice, opportunities and a news media determined — regardless of presidential assaults — to soldier on and ferret out the truth.

Alicia Shepard is a veteran media writer and a former ombudsman for NPR. Follow her on Twitter @Ombudsman

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