never heard anything like this

The 10 worst things Trump did in 2019

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration. I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

Ken Griffin, Republican Megadonor, Is Wall Street’s Loudest Trump Critic

We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated. The president and his enablers have replaced conservatism with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet.

Republicans, it’s time to choose between autocracy and a republic

Like, always and forever, these criticism are from some Bush Era flaks and other "moderate" reactionaries. But they were littered all through the back end of the Trump 1 regime and early 2024 election cycle.

A madman in the White House needs to be newsworthy beyond the opinions page.

At the very least, the dementia allegations have been front-page news since his first election campaign back in 2016.

After that, I'm not sure what you're asking for. Trump isn't a foreign leader, so you're not going to see the kind of truly hysterical coverage we reserve for enemy nations. One of the perks of running the secret services is that you can just fire all the guys who publish that shit. Not a coincidence that Trump took a hatch to the State Department in his first term nor that his first move in term two was to ax Voice of America and the USAID program. When these calls are coming from inside the house, just cut the phone lines. Problem solved.

Trump building a much closer relationship with Silicon Valley also curbed the negative coverage, given that virtually every major news organization is now owned or administered by a tech company. So you're not seeing "madman" coverage anymore, thanks to Trump's move to cozy up with the people who run the news business. But it wasn't abnormal to read about it five years ago.