I have some tweaks to make for this, but in general it’s spot on.

1. It is a stupid quote on its face, of course. Trump served as President for four years and the results were mostly positive despite deliberate and unethical efforts by the Axis of Unethical Conduct to undermine him. The Presidency is a unique job; by definition anyone who had been President (and not suffered a major cognitive decline subsequently, but that’s just a wild hypothetical) is more qualified than anyone who hasn’t been President.

2. What the anonymous (how courageous!) exec means is “if Trump wins despite eight years of 90% of the news media doing everything it it power to poison the public against him while covering up the vile conduct of Democrats” American journalism has no credibility any more and not enough power to manipulate our politics and public policy as its practitioners long to do.

3. Bingo. And that is one of the main reasons having Harris go down to defeat is so critical to the health of our republic. To me, it may be the major reason. A democracy and any of its forms requires an informed public, and that in turn requires an ethical, competent, fair and trustworthy news media. We don’t have one. The coverage of the 2024 campaign had proven that. If Harris wins, journalists will conclude that they achieved their mission and continue as they have been. The election must demonstrate that they are not trusted, and until they reform, will continue to be untrustworthy.

4. I think mainstream media may already be effectively dead in its current form anyway. Such once-unimaginable episodes as CBS faking a Kamala Harris response in an interview, so many previously respectable news sources trying to bolster the furious White House efforts to deny President Biden said what he said about Trump supporters being “garbage,” The Atlantic’s recent hit piece on Trump using “anonymous sources,” or the staff revolt at the Washington Post because the owner chose to not endorse either Presidential candidate reveal a profession that has lost its standards, its principles, and its justifcation for existing.