And why is it acceptable now?
A completely made-up “scandal” began when The Guardian reported on “Canoe-Gate.” “JD Vance’s team had water level of the river raised for family’s boating trip,” the outlet claimed. Though the same article said that “one source with knowledge of the matter who communicated with the Guardian anonymously alleged that the outflow request for the Caesar Creek Lake was not just to support the vice-president’s Secret Service detail, but also to create ‘ideal kayaking conditions” and that “The Guardian could not independently confirm this specific claim,” the story was reported anyway. Got that? An unnamed source claimed that Vance had ordered that a river’s water level be raised to create better kayak conditions, the news organization couldn’t substantiate the claim, yet they printed it as fact.
Then the usual suspects jumped into the fray. The New Republic’s headline was “JD Vance Abused Power to Raise River Levels for Family Kayaking Trip.” Huffington Post declared: “JD Vance Had A River’s Water Level Raised For His Family Vacation.” The Daily Beast: “JD Vance Ordered a River’s Water Level Raised for His Family Boat Trip.” Stephen Colbert called the story an “insane spoiled baby emperor move.” (What an asshole he is. But I digress.)
There was no truth to the story whatsoever. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi explained that the they conducted a routine trip to the Ohio area ahead of the Veep’s planned trip and one of their vessels actually ran aground. The Secret Service the increase: “It’s very normal, it’s very routine.” He said that the decision was made without input or involvement from the Vice President’s office.
Never mind, though. Vance is Donald Trump’s #2, so whatever damning stories and rumors people make up about him must be true, and must be broadcast to the world as fact. None of the news outlets noted above have retracted or taken down the false story. Of course they haven’t.
I’ll answer my own question: no, there have never been a President and Vice President who have been slandered, libeled, slimed and unfairly denigrated like Trump and Vance. By any objective measure, the first seven months of the second Trump administration has been spectacularly productive on an impressive number of fronts, yet the President’s popularity is still in negative numbers. The barrage of deliberately misleading negative propaganda is why. It hurts the government, it hurts society, it scars democracy. “Enemy of the people.” Trump coined that phrase in relation to the news media, and he was never more accurate. Journalists screamed, “How dare he!,” but Trump nailed their corrupt profession as deftly as Ronald Reagan did when he called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire.” That’s what we have as our “journalism” now: a malign, unethical, dastardly institution determined to mislead rather than inform.
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Pointer: Res Ipsa Loquitur
Ethics Alarms 
They still don’t get it. They are so hated that every negative story they post only makes normies love the current administration more.
Not this badly, but the media did attempt to tear George Bush the younger down and characterized him as an imbecile who was being manipulated or even control by Cheney, who was frequently characterized as evil and just interested in what would boost his oil portfolio. The media also treated Dan Quayle like he was nothing more than an imbecile, maybe put there to ensure that no one would try to impeach Bush the elder. The media was not as hard on Reagan as they could have been, challenging a president who won 49 of 50 states would have been simply stupid. Nixon, of course, got abused, but some of that he brought on himself. I honestly do not know if the media was unpleasant or abusive to Eisenhower.
Of course, the media gets more objective the further back you go, or at least some of it does. By the year 2016, almost all of the media had morphed into nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democratic party, and the more liberal the better. Trump and Vance are everything they hate, so they are going to do everything they can to attack them, no matter how absurd. They also will not cut their families any kind of a break, even though they were all over Obama’s daughters like they were the next generation of heroines.
Let’s not forget that it extends to Presidential candidates, too. While running for President, liberal Mitt Romney was run though every bit of mud the media could ever find (But . . . “It worked, didn’t it?”), and “The Maverick” John McCain–normally a darling of the left for routinely breaking ranks with the GOP–suddenly became some sort of arch-conservative super-villain until President Obama won the election, after which he went right back to being a media darling.
It doesn’t matter who the GOP candidate will be in 2028. That candidate will be Trump. Fuck, Bernie Sanders could somehow win the GOP nod and as far as the media is concerned, he’ll be the next coming of Donald Trump.
–Dwayne