From the Jim Rutenberg media column, returned after an absence:
He has succeeded in creating a daily narrative in which he is the central figure," Steve Coll, the dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism and a staff writer at The New Yorker, told me. "And he uses props and invented opposition — whether they are migrants hundreds of miles from the U.S. border or the press right in front of him — to pursue this kind of idea he has about how his populism works."
I don't really follow how the migrant caravan or the press are "props and invented opposition"? They seem to me to be not "invented" — at least not invented by Trump — but, rather, genuine. There really is a caravan of migrants headed for our Southern border. There are photographs of it in the Times and images on television. They don't appear to be actors hired by Trump. Likewise, the press really does seem to oppose Trump, at least to judge by the unusually low ratio of endorsements he received in the presidential election and to judge the periodic surveys of the political views of newsroom personnel. There may be some element of the press that hyped Trump because he was good for ratings or subscription sales, but to judge by the tenor of the coverage, there certainly is an element of opposition in the press, as there is, to some degree, with most presidents. I get how Trump is seizing on these images and situations to turn them to his political advantage, which may be the point that Rutenberg and Coll are trying to make. But describing these situations as "invented" only confirms and reinforces Trump's narrative of an unremittingly hostile press.