Less than thirty years ago, Bill Clinton got impeached for among other things, perjury and abuse of power. Trump was elected having openly said "grab them by the pussy", mocked a reporter's disability, and again despite being a convicted felon. He's been impeached twice!

This kind of thing just doesn't surprise anymore. What would surprise me is if he doesn't remain for a third term.

I've long thought one of the things that led to the sorry state we're in today was the advent of cable TV. In the days you're talking about, three or four networks were competing for the same viewers, and none of them could afford to alienate a big hunk of people, so they all tried to at least appear objective. With cable, there were so many stations that one could go after some niche and do fine, so we got stations that barely even made a pretence of being news, rather than propaganda, and people tuned in to hear whatever confirmed their existing narratives.

It's also dilution. When there were 4 stations on TV and everyone watched televised news, a story on there got a shit ton of viewership, and there could only be a handful of news stories to pay attention to. Now there's several 24 hour news stations, all the other local stations, 100 other channels to watch besides news, streaming shows, all the news from the internet coming in at 100's a day, and shit little Facebook and YouTube algorithms that only feed people things they're likely to keep eyeballs glued on to the screen.

And remember how we were told each time that it was a good thing that another billionaire had his oen Kees station? Hoe it was a good thing that each news station was bought and lost its independence?

Its all such a great thing!

the press was the first branch of the government they had to take

I mean two rich guys bought almost all legacy media sources. It's not that they were good before it's that they're worse now.