CHUCK TODD (HOST): Elite opinions have had, I would say, no new influence on this campaign. How about that?
AMY WALTER: You can also argue they've been having less and less influence every year. Whether you put this up in 2004 or 2008. We've seen it now, the gradual decline. Not just in elites and media, but in elites in everything. In business, in organized religion. It's become much more diffused. The question though, I think, that didn't get answered in this was, who is responsible for creating this? And people in the media also have a responsibility for that. And so when I see folks coming out and kind of wringing their hands about how terrible and uncivil it is, they've been helping -- they've been making a lot of money in helping to foment this kind of conversation.
[...]
MARIA TERESA KUMAR: But I also think when you start looking at the effect within the media, you've basically had a network for the last fifteen years saying that you can't trust politicians, that our government is broken. And after that, people start internalizing that. And we end up getting a candidate like Donald Trump, who is completely anti-establishment, completely populist rhetoric. And you're just like, well, there is such a shift when people say, well I don't trust government. But it's because we've actually had a propaganda machine for the last fifteen, twenty years saying you shouldn't.
