Facebook has found evidence of plans to influence the mid-term elections. Oddly enough the plans were found unanimously seconded in the minutes of their latest business meeting.

Well, well, well. After one year in office, President Obama and President Trump ended up with the same approval rating:

46% approved;

54% disapproved.

Hard to believe really, given that Obama was so popular and Trump is so loathed. The interesting part to this equation lies with media coverage. Let’s compare their first year in office:

Positive media coverage – Obama 52%, Trump 10%;

Negative media coverage – Obama 48%, Trump 90%.

To begin with, Obama had 48% negative coverage? Give me a break. No doubt being a conservative news outlet Fox News were critical, but you’re trying to telling us MSNBC, ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS, PBS were critical of Obama in almost half their coverage? That’s the modern version of the Brooklyn Bridge being up for sale, pure nonsense. But, moving on.

For those willing to look at facts and figures, it’s obvious that President Trump has achieved far more than his predecessor in their respective first year. Job growth, reduction in illegal border crossing, consumer confidence, the unprecedented stock market run, his removal of government regulations hindering small business growth, the return of big companies inside the U.S. – plus having a way hotter wife – make this comparison a no brainer. Yet the endless cycle of negative coverage of President Trump raises two interesting questions.

1) How high would President Trumps approval rating really be if he had benefited from 52% positive coverage? He’d easily be in the high 60s, if not low 70s.

2) And how low would President Obama’s ratings be if he had of been hit by 90% negative coverage? He’d be lucky to be in the low 20s.

It must really upset the mainstream media that for over a year they’ve attacked him 24/7 and he ended up being just as popular as the Messiah who promised that, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. I bet it also bugs a lot of male journalists that despite dredging up dirt on his alleged extramarital affairs, he’s still with his hot wife too.

It can be said the commentariat dismissed Donald Trump as a viable threat to Secretary Hillary Clinton. Given that Matthew Dowd’s prediction of Hillary’s chance of winning was a fair and balanced 95%, it’s fair to say they viewed his candidacy as a complete joke. Although they couldn’t tar Trump with the stupid brush that they did with President George W. Bush, their approach involved focusing on how mad, how unpredictable, and how flippant he was. Granted, his foot and mouth did seem to constantly meet, but there was once again a method to his madness.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert (and a trained hypnotist), predicted that Donald Trump would win due to two simple reasons. Firstly, he spoke in “visual ways”. According to Adams this resonated with voters as using a visual approach connects with the “most persuasive part of the brain.” To demonstrate, he used visual devices like pointing to his “crowd sizes”, describing ISIS as, “putting people in cages and chopping off heads”, and always linking illegal immigration to a, “beautiful, big wall.” Donald Trump is a businessman and a television star – two industries which rely heavily on advertising. He knew exactly how to sell a product and sell he did.

Secondly, Trump used a business approach of A and B testing. While it would appear he was flippant and often contradicting himself, Adams believed he cleverly tested his policies with the electorate through his campaign rallies. When something didn’t test well, he was quick to change his position. While his detractors saw this as contradictory, they missed the genius in his shaping and honing his positions before that first Tuesday in November. While Hillary road tested 84-85 slogans, somehow ending up with what sounded like an advertisement for mixing scotch with bourbon – ‘Stronger together’ – Trump really knew what his electorate wanted because he constantly honed it on a live audience.

After President Bush beat Vice President Gore, the excuse from the left was the election was rigged. When President Trump beat Secretary Clinton, the excuse was the Russians hacked the election. If President Trump wins re-election in 2020, what do you think the chances are that the left trot out another excuse? Tell Matt Dowd I’d be willing to go higher than 95% on that one.

Arthur Jones, a Republican running for congress in Illinois, has been found to hold anti-Semitic views and Democrats are furious. And rightly so, that’s their platform!

Watching the latest season of The Voice with my wife, I couldn’t help notice a trend with a lot of the contestants. After telling the panel their name, age, place of origin, a lot of them followed up with the same sentence, “and I was bullied.”

Despite the National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence, State Schools adopting the Bullying. No Way! platform, umpteen ads and media campaigns addressing bullying, multiple lessons and school parades on cyber-bullying, and schools having to respond to every single bullying complaint their child makes – real or imagined – it seems bullying grows exponentially. It’s an epidemic that cannot be stopped!

Or is it?

Could the growth of bullying also be a lack of perspective from young people who are yet to experience life’s hardships? Young people who are taught an easy way to get attention, to get out of trouble, and to get out of work when things get a little tough? I’m not saying there is no such thing as bullying, or that there are not cases that are severe and warrant addressing, but when you teach kids that they’re victims, it’s no surprise that there are more and more victims every year.

I mean, can that many kids on The Voice be victims of bullying? It’s a bit rich too that these youngsters stand in front of a person like Boy George – who was one of the first high-profile trans/gay people in mainstream culture in the 1980s – and complain about the hard time they experienced at school. I’d wager he experienced true bullying compared to most of them.

For once I’d like to see a contestant get up and go, “Hi. My name is… I’m from… and I was bullied. But it’s okay, I got on with it.” Until then, we’ll just have to get used to more and more victims on our screens. I’d wager it won’t be long before a contestant who doesn’t get picked accuses the judges of – you guessed it – bullying.