Aesop is said to have been an ancient Greek storyteller, perhaps a slave, whose stories of wisdom were collected and passed down through the ages. None is more famous than “The Boy That Cried Wolf.” For those too young to have been taught the fables in public school, it’s a short and simple tale: A young shepherd boy is tending a flock by himself for the first time. He is instructed by his elders to cry out should a wolf arrive and threaten the sheep. Two or three times, the boy falsely sounds the alarm and three times the elders show up in a panic. The boy laughs and thinks it is great sport. When the wolf finally does come, he screams to no avail, no one shows and the boy himself is eventually devoured.

The analogy with today’s press corps virtually writes itself. For almost a quarter of a century, the media has worked hand-in-glove with the Democratic Party to try to destroy the character of a succession of Republican presidential candidates. To steal one of their own phrases, it became so common place it was “normalized.” So, in 2016 as the late presidential campaign heated up and the charges against Trump were trotted out like clockwork, huge swaths of the nation simply yawned. The press cried, and screamed, and stamped their feet and pleaded that this time was different; this time they actually meant it.