Why the Media Thinks Trump Is Indestructible

And why they may be right.

This June, it will be seven years since I assumed we were done with Donald Trump. I had been covering the 2016 Presidential campaign for Bloomberg Politics, mostly on the intersection-between-politics-and-culture-beat — I covered things like the end of Letterman, and the hiring of Trevor Noah, and how Ted Cruz actually isn’t bad on talk shows — which meant I was spending a lot of time writing about the early days of Trump’s campaign. You will have to believe me — and forgive me — when I say that it really was kind of funny back then. It was downright absurd to have someone like this guy running for President, like inviting a snotty teenager on the debate stage with super-serious grownups; seriously, he got Marco Rubio to make a penis-size joke, in a Presidential debate. That’s incredible. I once spent a whole day going through Trump’s old Instagram videos. I will never forget how mad he used to get at Kristen Stewart, for some reason.

(Videos like that are insane to watch today, by the way.)

I regret this now: I should have taken him more seriously, and I didn’t. But there was one day, in June 2015, when I thought he was done. We all did. It was when Trump, in an interview at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, he famously hammered Sen. John McCain by saying, “I like people who don’t get captured.” I still sort of can’t believe a human being said that.

That next morning, I talked with my editor, the late great John Homans, who chuckled when I picked up the phone.

“Well,” he said. “It was fun while it lasted. Guess we better find something else to write about now.”

It wasn’t just him. The lede to a Politico piece about Trump’s comments? Donald…