If Trump gets to be elected President...

On Wednesday, May 4, less than 24 hours after Donald Trump won the Indiana GOP primary and became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, "NBC Nightly News" did not just report the news, they let Trump take over their newscast. NBC originated its broadcast from Trump Tower in Manhattan. And for a full eight minutes at the top of the show, anchor Lester Holt interviewed Trump live from his office -- with no opportunity to respond provided to Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or any political commentator.

That same morning Trump had appeared live and unfiltered -- by phone -- on NBC, ABC, Fox News and MSNBC. Not even the president would enjoy that kind of coverage. But, in a way, it was the fitting end to Trump's primary campaign: the national media, in effect, placing the presidential crown on the head of the candidate they created in the first place. Having succeeded in making him the GOP nominee, the media are now determined to make him the next president of the United States.

How did Donald Trump, a man with no elective experience, manage to beat out a field of 16 other candidates that included nine current or former governors and five current or former United States senators? Thank his enablers. Thank the media.

Or, better yet, belittle the media, which is what President Obama did at last weekend's White House Correspondents' Dinner. After poking fun at Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the president told reporters he didn't want "to spend too much time on The Donald." Nervous laughter crept across the ballroom as Obama dropped the hammer: "Following your lead, I wanted to show some restraint. Because I think we can all agree that from the start, he's gotten the appropriate amount of coverage, befitting the seriousness of his candidacy."

Spot on. From the beginning, coverage of "The Donald" has been so inappropriate, so fawning, so nonstop, and so over the top that it's hard to tell who's the bigger media whore, the candidate or network executives. Even when Trump said something truly outrageous -- like banning all Muslims from entering the country, simply because they were Muslim -- the coverage was always of the "can you believe he said that?" variety, but never "this man is such a racist he should never be taken seriously."

Of course, there's a good, albeit cynical, reason the networks give Trump so much airtime. "Trumpmania" is good for their bottom line. Why else would they carry an entire hour-long Trump rally live, when other candidates would be lucky to get an honorable mention? Because ratings soar whenever he appears on their air, and the more outrageous things he says, the more controversy he stirs up, the better.

But what's good for the networks is even better for Trump. Back in March 2016, according to the media tracking firm mediaQuant, the New York mogul had already received $1.9 billion in free media exposure since announcing for president on June 16, 2015 -- and that windfall has only multiplied many times since. Trump far outpaced every one of his Republican rivals and more than doubled the $746 million in media attention paid to Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders clocked in at $321 million in coverage; Ted Cruz, at $313 million; Marco Rubio, $202 million; and John Kasich, $38 million.

Again according to mediaQuant, Trump even outpaced celebrities Taylor Swift ($497 million), Kim Kardashian ($250 million) and Kanye West ($234 million) in free publicity. But for his rival political candidates especially, it wasn't what you'd call a level playing field. As Rand Paul acidly observed when asked on Fox News what was behind Donald Trump's surge in the polls, "It could be the free billion dollars of publicity he has gotten by being on every channel all the time."

Of course, the big payoff for Donald Trump was: the more free media he received, the less he had to spend on his own campaign. According to the Federal Elections Commission, Trump spent less than any other presidential primary front-runner in the last 16 years. Through the end of February, he had spent only $33 million to win 19 state primaries. Never has one presidential candidate spent so little to win so much.

And, for all their adoring coverage, what did the media deliver? The least experienced, least knowledgeable and least qualified presidential nominee of our lifetime. As President Obama chided reporters at last Saturday's correspondents' dinner, "I hope you are all proud of yourselves."

Hillary served the same number of terms as all but one of the rest of the Secretaries of State in the last forty years.