After spending nearly six months treating his hateful outbursts as if they were nothing more than a curiosity, or even a welcome distraction from the tedium of the campaign trail, it looks like the mainstream press has had just about enough of Donald Trump.

Apparently, his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the country is unforgivable in a way that his other transgressions were not. Categorizing an entire ethnic group as rapists, urging the closure of mosques and the creation of a religious database, disseminating neo-Nazi propaganda, likening an opponent to a child molester, advocating torture for its own sake — this was all bad, of course. But apparently not bad enough.

Great! The media turned on Trump. But their softball, policy-free coverage has helped him mainstream odious ideas