He got a lot of coverage , yes . Full rallies and speeches fucking unprecedented amounts of air time , yes . However , the majority was heavily criticized by virtually every Democrat and Republican alike , up until the GOP realized they were going to have to back him did a 180 . I mean , Paul Ryan was publicly calling Trump a racist . Ted Cruz was publicly condemning Trump , up until he was making phone calls for him , and then even that flip itself earned coverage . My point is this Harvard referred to the coverage as favorable free media exposure . 1 . Trump didn ' t need exposure he already had name recognition with essentially the entire country . 2 . He received more coverage overall , but the majority of it was negative at least up until the very end of the race . I would dare say there has never been a political candidate to get more outright condemnation from the media and political figures from both sides of the aisle , and it still did not matter because he got more coverage overall aka , all press is good press . I just wish Harvard of all places would have noted that most of the coverage wasn ' t favorable , because there is a distinct difference in the reception of his negative coverage than there would have been say if Obama did even 13 of what Trump has done . Or , if Hillary had publicly admitted to selfdealing with her charity refused to release her taxes . I just think it ' s a lot more complex than Harvard is making it out to be .