Being a shit-bag and. a bully just isn't a "war". Arguably the controversy saved most of the legacy media landscape from financial ruin and gave them 4 more years to adjust to some new revenue models, the NYT in particular seems to have figured out how to pivot to a profitable online subscriber model that works. It wasn't clear in mid 2016 that they would be able to do that.

You can make a good case that the guy damaged the discourse and eroded trust in institutions, but news and journalism have flourished in recent years.