Published 03 Sept 2024; updated 04 Sept 2024
After the Trump-Biden debate, the political press went into hypercritical mode, calling for President Joe Biden to step down because he had a bad night in a poorly run event (that was not a “debate”).
There was little time or pixels spilled on Donald Trump’s disjointed responses.
This was Trump last week in Potterville, MI:
[Kamala Harris] destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s — and I own a big building there — it’s no — I shouldn’t talk about this but that’s OK I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world — sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?
That is a ramble through the briar patch with no path out.
Although an MSNBC columnist is calling out this new disjointed stream on consciousness, it is by no means a new behavior. Nor is it on display in news stories.
Parker Malloy highlighted the widespread journalistic malpractice in a New Republic column on Wednesday: “Voters who rely solely on traditional news sources are presented with a version of Trump that bears little resemblance to reality.’
This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president…
When major news outlets consistently present a polished version of Trump’s statements, they create an alternate narrative that exists alongside the unfiltered truth available on social media and in unedited footage…
Voters who rely solely on traditional news sources are presented with a version of Trump that bears little resemblance to reality.
She reserves pointed criticism for the New York Times:
By framing Trump’s incoherent ramblings as some form of avant-garde oratory, the Times isn’t just failing to accurately report—it’s actively warping reality to its readers.
All the news organizations are playing this game.
There’s the electric boats and sharks, a story that the Washington Post chose to ‘clean up’ so that it appeared coherent.
Daniel Dale at CNN cleaned up a “nonsensical” rant about Truth Social and the New York Stock Exchange.
The treatment of his non sequiturs is little different than the treatment of his massive strings of lies. This series from a recent Mom’s for Liberty event, one weird lie following another about transgender children and schools, was ignored in the main:
“The transgender thing is incredible. Think about it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and many of these children, 15 years later, say ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’”
Nothing in that blurb is true.
Nothing.
A Guardian columnist was clear back in the spring that Trump’s actual words matter. But the news side of the house still edits him.
Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.
The two problems — ‘sanewashing’ the rambles and glossing over the lies — are deeply damaging to democracy. Newspapers are creating a faux reality where Donald Trump seems to have his wits about him. Maybe he’s weird, but he’s coherently weird. That’s a lie.
When will the New York Times and Washington Post finally acknowledge that the emperor has no clothes? When will they stop making him appear coherent? Will they savage him on September 10th like they did Biden?
I fear we all know the answer.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com