Why Won't The Media Do Its Job?
The absolute refusal to cover Donald Trump's mental and physical collapse is tantamount to deliberately tilting the election in his favor
Remember June 27th? Four months and four days ago. Joe Biden went out and, for lack of a better phrase, mentally melted down on live television. Donald Trump was lying his ass off the entire time, but that was buried behind the story of the president of the United States appearing to have suffered a severe cognitive decline. Fair enough.
But here’s the thing: Joe Biden is no longer running for reelection. Vice President Kamala Harris is, someone much younger, much sharper, much more energetic. That means now that Donald Trump, the former president trying to pull a Grover Cleveland, is the oldest person in the race—not by a little, but a LOT. There is increasingly mounting evidence that he is not well. From the increasingly angry, unhinged, blatantly racist and violent speeches to his sudden inability to show up on time for anything; from his grotesquely worsening self-tanning application to his obvious sundowning moments at rallies, Trump is falling apart.
The media? Crickets.
Here’s a look at Trump today in Wisconsin. First, the self-tanner.
That’s a shade that no human being should ever look like. But then there was this moment.
If Joe Biden had done that, it would’ve led every newscast and made the front page of the New York Times with headlines like “Concerns about Biden’s age persist: the president stumbles and struggles to open a truck door.” Not a word by CBS, NBC or ABC. Nothing in the Times or the Washington Post—in fact, the Post’s top headline is “Harris’s message has been clear, but Biden’s blunders still haunt her” because Biden stumbled over his words and the media immediately had a collective coronary at the appearance of Biden saying Donald Trump’s voters are garbage.
Two weeks ago, Trump was here in Detroit, days after the town hall in which he went into DJ mode and requested songs for forty minutes when he was supposed to take questions from attendees. He proceeded to do this.
Imagine being on stage right there, cheering for a man you want to be president, and his brain is just not in the building. Sixteen minutes of just staring into space, slowly pacing around, supposedly because he was waiting for a new microphone. He didn’t talk to anyone, shake hands, act like a normal person, just stared off vacantly. Did the media cover it? Outside of the Detroit Free Press and a west Michigan Fox affiliate, nope.
There are so many examples of this, and none of them draw the sustained, breathless coverage that Joe Biden got after his terrible debate performance. Biden was hounded until he dropped out. Trump rambles on during his interviews and speeches, showing no linguistic coherence or ability to stay on topic, and the media cleans it up. They’ll read his social media posts like this and remove the inflammatory information in their writeups. The below post was read aloud at a recent North Carolina rally. The local news headline? “At ILM rally, Trump promises reduced costs, “happy” women, and culture war victories.”
Last month, he posted this rant about Pennsylvania early voting…
…and followed with this allegation yesterday that “Pennsylvania is cheating” in early voting, which is just more priming of the pump to stage another January 6th insurrection if he loses. Headline? “As Trump Sows Doubt on Pennsylvania Voting, Officials Say the System Is Working.”
This post during the DNC…
This disgusting misogynistic post about Vice President Harris was framed as, “Trump Reposts Crude Sexual Remark About Harris on Truth Social:
Though the former president has a history of making crass insults about opponents, the reposts signal his willingness to continue to shatter longstanding political norms.”
This behavior would get you fired from any corporation in America. But here, it’s just “shattering longstanding political norms.” Everything he does is toned down by the media, and while it’s easy to be exhausted by the man and his behavior (God knows it’s why I’m astonished anyone wants to elect him again!), the fact is that this is beyond not being normal. It is making the immoral, the illegal, and the disgusting actions of Donald Trump and his following acceptable. It does not plainly state the obvious for fear of being attacked as partisan, but when one side repeatedly acts in a way that is contrary to any standard of decency, morality, or the law itself, then the facts and the truth are going to favor the opposite side. One cannot simply “both sides” every story, every occurrence, every speech, every action.
To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, Thirteen Days, “Sometimes there is only one right choice, and you thank God when it's so clear.” History shows us that using the “both sides” framing can be disastrously wrong. This New York Times piece will live in my head forever.
That was 102 years ago. The anti-Semitism was downplayed as a rhetorical phrase to draw in followers. Twenty years later, the extermination of six million Jews began en masse. When Trump promises mass deportations and deploying the military on American soil to go after critics, he means that, so framing his stated intent to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (a law passed by the Federalists at the behest of President John Adams, who was enraged by criticism in the newspapers) to conduct his mass deportations and build concentration camps deserves so much more than these milquetoast descriptions:
“Trump amplifies falsehoods about immigrants in closing appeal”
“Trump Rally in Aurora, Colo., Is Marked by Nativist Attacks.”
These aren’t “nativist attacks" or “falsehoods” — “falsehoods” is probably the most abused word in the English language after eight years of The New York Times stretching it like Gumby to avoid saying lies. This is fascism, using a law that was last deployed to lock up Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps during World War II. The idea that it would only be used on illegal immigrants when Trump repeatedly raises the alleged number of illegal immigrants in this country well beyond the realm of possibility is fatuous. When you combine that with his promises to lock up critics of teh Supreme Court, it’s clear that he’ll utilize that law to mean whatever he wants it to mean, and the problem is that the only barrier would be the refusal of those given the power to not wield it. After witnessing the behavior of police under his first presidency, and the Supreme Court’s unprecedented grant of immunity to him, is it even plausible to argue anything else?
The failure of news media, from editors and headline writers to [some] reporters, to frame these words and actions as what they are and what they mean is gross negligence. They elevated Donald Trump through their constant focus on his rallies and speeches in 2016, made him the central character, and treated him as an amusement while subjecting Hillary Clinton to antagonistic and hostile coverage. They fueled his rise, and now, with his clear cognitive decline and untethered emotional state plain as day to anyone who watches a full rally or interview he partakes in, they refuse to state the truth. They water it down. They clean it up. They make him look normal, when he is abnormal and a danger to our very freedom.
Truth takes a side. Failing to tell it is also taking a side.
Yes!