Just putting it here, but this probably belongs in some 'media is X' thread. (it's a serious take and a very good read) Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump? https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trump_incoherent_media_sanewashing.php Columbia Journalism Review September 9, 2024 By Jon Allsop There’s a hot new term doing the rounds among media critics: “sanewashing.” The term itself actually isn’t new, and it wasn’t born in media-criticism circles, per se; according to Urban Dictionary, it was coined in 2020 on a Reddit page for neoliberals (which Linda Kinstler wrote about recently for CJR), and meant “attempting to downplay a person or idea’s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public.” (It was deployed in discussions around, for example, “defunding the police.”) Recently, though, various observers have applied the term to media coverage of Donald Trump. Aaron Rupar, a journalist who is very active on X, has been credited with coining “sanewashing” in this specific context, but the term appeared to really blow up last week, after Parker Molloy wrote a column about it in The New Republic. (She expanded on the idea as a guest on the podcast Some More News.) The word has since been picked up by media bigwigs including Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow, and appeared in outlets from Ireland to India. As applied to Trump, the idea is that major mainstream news outlets are routinely taking his incoherent, highly abnormal rants—be they on social media or at in-person events—and selectively quoting from them to emphasize lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing. As I see it, newsroom policies discouraging remote diagnoses of mental health are generally to be followed, even if they shouldn’t curb any and all discussion in this area; also, Trump does have (or at least is associated with) policies that merit scrutiny, however incoherently he articulates them, and—as even some critics acknowledge—there has been at least some sharp recent coverage centering the incoherence. The idea that “the media” as a whole has ignored Trump’s fitness for office is very hard to sustain. Nonetheless, I find the sanewashing criticism persuasive, on the whole. Too often, major outlets clean up Trump’s language—especially in shorter formats, like headlines and ledes—to the point where it barely resembles what he actually said. And, if the press hasn’t ignored Trump’s fitness, Sargent made a compelling case, in his column, that it hasn’t subjected his age and condition to anything like the level of focused scrutiny that was applied to President Biden on such grounds. (Sargent deftly illustrated this by swapping Trump’s name into real headlines about Biden.) As I wrote after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June, Trump was incoherent that night, too, but seemed to get away with it because he showed more energy. If journalists are sometimes sanewashing Trump, why are they doing it? Critics including Molloy and Barnicle have suggested that it has something to do with that old desire to project a false equivalence, or “balance,” between the two leading candidates. Goldberg blamed a “bias toward coherence,” whereby Trump benefits from journalists’ classic conception of their role as being to make sense of the world around them. (“It works like this: Trump sounds nuts, but he can’t be nuts, because he’s the presumptive nominee for president of a major party,” Goldberg wrote.) There are other possible explanations. Could it be that elite journalists think so little of Trump that they effectively condescend to him by cleaning up his speech? Do they think that picking meaning out of his word salads makes them sound clever or original? Is he held to a lower standard than his opponents because the latter are expected to speak in full sentences and he never has been? Is Trump sounding incoherent simply old news at this point, in an industry that prizes novelty? Whichever it is—and all these explanations could, theoretically, be in play at the same time—it’s worth noting that the sanewashing phenomenon figures into a debate that is almost as old as Trump’s political career itself, and legitimately thorny: whether to expose news consumers more to his rhetoric, or shut it out. Proponents of the former approach have argued that broadcasting Trump’s rallies live, for example, offers an unvarnished window onto his incoherence; proponents of the latter have argued that the first approach exposes audiences to unchecked lies and gives Trump free airtime. I wrote about this debate earlier in the year and concluded that it has been so circular because there isn’t really a satisfying answer—it felt true to me that many people have become desensitized to how Trump talks, but also that journalists cannot expect people to consume streams of raw information all the time. ....
It's so strange this is a talking point now. He's been largely incoherent and BSing answers for at least a decade. The "nuclear" quote was in 2016.
Donald Trump is once again trying to steer the Republican Party from the backseat. On Tuesday, the Republican presidential nominee decided to plant himself in the middle of the debate over funding the government, making it that much harder for House Speaker Mike Johnson to rally his caucus behind a six-month continuing resolution to avert a shutdown in three weeks. At the crux of the issue is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility—or SAVE—Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship in order to vote. “If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday afternoon. “THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN—CLOSE IT DOWN!!!” Trump regularly (and baselessly) insists that Democrats are letting undocumented immigrants vote in an attempt to rig the election. This latest claim comes as he struggles to attract new voters, while his presidential opponent Kamala Harris has seen a steady rise in the polls. It is, of course, already illegal and impossible for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections. But adding a proof of citizenship requirement to the stopgap funding measure would restrict voter access in less resourced regions of the country, and add another barrier to fulfilling the quintessential American ideal of a free and fair democracy. Johnson, meanwhile, is already on the verge of losing the funding measure: currently, the conservative leader is facing six “no” votes, while he can only afford to lose the votes of four House Republicans. But it’s not the first time that Trump has tried to seed division in the American legislative system from the campaign trail. Earlier this year, the former president had a heavy hand in coercing Republicans to tank a bipartisan border deal so that he could overinflate concerns about immigration and run on the issue.
The new maga gop is nothing more than a bunch of old white men who became cucks to serve their leader, yet they preach that masculine men need to take this country back.......................ummmmmmmm, ya`ll are doing it wrong, get off your knees, wipe the j*zz off your chin and learn to stand up like a man.....................I`m looking at you cuck cruz, cuck rubio, cuck jordan
This is what you call wasteful, ineffective, and stupid government—threatening a government shutdown over a bill whose only purpose is politicking. You can also thank Musk for pushing the fake news about illegal votes in federal elections, fooling enough Republicans to push for the SAVE Act.
From the Rolling Stone magazine article ... Former President Donald Trump reportedly wanted to kill drug dealers and gang members in mass executions that would be a spectacle aimed at demonstrating his power. Sources tell Rolling Stone that Trump would regularly make angry demands about using either firing squads or gallows to mass-execute gang members in a way that would see "bodies pile up in the streets." “F---ing kill them all,” Trump would say, according to Rolling Stone's sources. “An eye for an eye.” The former president also referenced the way authoritarian regimes dealt with drug dealers by saying, "Other countries do it all the time." “He had a particular affinity for the firing squad,” one former Trump administration official told the publication. The report goes on to detail exactly why Trump was not successful in his endeavors. "That mass executions were not a feature of Trump’s term is a credit to the American justice system and the more sober-minded government officials who were unwilling to be complicit in his mad schemes," reports Rolling Stone. "These aides and advisers typically put the president off, making vague promises to 'look into' the idea, long enough to let Trump’s tyrannical tantrum blow over." However, the publication warns that guardrail is far less likely to hold in a second term. "A second administration will not feature advisers in the mold of former Chief of Staff John Kelly, or Defense Secretary Mark Esper — establishment Republicans with a stake in keeping Trump constitutionally in bounds," the report notes.
John Kelly and Mark Esper have said he doesn’t understand and is a threat to the Constitution. I don’t know if Harris will bring this up tonight but in hope she does point out how so many of those who’ve served in his administration say he’s unfit to hold office.
Given that she literally has an ad with former Trump officials saying he’s unfit, there’s a good chance she will.
Guess who Trump brought along with him to the event? Laura Loomer, the 9/11 conspiracy theorist. She's the right wing radical who shared a video on Twitter last year that claimed the terrorist attack was an inside job. Then she shared her own belief with it that the plane hijackings and resulting terrors were merely a ploy to allow the US government to surveil Americans moving forward. She's the kind of nutjob Trump would give a position to if elected. I don't doubt it one bit. The thing is, even if people are die hard Republicans, they should realize that voting for Trump is a mistake. It's better to weed out the MAGA crazies, and start fresh than to let a crazy power hungry felon like Trump turn our Democracy into a Dictatorship Trump radicalized system full of hate spewing radicals hellbent on retribution, division, with blind loyalty to a leader, and not our constitution or country. He will lie to the people, and start threatening media outlets who dare to tell the news truthfully. I have no doubt he would be more Hitler like in a second term by controlling the media and the people by means we've never seen before. If he gets his full immunity, it's scary to think how far he would go with the military, police, and National guard as his attack dogs. He will die trying, even from his death bed or a prison cell as a leader.
The father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by an immigrant from Haiti collided with his school bus has asked Donald Trump and JD Vance to stop using his son’s name for “political gain”. During a city commission meeting on Tuesday in Springfield, Ohio, Nathan Clark, the father of Aiden Clark, addressed the forum alongside his wife, Danielle. Speaking at the meeting, Clark said: “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,” the Springfield News-Sun reports. Clark went on to list politicians including Trump and Vance, who he said have been using his son’s name for “political gain”. “Bernie Moreno [the Ohio Republican senate candidate], Chip Roy [the Texas Republican representative], JD Vance and Donald Trump… have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain. This needs to stop now. They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio,” said Clark. “I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies. To clear the air, my son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti. This tragedy has been all over this community, the state and even the nation. But don’t spin this towards hate,” he continued. Clark went on to say: “Did you know that one of the worst feelings in the world is to not be able to protect your child? Even worse, we can’t protect his memory when he’s gone. Please stop the hate.” Clark’s comments come after the Trump campaign and Vance mentioned Aiden Clark’s death earlier this week amid hateful and baseless rumors surrounding the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield. In a post on X on Tuesday, Vance alluded to Clark’s death by saying a “child was murdered by a Haitian migrant” on X. In the same post, Vance also repeated the falsehoods surrounding Haitian immigrants eating local pets – a rumor brought up again by Trump during Tuesday’s debate with Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, the Trump War Room, an X account used by the Trump campaign, also mentioned Aiden Clark, accusing Harris of refusing to say his name. Aiden Clark died last August when the school bus he was riding in collided with a minivan driven by 36-year old Hermanio Joseph, a Haitian father of four children. More than 20 other students were injured in the collision and Joseph was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide. In May, Joseph was sentenced to nine to 13.5 years in prison.
Meanwhile the Texas rich white teen, Ethan Couch, who killed 4 people driving with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit in Texas only got 10 years probation, and you never heard Republicans screaming in outrage and calling him a murderer. Even after violating probation and fleeing to Mexico he was only ordered to serve 720 days in jail for violating his probation -- 180 days for each victim. Skin color and race matter most when Republicans decide which crimes to get outraged about most.
