In the last 10 days, former president Donald Trump has:
Written that outgoing leader of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, “deserved DEATH” for assuring China that Trump wasn’t going to launch a post-election attack in 2021 in order to burn down the house on the way out the door
Told an adoring crowd in Anaheim, California that shoplifters should be shot
Signaled to his supporters that the clerk who works for the judge (Arthur Engoron) in his New York civil trial should be a target
Written that Judge Engoron is a “Trump-hating judge” who is “run by the Democrats”
Called New York Attorney General Leticia James a “monster” who is “grossly incompetent,” while urging his supporters to “go after” her
Asserted that if he submits fraudulent numbers that are lower than reality, “they’re not fraud”
Mocked Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, for almost being killed when an intruder held him hostage in his home
Compared people who don’t like him to “locusts”
Said he would punish Democratic attorneys general
Suggested that the flooding in New York could stop forest fires
Then there’s this:
“If it’s after the 9th month and the baby was born you put the baby aside.
You discuss with the mother and if the mother doesn’t want the baby we execute the baby.
This is part of their thing.”
During this same timeframe, Joe Biden:
“What?!” the headlines screamed. “Sneakers!? Sneakers come from the word, ‘sneaky,’ and Biden wearing sneakers means he is hiding something. Like being old. Old people wear sneakers so they won’t fall. Biden is afraid of falling. This is a MAJOR ISSUE.”
That wasn’t all Biden did. He also touted the amazing jobs numbers that came out this week, which spawned “fawning” headlines like this from The New York Times:
And this:
For headline writers and many of the journalists who write the stories, good news is actually bad news. If Biden is responsible for it.
Jeremy Slevin, one of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s staffers, pointed out the hypocrisy by comparing CNN’s headline from this week to their headline in 2018 over the jobs report. In 2018, the job growth wasn’t nearly as high as it is now, by the way, but CNN gives Trump some credit. Now, they just HAVE to point out how the good news under Biden really has “hidden costs.”
I’m reminded of a joke that was popular in the 1990s:
Bill Clinton was hosting a state visit by Pope John Paul II. Someone thought it would be a great photo op to put them in a rowboat in the middle of the lake at Camp David. As photographers were clicking away, a slight gust came up and blew the Pontiff’s Mitre off his head, into the water a few feet away. Everyone gasped. But Clinton was cool. He stood up, stepped over the rowboat, walked the five feet to the hat, picked it up and got back in. The press was in an uproar. The next day (yes, the next day because this was the 1990s) the headlines all read, “Clinton Can’t Swim.”
Now, I’m not saying Clinton was Jesus. I have problems with his legacy as president, on many different levels. But you get the point of the joke. It’s not just Clinton. It’s all Democratic presidents.
Remember when Obama wore a tan suit?
More people probably remember that suit than the fact that Obama blindly hired Tim Geithner and Larry Summers as his two top economics officials. Geithner and Summers created the economic instruments that made the economy come crashing down in 2008.
Obama also told Wall Street CEOs, not long after he got in office, that he wanted to work with them, not punish them.
Most people don’t remember the Cabinet appointments because journalists at the time did not report them with a critical eye. Geithner and Summers were “famous economists,” and journalists who had come of age during Reagan were enveloped in the idea that Reaganonics was the only economic system. It was the soup they swam in, and they saw nothing else.
Many still don’t.
The Obama/Wall Street CEO conversation wasn’t reported until 2011, when Ron Suskind wrote his book, “Confidence Men.”
Obama gave no consequences to Wall Street for ruining people’s lives. Because of Geithner and Summers. He engineered a slow recovery that allowed the Tea Party to take hold, and for state governments to turn red - in a redistricting year. Because of Geithner and Summers.
Those decisions still haunt us. Much more than his damned tan suit.
But we remember the tan suit. Not his bad economic choices.
Then again, if he had made good economic choices, journalists would have found a way to call them bad.
We Just Did a Story on That
One of the things we have learned from Trump is that when you repeat something over and over, people believe that it’s true. Even if - as what most of Trump says - it isn’t.
It’s called the Illusory Truth Effect, and I will write more about it at a later time.
Trump and the right-wing ecosystem are really good at repetition. Journalists are not.
Actually, journalists hate repetition.
Sure, we tend to come out with the same stories at the same time. For some reason, which has always alluded me, we call that “competition.”
But we tend, as individual organizations, not to want to tell you what horrible and undemocratic thing Trump said today, and then tell you the horrible and undemocratic thing he says tomorrow.
“We already did that story,” our editors say.
This presents a problem: if a major figure lies every day, but the news media doesn’t want to do stories that call out his lies every day, then the lies get repeated and the truth does not.
And our allegiance as journalists is to the truth. Or, it should be.
The video and audio versions of this newsletter will be out every Wednesday.
Physician, heal thyself