Media posts

From the story:

For nearly a century, Democratic and Republican presidents alike have sought to amass more power, particularly to conduct foreign policy and military operations, and with a few exceptions, succeeded in chipping away at congressional influence. What is different now is the degree of disdain Mr. Trump has shown for Congress — and the willingness of G.O.P. leaders to defer to him even when it means undercutting their coequal branch of government.

“That is the big story here — not that a president is trying to push the bounds of their authority, because our system was designed with that in mind,” Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, said in an interview. “The true story is that Republicans in Congress have capitulated and are not pushing back to assert authority.”

Again, about time. I'm beginning to get the feeling that the Times is gradually waking up, and that if American democracy should end it'll at least be reported.

Credit where it's due. I've complained about the Times and their sanewashing for years, but this one really does get at the idiocy of what Trump and the GOP are attempting. 

Article here. At least JB Pritzker keeps calling them out.

And if you don't think this is wrong, what Trump wants, putting politics ahead of science yet again, and not even politics but his own stupid balloonish buffoonish ego, putting that ahead of the science that keeps us all safe? If you don't think that's WRONG? Jesus, dude, get your head examined.

Trump and Epstein hung together before Epstein hung separately.

I find it amazingly depressing that the president of the United States reneged on a campaign promise to release the “Epstein List,” which supposedly details the clients of the man charged with international and underage sex-trafficking back in 2019 (and who hung himself in his prison cell, or was killed in his prison cell, that same year); and then aftering hearing a roar of disapproval from his base, this same president, the current U.S. president, by the way, claimed that two past U.S. presidents, a past U.S. secretary of state and presidential nominee, and a former FBI director, among others, created the list in the first place. They faked it.

The reneging isn't the thing that's amazingly depressing, of course. Trump reneges daily, hourly, probably by the minute. What's awful is that it's not more of a story in the legit media. The New York Times, to name one band of idiots, hasn't mentioned it in its news coverage. It's on the Opinions page but not in the news. Because, one assumes, they don't considered it “news.”

Think of that. Again: the current U.S. president, in a flailing post on his own social media site, is accusing past U.S. presidents of manufacturing a document that details sex trafficking. How is that not news?

Add in the fact that this current U.S. president, Donald J. Dumpypants, knew the Epstein in question. They hung together. Before Epstein hung separately.

This is what Trump wrote on Saturday: 

“For years, it's Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 'Intelligence' Agents, 'THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,' and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called 'friends' are playing right into their hands. Why didn't these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files?

”If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn't they use it? They haven't even given up on the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Files. No matter how much success we have had, securing the Border, deporting Criminals, fixing the Economy, Energy Dominance, a Safer World where Iran will not have Nuclear Weapons, it's never enough for some people. We are about to achieve more in 6 months than any other Administration has achieved in over 100 years, and we have so much more to do. We are saving our Country and, MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, which will continue to be our complete PRIORITY.“

I love his ”It's never enough for some people“ comment, as if he's slaving on our behalf 24/7 rather than out on the golf course again or hocking perfumes and what have yous. I particularly like that the ”some people" he's annoyed with is his base. 

The president of the United States showed up at West Point today to give a stirring commencement address to its graduates. Among the things he said:

He ended up gettting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say trophy wife? I guess we could say a trophy wife. It didn't work out too well. But it didn't, it doesn't work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives, it doesn't work out. But it made him happy for a little while at least. But he found a new wife. He sold his little boat and he got a big yacht. He had one of the biggest yachts anywhere in the world. He moved for a time to Monte Carlo and he led the good life. And time went by and he got ... bored. Fifteen years later, the company that he sold to called him and they said, the housing business is not for us. You have to understand, when Bill Levitt was hot, when he had momentum, he'd go to the job sites every night. He'd pick up every loose nail, he'd pick up every scrap of wood. If there was a bolt or a screw laying on the ground, he'd pick it up and he'd use it the next day and in putting together a house.

Meanwhile, the White House is refusing to release a transcript of the president's remarks. Meanwhile, the New York Times, the self-appointed paper of record, doesn't mention any of this in its coverage of the speech. Anywhere. This was their first hed:

 Then they went, “Nah, we can do better,” and came up with this:

Elsewhere in the paper of record, they're taking Democrats to task for hiding Joe Biden's cognitive decline during his final year in office. 

It's almost 100 days into Trump's second term. What's your read on that milestone?

That's what NPR's Lauren Freyer asked NPR's White House correspondent Asma Khalid. Before I give her answer, think about what your answer would be. Particularly if you framed it by saying “Two things stand out to me”? What would be your two things? Maybe roiling entire economic systems with his tariff war? Maybe shipping undesirables and innocents into foreign prisons without due process and in direction violation of court orders? Attacking law firms with executive orders as a means of getting them to fall in line? Attacking universities the same? Giving the keys of our government to Elon and the DOGE-bags? Floating an unconstitutional third term?  

This is what NPR's White House correspondent Asma Khalid said: 

Two things stand out to me. And the first is that this term feels fundamentally different than the president's first term. He has been acting more swiftly, more boldly, somewhat more agressively than his first term, to enact sweeping change: you look at shrinking government, dismantling agencies, even frankly trying to change the economic system with his tariffs—this is all bigger than what he did the first go-round. 

But the other thing that I think is also very important, is that when you talk about this massive change, it's important to note that, at this point in time, the president's approval rating, as he's reaching his 100-day milestone, is falling, and it is looking lower than other presidents at this point—including, frankly, President Trump himself in his first term. So I will be keen to keep an eye on what the next 100 days look like and how he tries to navigate change—as he moves from this era of unilateral action to working with Congress more. 

Sigh.

OK, let's break down some of this. Look at the adverbs in that first graf: swiftly, boldly, agressively. They seem kind of positive, don't they? Those aren't negative words. We admire those words. We admire people who embody those qualities. And if the word is maybe more mixed, maybe like “aggresively,” hey, let's temper it with a “somewhat.” He's just been acting somehwat more aggressively. Because we don't want people to think we're saying anything negative here. About a president? Lord, no. And then, whoops, despite all those positive words we just trotted out to describe this guy, somehow, his actions aren't that popular. Huh. We don't know why, we're just reporters. This is just our job. We can't begin to break it down for you or give you insight. We don't know. All we know is that—somehow—swift, bold and aggressive isn't popular. You'll have to figure out the rest.

Has there ever been more useless reporting in the history of reporting?

I mean, at least FOX News has the temerity to propagandize. They take a stand, and, sure, it's an awful stand, an un-American stand, one designed to divide, but it's a stand. You might even call it bold and aggressive. 

This? This is fucking worthless.

And what's with “as he moves from this era of unilateral action to working with Congress more”? Where did that come from? What is it based on? Hopes? Dreams? The opposite of everything he's ever indicated about how he does business? Seriously lady, if this is your take on the worst 100 days of any American president ever, I don't give a shit what you think the next 100 days might bring.

NPR, you will be the death of me. Or the country. 

Shoutout to the headline writers at The Toronto Star. This is brilliant. Or at least a breath of fresh air.

Not a good day today. Or yesterday. Or the last five days. Or year. Or century, really.

Not sure when I began to panic with how Trump's tariffs were roiling the stock market. Might've been when the Dow plunged and he went, “Yeah, that's right, that's what I'm doing!” First term, it felt like he viewed Dow Jones like it was TV ratings or something, a reflection on him, and now not so much. Made me feel like the ant in the ant and grasshopper fable, except at the end, when the ant has spent his lifetime working to provide for the winter, a BIG FUCKING DOOFUS comes along and smooshes everything. 

Forbes, yesterday:

The Dow has lost more than 6% since the tariff announcement was made Wednesday afternoon. The shocker is that it hasn't lost more. Entire life savings will be lost—maybe mine—all because ... why? So many reasons. A convicted felon kept getting his rough edges smoothed out by the press. That's part of it. We needed more “incredibly stupid” headlines during the campaign(s). We didn't get them.

Reminder: He sank an entire football league. In AMERICA. And what did he have to say about it afterwards? It was “small potatoes.” Not to the players and their fans, certainly, but to him. Because he's a dick. That's what your business is to him, that's what your life savings are to him, that's what your life is to him: small potatoes.

I don't know what to do about any of it—if someone gives me marching orders (real marching orders, not peaceful protest marching orders), I'll march—but a place to begin, if you're The New York Times and the rest of the legit media, is to stop softpedaling the man trying to overthrow American (and Ukranian) democracy:

Jesus fuck, folks, just say he's lying, and say it in the hed: TRUMP LIES ABOUT ZELENSKY. Or: TRUMP REPEATS PUTIN'S LIES ABOUT UKRAINE. Or: TRUMP DOESN'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT UKRANIAN WAR. But whatever you do, don't make the lie the headline. The Times keeps doing that to a pathological degree, and the other side, the liars, knows they do it and take advantage. Even the “rewriting” in the sub isn't helpful. It's so ... weak. Don't be weak. Goddamnit, Times, we can't afford you to be weak. 

Everything needs to be reconfigured, because nothing is working correctly, and let's start with the Times and Post and NPR and WSJ. The world you're describing isn't the world as most of us are perceiving it. You've had 10 years to figure this out and you're just getting worse at it.

Noem's face tells us more than the New York Times lede.

What are the facts surrounding the Donald Trump rally last night outside Philadelphia?

• There were two medical emergencies in the crowd, the first 30 minutes into the Town Hall, the second shortly thereafter
• The Town Hall was suspended
• The gathering didn't disperse; instead, Trump called for music (“Hey Justin, how about a couple of really beauties, and we'll sit down and relax”) and stood on stage, listening and bobbing his head for 30 minutes

Here's how The New York Times described it. And let me highlight the areas about which I have questions:

Donald J. Trump was about 30 minutes into a town hall Monday night in suburban Philadelphia when a medical emergency in the crowd brought the questions and answers to a halt. Moments later, he tried to get back on track, when another medical incident seemed to derail things, this time for good.

And so Mr. Trump, a political candidate known for improvisational departures, made a detour. Rather than try to restart the political program, he seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.

Mr. Trump had his staff fire up his campaign playlist, standing on the stage for about half an hour and swaying to songs as his crowd slowly dwindled.

He bobbed his head through the Village People's “Y.M.C.A.,” his usual closing song. He swayed soberly to Rufus Wainwright's version of “Hallelujah,” watched a Sinead O'Connor video, rocked along to Elvis, watched the crowd during “Rich Men North of Richmond” and then, finally, left the stage to shake hands on his way out during one last song.

This used to be called “sugarcoating,” and in 2016 we called it “normalizing.” For the kids, it's “sanewashing.” But no matter what you call it, the Times is going out of its way to make odd behavior, questionable behavior, seem normal. And they only seem to do it with Donald Trump and the GOP. It goes one way. With the Dems, they hold their feet to the fire for minor missteps. With Trump, he could take a dump on the stage and the one-time Paper of Record would tell us he's a political candidate know for his earthiness. 

To the questions about the highlighted:

• Why would this derail things for good? Even later in the article, writer Michael Gold mentions that medical emergencies at Trump rallies this summer stopped nothing. “But Mr. Trump generally returns to his planned remarks after medical issues at other events. On Monday, he seemed more uncertain how to proceed.” 
• “A political candidate known for improvisational departures” is the chef's kiss of normalizing Trump's batshit ramblings.
• “He seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.” Too much “seemed” and “appeared” to be this high up in the article. But if you're going to include it, also include the later line: “he seemed more uncertain how to proceed.”

Here's the key to it all: Trump did something that confused everybody. Nobody knew how to proceed: the music guy, Gov. Kristin Noem of South Dakota, who was moderating, nor the audience. This is the third-to-last graf of the story. It should be near the top:

But after “Y.M.C.A.” ended, Mr. Trump seemed a little perplexed. “There's nobody leaving,” he said. “What's going on?” The audience cheered, and so the music kept going, as Ms. Noem stood awkwardly by, and many in the audience seemed unsure about whether the event was over.

Finally, no explanation why Gov. Noem of South Dakota was moderating an event near Philadelphia.

Saw this on social media over the weekend:

100%. Everything he says. The absolute dereliction of duty by our most respected news sources during the most dangerous time in my American lifetime is something that will not be forgiven. 

Here's the referenced NPR interview with Joe Kahn. Blather. Sure, the Times generally doesn't have to portray that “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our society,” but it should report what he says, without buffing it up, without dragging it toward the sensical; they should give it the same treatment and placement if Kamala or Biden had said something similar. Instead, it feels like there's a very low, almost nonexistent bar for Trump in Times coverage. On the stump, he could state the most atrocious things, and does, and is doing, and it rates nothing. 

This has been making the rounds as well. Kamala is called on ... what exactly? Bobbing and weaving? Because she's not as forthright as the Times demands? Because she focuses on what she wants to focus on? Meanwhile, Trump is not being called on ... what exactly? Overt racism? 

“Long-held fascination” is so awful there. “Yeah, it's just a hobby of his. Like stamp collecting.”

Margaret Sullivan has a SubStack post, “About Those New York Times Headlines,” and writes, of the “long-held fascination” headline:

The article itself got to the heart of the matter — but not until its 11th paragraph.

Trump, it noted, “has a pattern of using dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants. He has repeatedly referred to immigrants who commit crimes as 'animals.'”

And later still, it noted that Trump's insistence that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” evokes “the ideology of eugenics promulgated by Nazis in Germany and white supremacists in the United States.”

This is vile stuff. Cleaning it up so it sounds like an academic white paper is really not a responsible way to present what's happening.

I'd call it an absolute dereliction of duty. I don't know if anyone in the Trump era has disappointed me as much as The New York Times. They should be better. And they are utterly failing us.

I found this piece via that SFGate piece on how self-satisfied The New York Times is its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 presidential race. And you could sub in the 2020 race, too, or the 2016 race, or go back to 1973 and the first time they covered him, via an article on his father, and how they bought the lie and printed the lie and didn't correct the lie, because just look at him, just look at that blue-eyed boy, Mister Death.

Anyway, in that SFGate piece, there's a reference to “sanewashing,” a new term for me, that was linked to a website called the defector, and an article by Tom Scocca entitled “Where Racism Goes to Become Rhetoric.” The “where” there, well, that, too, is The New York Times, or the mainstream media generally. It's about something Scocca heard Donald Trump say that he thought was the most racist thing he'd heard any major presidential candidate—including earlier incarnations of Donald Trump—ever say. He said it to a crowd on Long Island, N.Y., about how the U.S. is being overrun by immigrants released from prisons in other countries:

“They're coming from the Congo, they're coming from Africa, they're coming from the Middle East, they're coming from all over the world—Asia! A lot of it coming from Asia. And what's happening to our country is we're just destroying the fabric of life in our country, and we're not going to take it any longer. And you got to get rid of these people.”

Scocca initially thought someone was simply exaggerating what Trump was saying, since no one was reporting on it; and when he found the speech verbatim on C-Span he dug further and discovered that Trump had been saying this exact thing for months. And no one was reporting on it simply because he'd been saying it for months. It wasn't news. When they wrote about it, they wrote to dismiss it:

The Washington Post put it into a fact-check roundup in March (“no such decline in Congo's prison population is shown in the data”); critic at large A.O. Scott of the New York Times, in a “Critic's Notebook” item reviewing Trump's speech after his criminal conviction, wrote about it knowingly, as if it were old news: “A citizen looking for campaign issues might find some boilerplate in a peroration that conjured images of Venezuela and Congo emptying their prisons and asylums onto America's streets.”

Yet the Times hadn't ever directly reported on those remarks, and it still hasn't. In its story from Nassau Coliseum, the paper wrote that Trump had “continued to stoke fear around immigration,” and then quoted only the later part of the passage: “We're just destroying the fabric of life in our country,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Democrats' immigration policies. “And we're not going to take it any longer. And you got to get rid of these people.”

But the truly telling point, which I admit I missed on first glance, is the part I've highlighted, which isn't a quote from Trump but reportage from the Times, so supposedly a fact. But it's the opposite of a fact. It's the Times doing Trump's heavy lifting for him. “What Trump was referring to,” Scocca writes, “in the literal text of his speech, was some agenda by which the United States is importing convicted criminals released from other countries' prisons. The Biden administration has no policy that does anything like what Trump was talking about.”

That said, that Times article by Michael Gold on the Long Island rally isn't bad. I like the lede:

On the day that he was originally set to return to his hometown and receive the sentence for his 34 felony convictions, former President Donald J. Trump found himself a few miles east, basking in the raucous adulation of a packed arena on Long Island.

Standing in front of thousands at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., Mr. Trump received a local hero's reception, as he drew an exaggerated depiction of a New York in decline, made false claims and hammered Democrats over crime, inflation and immigration.

Even this, though, makes you wonder. An exaggerated depiction of a New York in decline? Meaning it's only slightly in decline? Or is it not at all in decline and Donald Trump is a big fat liar?

But again, the article isn't bad: “exaggerated attacks,” “exaggerated claims,” “exaggerated depiction,” “false claims,” “falsely maintain,” “exaggerated claims,” “debunked claim,” “debunked claims,” and “misleadingly claimed.” They're so close.

It seems everyone is as sick of Times/Post/NPR coverage, particularly RE: Donald Trump, as I am. This article came through the social media transom the other day via historian Kevin Kruse (who, not for nothing, has zero fucks to give): “The New York Times is washed: SFGATE columnist Drew Magary is done with caring about the Times, and you should be, too.”

(I love including author and source in the subhed but couldn't it have used a better hed? What's washed? As in brain-? Is it new slang from the kids I have to look up? Alright, I'll look it up. And it's ... apparently short for “washed up.” Got it. Way to go, kids.)

So Magary begins with the poll numbers, and this one says that or the other, and whatever. But he gets at the heart soon enough, calling the Times, “an institution that has never met a story it couldn't water down” with “its patented strain of prestige clickbait.” Then he gives a brutal example: HOW J.D. VANCE'S COMBATIVE CONSERVATISM IS SHAPING TRUMP 2.0. Good god, that's awful, but they've been doing it for years. Remember this Rick Perry hed from 2011?

Magary is a little too chummy for me, and assumes a little too much about his reader, but he's not wrong. He writes:

“[Readers] understand that the Times has so thoroughly isolated itself from the zeitgeist that it's written itself right out of it. ... In the process, they've left the New York Times alone on its bespoke soapbox, screaming centrist nonsense into the void. I'm done listening to any of it. I'm not going back, and neither are you. The Times doesn't matter anymore, and they're the last people on Earth to realize it.”

Yep. And what a shame. 

“I've spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody's spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King, when he ... uh ... did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people—if not we had more. And they said he had a million people and I had 25,000 people. But if you look at the exact same picture, and everything's the same because the fountains, the whole thing all the way back to ... uh ... from Lincoln to Washington, and you look at it, and you look at the picture, of his crowd, my crowd, we actually had more people.”

-- Donald Trump, two days ago, in a rare press conference. All of the above was cleaned up by the mainstream media for public consumption, of course. If a Democrat slips up, they're hounded for months. This kind of B.S. by a Republican, particularly this Republican, and the MSM polishes the turd until they can see their faces in it. They're cowards. They've been cowards with Republicans since Agnew, or maybe Reagan, but they're always looking for ways to not be “the liberal media,” which they haven't been for decades and decades. They're the opposite of that. Dems get held to tight standards, while Republicans (particularly this Republican) suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations.

FURTHER READING/VIEWING:

• Tom Nichols, “The Truth About Trump's Press Conference: His obvious emotional instability is frightening, not funny,” in The Atlantic
• Lawrence O'onnell, “The Last Word,” MSNBC

Came across part of a speech he gave in Montana this past week and it's more of the same gibberish: 

“The numbers are much worse. They've let an invasion of our country happen. But I took a look. [Mimes taking a look.] And because I took that look, I mean, what are the chances of that? So I just want to thank everybody, cause, I tell you what, the level of love and compassion and all of the things that we all went through—that was a terrible thing—and we're going to be very careful. We have to be very careful.”

My kingdom for a serious media. 

“I guess we knew a lot of this, but it's jarring to hear it directly from a witness—that through all of these allegations Donald Trump has made about fake news, and about the media and lying and everything else, there was a whole system he had in place for literally the planting of fake news and the killing or the deep-sixing of correct and true news. I mean, at some point, Pecker testifies on the stand that Michael Cohen would call me and say, 'We would like you to run a negative article on a certain—let's say for argument sake—Ted Cruz. Then he, Michael Cohen, would send me information about Ted Cruz or Ben Carson or Marco Rubio, and that was the basis of our story. And then we would embellish it from there.'

”So I guess there's nothing necessarily unlawful about that. I guess there's a potential seed of a defamation or a libel claim there. But this whole machinery of the creation and dissemination of fake news against the backdrop of Donald Trump making those allegations against the mainstream media, it's a little jarring, isn't it?“

-- Preet Bharara, ”Trump Fined and Weinstein Overturned,“ The Cafe Insider Podcast. 

Completely agree. At the same time, I'm old enough to remember when ”fake news" became news. In the runup to the 2016 election, The New York Times ran several stories about how, particularly on social media sites, misleading information or fake news was being disseminated, and post-election, when we saw the real damage it had done, there was much national hand-wringing over fake news and (Mark Zuckerberg notwithstanding) a brief attempt to come to terms with it. And then Trump took ownership of the phrase. Any story that included negative inferences to him became fake news. He repeated it, over and over, and his acolytes repeated it, over and over, and that became the drumbeat, drowning out any real discussion. And now here we are. And it's a beautiful day.

But I'm glad Preet pulls back like this occasionally for a bigger picture. Not enough commentators do.