By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling with Florida Correspondent Jenny Herk
This week in the wilds of Florida the Republican candidate for President, who staged a violent coup to perpetuate himself in power in 2021 and said he would be a dictator for a day if elected made another promise to his usual audience of hard-right self-proclaimed Christian bigots:
Trump: You have to get out and vote. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four years, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.. In four years, you won’t have to vote again. pic.twitter.com/DBGcBr3Wht
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 27, 2024
You won't have to vote again, because he'll install a Christian extremist theocracy. That's what he meant, right?
In its early editions, the paper of record assured its readers that he just meant that Christian extremists would get everything they ever wanted from his administration so they wouldn't need to vote any more.
At the end of his speech, Mr. Trump urged the religious crowd to vote in November, suggesting that if elected he would address their concerns sufficiently enough that they would no longer need to be politically active.
Somehow by 11 a.m., the paper of record saw fit to revise the record:
Some argued that it was a threat that the 2024 election could be the nation’s last if he were to win and claimed it was further evidence of an authoritarian, anti-democratic bent he has displayed throughout his political candidacy.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify Mr. Trump’s intent.
Why would they? It was clear. Let's remind ourselves about the Tangerine-Faced Felon's commitment to ending democracy:
That's gotta be right, because the New York Times told us so, last Sunday.
With the stakes this high, you'd think that all campaign coverage would focus on the ongoing threat to America and democracy posed by the Tangerine-Faced Felon.
Not so much.
Instead, the Times, and its supposed competitors, can't resist the temptation to cover the campaign not as the last chance for democracy but as riveting reality entertainment, except that this time the prize isn't a fake marriage:
Really, we don't know. We know it's been a through-line of Times coverage of the Tangerine-Faced Rapist since 2015. This trivialization of fascism as a carnival act helps normalize it and blunts the force of the threat.
Here''s what the Times wrote about the appalling lie-filled post-convention performance of the newly-minted Republican ticket:
In his 12-minute solo set, Mr. Vance showed he understood the arrangement. While he flicked at his rags-to-riches story, he talked most effusively about Mr. Trump and how he has the most splendid judgment of any politician ever. In a pale imitation of the master, he trash-talked the press, and the crowd booed on cue.
When it was time to bring out the headliner, Mr. Vance, who at 39 is younger than most of Mr. Trump’s children, said: “Come on out, sir!”
Being Mr. Trump’s running mate is dangerous business. The last one, Mike Pence, ended up the target of death threats and mockery, and ultimately landed in political exile. The trick to lasting affection in Mr. Trump’s orbit is unwavering deference. The former president doesn’t share the spotlight.
It's not just the political hacks who cover Trump as an entertainer rather than as a corrupt disloyal threat to America. It's also the extremely witty columnists who interrupt their profiles of real celebrities to write stuff like this:
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| Entertainment reporter Maureen Dowd |
Here's why the Trump campaign is wicked fun:
I watched Donald Trump in New York for decades, as a bachelor swanning, a party fixture mingling, a master of bling and bluster....
So I can assure you of two things. No one is more shocked at how far, how fast, Trump has come than Trump.
Watching him morph into a pol in real time and wriggle away from the junior-varsity G.O.P. chuckleheads trying to tackle him is hypnotic. He’s like the blond alien in the 1995 movie “Species,” who mutates from ova to adult in months, regenerating and reconfiguring at warp speed to escape the establishment, kill everyone in sight and eliminate the human race.
Despite years of drivel like this, punctuated with attacks on Hillary as too political and Obama as too uppity, she still has her op-ed sinecure, where she slays irony with gems like telling Joe Biden he should realize he's too old and tired to go on.
Nor are the Times's competitors doing much better. The Washington Post finds Trump's performances to be non-stop laff riots. His insane lies about being electrocuted by a battery-powered boat (not possible) while sharks circled is retold not as evidence of his cognitive decline and unfitness for office but as a crowd-pleasing act, like Abbott & Costello's “Who's on First?”
The riff has all the hallmarks of a classic Trumpian yarn — full of fabrication, riddled with illogic, defying the laws of physics and, by turns, rambling and hyperbolic, humorous and head-scratching.
It is a whale of a tale, and listeners could be forgiven for thinking they’re going to need a bigger boat to handle all of the exaggerations and flights of fancy.
Why does the media cover the twilight of democracy as entertainment? Perhaps it's because that's how reporters perceive it, according to this too-candid piece in Washington Post Style:
If the public’s interest in the race was low at the outset, correspondents said, it was because Americans had already made up their minds about Trump and Biden. Now that dynamic has changed.
“I do think Americans are engaged in a different kind of way,” Bruce said, citing the energy level at a Harris rally she attended in Milwaukee.
“To those of us who are political junkies and love covering campaigns, this is really fun.”
Fun.
The focus on the campaign as entertainment did in Hillary Clinton's campaign, in what we now realize was the most fateful election of our lifetime. At the third debate, she raised the important issue of whether the Tangerine-Faced Felon was in cahoots with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as suggested by the torrent of Russian disinformation and Trump's solicitation of more of the same.
When she accused Trump, correctly, of being “Putin's puppet,” Trump with the fourth-grader's instinct for the brilliant riposte came back with I'm-rubber-you're-glue: “You're the puppet.”
Instead of looking into the issue of Trump's collusion with Russian election interference, the media covered it as if it were all wrestling trash talk:
She mocked him. After Mr. Trump said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had “no respect” for her, Mrs. Clinton slyly posited why Mr. Putin seemingly preferred Mr. Trump: “He’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States,” she said.
In the third and final presidential debate, Mrs. Clinton outmaneuvered Mr. Trump with a surprising new approach: his.
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| As long as it's entertaining, who cares if it's fixed? |
....When Mrs. Clinton called him a puppet of Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump offered a limp interruption.
“No puppet. No puppet,” he said. “You’re the puppet,” he added, emptily. He never explained what he might have meant.
Too bad the Times didn't bother to explain what she meant either and why it might be important, as indeed it was and is.
The irony is that while supposedly serious reporters cover the fight for our country as entertainment, entertainers are supplying the trenchant observations that elude our media hacks. We now rely on Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Seth Meyers for sounding the alarm loud and clear, while our media geniuses tell tales of horse-races and circuses.
Those wits are funny in the sense that they make us laugh (and cry). The media's preoccupation with the entertainment value of this election isn't funny at all. It's sad and weird and scary.
It's great that the media is having fun, fun, fun. But unlike the girl with Daddy's T-bird, their fun will be over if the Tangerine-Faced Felon is elected and Trump's Supreme Court, as threatened by Long Dong Thomas, overrules New York Times v. Sullivan, thus permitting any state in this online era to outlaw a free press.
Our media bloviators may be oblivious, but the end of freedom of speech in America would be no fun for anyone.
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