MARGARET SULLIVAN INADVERTENTLY DEMONSTRATES THAT EVEN A BETTER PRESS COULDN'T SAVE US FROM TRUMP

Margaret Sullivan, the former New York Times public editor and Washington Post media columnist, is alarmed by the media coverage of a speech Donald Trump delivered over the weekend. She faults the press for not doing a better job of reporting on Trump. Among the ways the press has failed, according to Sullivan:

The use of neutral language. If you merely read about Donald Trump’s deeply offensive rally this weekend in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, you probably thought it was about immigration. And about Trump up to his usual tricks of disparaging his rivals.

Here the lead of the report from Axios, for example:

“Former President Trump, in a self-described ‘dark speech,’ told a rally in Wisconsin yesterday that his opponent, Vice President Harris, is “mentally impaired’ and “mentally disabled.’”

Axios, which favors bullet points and boldface help for the tuned-out, let us know “Why It Matters”: “Even for Trump, it was weird, nasty and nonsensical — when he needed to be swaying ‘national security moms’ and other undecideds.”

Or here’s the top paragraph of the Washington Post report: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized Vice President Harris’s mental capacity Saturday, falsely claiming she was born ‘mentally impaired’ and comparing her actions to that of a ‘mentally disabled person.’ The remarks prompted criticism from advocates for people with disabilities.”

Here’s the Associated Press’s headline: “Trump lists his grievances in a Wisconsin speech intended to link Harris to illegal immigration.”

At this point, you'd expect Sullivan to suggest the kind of language the media should be using to describe the speech. But she doesn't. She merely tells her readers to watch a clip of it:

But if you watched the speech, or even snippets of it, you saw something quite different — an absolutely ugly and brutal attack on Kamala Harris, full of lies and racist misogyny. In case you missed it, watch a bit of it here.



Somehow, “the remarks prompted criticism from advocates for people with disabilities” just does not get the job done. Nor does “lists his grievances.”

Nor does Bloomberg’s news alert: “Donald Trump sharpened his criticism on border security in a swing-state visit, playing up a political vulnerability for Kamala Harris.” Is that really what happened here?

So what did happen here? Sullivan says that the media fails in its duty to tell us, but then she fails in her duty to tell us.

I don't mean to pick on Margaret Sullivan. I think the fact that even she can't find the words to explain what's so horrifying about this suggests that maybe there aren't any words -- or to be more precise, maybe there aren't words that can convey what's so horrifying about this to people who've watched Trump for the past nine years and still aren't horrified.

Calling a political opponent "mentally impaired" and "mentally disabled" ought to be a very bad look for any candidate, and it should be self-evidently bad for reasons Joe Scarborough noted this morning:

“If [Harris] were so quote stupid, if she were so quote mentally impaired, if she were quote so mentally disabled, why did she destroy him in a debate for 90 minutes, humiliate him, and beat him so badly that he refuses to even debate her on Fox News?”

“That’s question number one,” he continued. “And if she’s had this mental condition from birth, then why did he give her thousands of dollars in 2014 for her political campaign when she was running for the United States Senate?”

But it's unsuitable language for any candidate to use -- except it isn't anymore, because talk radio and Fox News coarsened the political culture, in lockstep with Republican politicians from Newt Gingrich on, and now there's a large percentage of the voting population for whom there's nothing a Republican can say that will lead to a withdrawal of support, except perhaps a kind word about a Democrat.

And for many of the rest of us, Trump's demeaning, bigoted language -- Trump thinks all Black people are stupid, which is why his insults are taking this form -- is just an inescapable fact of American life, like gun violence and medical debt, something that clearly could be alleviated but never will be alleviated. You can never find the right words to say how unfit Trump is to serve because there will always be enough voters who think he actually is fit to put him within reach of 270 electoral votes.

Of course the press coverage of Trump and Harris could be improved. The media is making Harris jump through hoops, demanding more policy details and then speculating that the policies she released in response to these demands might be too wonky to impress voters.

The NYT wants details! No, no, that’s too many details.

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— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) September 26, 2024 at 7:03 PM

I'm not sure what else the press can do about Donald Trump's rage and ignorance besides report his words and fact-check his lies. We heard what he and his running mate said about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. The press has debunked the lies. Public officials in the state have debunked the lies. A debate moderator debunked the key lie in real time. And Trump hasn't lost a single point in the polls as a result.

Trump can't be discredited any more than he already has been. Our only recourse is a large turnout by people who are neither impressed by his rhetoric nor numbed by it.