Trump spoke yesterday to the Economic Club of New York–an organization composed not of economists but of people who work in the financial sector (e.g. Wall Street). At the end of his speech, he took a few questions. The last one came from a woman who said that American families were worried about the high cost of childcare, costing as much as 20% of their income. She asked Trump what he would do to help families and what specific actions he would take.
His answer was rambling and incoherent. He never answered her question.
Lawrence O’Donnell played the full question and Trump’s answer last night. Watch at 18:00.
This is an unedited transcript of his response:
Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care is. Couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it – in this country you have to have it.
But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to — but they’ll get used to it very quickly – and it’s not gonna stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Uh, those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care.
We’re gonna have – I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about.
We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care, uh, is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.
Even though he didn’t answer

Trump has no vision for helping working families. He cannot answer a question about childcare because he has no intention of addressing it. Trump, a man with six bankruptcies, has no viable economic plan. Most economists agree that Trump’s tariffs will result in working families paying about $1600 a year for goods. This clip from a recent “Morning Joe” episode shows the devastating impact Trump’s policies would have on red states and education.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrEtbRMYu6A
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dontcha know, it’s called the “weave”
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Trump sounds like a student concocting some story about how “the dog ate his homework.”
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haaa
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Exactly. It’s “the weave”. The “best” English professors say it’s brilliant.
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Good morning Diane and everyone,
Well….half of this country wants this guy for president.
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They would vote for a ham sandwich if it was running against a Democrat. And frankly I’d vote for a ham sandwich if it were running against Trump.
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Perfect summation of what’s wrong with this country.
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President Sandwich’s platform is impressive.
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Wow, and here I was informed that Trump spoke truth to power and offered his economic policies and the only people who might have looked askance at Trump’s speech are those Wall Street titans who Trump is standing up to, and of course “partisan Democrats”.
The NYT normalized Trump’s appearance. It wrote a story “analyzing” the policies he offered (newsflash: partisan Dem economists don’t like it) and there was no indication that Trump’s mental state was problematic. Oh yes, the NYT did allude to one of Trump’s answers “meandering” not in any unusual way. All normal folks. The only discussion is the both sides discussion of whether Trump’s economic policies will be good or bad, and surprise! – there is disagreement!
Headline:
“Trump Calls for an Efficiency Commission, an Idea Pushed by Elon Musk: Donald Trump, in a speech in New York, said the commission would conduct a sweeping audit of the federal government and recommend “drastic reforms” for cutting waste.”
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Sorry I was in the shower and I heard the New York Times normalized something, what did I miss?
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Here’s a summary –
Trump spoke truth to power:
“Mr. Trump seemed aware that his prescriptions for import tariffs on every product made abroad and a preferential 15 percent corporate tax rate for domestic manufacturers might not resonate in the high temple of global finance.
“You can call it what you want; some might say it’s economic nationalism,” he said after name-checking some of Wall Street’s richest men, such as Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, and John Paulson, the famed hedge fund manager. “I call it common sense. I call it America First. This is the policy that built this country, and this is the policy that will save our country.”
While if you are wondering about Kamala Harris, the NYT sums up her policy in their headline:
“Harris Tells the Business Community: I’m Friendlier Than Biden”
Now you may think that informing America that Kamala actually bragged to the business community that she was friendlier than Biden, and Trump actually gave a coherent speech standing up to those horrible Wall Street vultures may not tell the entire picture.
But the NYT understands it is of vital importance to amplify these true narratives so that undecided voters will know who is on their side to deal with all the economic “failures” that the NYT says Harris must answer for because of this failing Democrat economy. (Today the big story is the Biden failing economy for only creating some new jobs, but not “enough”.
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It takes a very advanced case of TDS — Times Derangement Syndrome — to think this is an article that is favorable for Trump.
First two paragraphs are outright mocking:
Mocking and dismissive paragraph about his position on tariffs:
A few paragraphs contrasting hedge fund manager John Paulson’s approval of Trump’s plan with the view of “more traditional economists” — an understated way of suggesting Paulson’s view is not “traditional,” i.e. wacky. Note that the article includes two quotes attacking Trumps’ plan, against only one praising it:
A few paragraphs mocking Trump’s accusations of Marxism and the vagueness of his proposals:
Oh the “so-called liberal” New York Times!!!
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Did you miss the fact that John Paulson was NOT identified as a Republican, but the other two economists who criticized Trump’s policies were identified not just as Democrats, but Dems who worked for Democrat presidents?
You also posted a long quote that has no mention of Trump’s word salad nonsense regarding childcare or anything else. That speaks for itself.
Your excuse for lousy reporting that SANE-WASHES Trump’s nonsensical word salads is that it’s okay to SANE-WASH and exclude quotes that might give voters the impression that Trump is cognitively unfit and deluded — as long as a reporter uses a “mocking” tone.
Did you learn in journalism school that a “mocking” tone is an acceptable or even preferable alternative to reporting accurately, because readers will assume that the reporter knows something negative that he doesn’t want to tell them about Trump?
That isn’t how journalism works, although I agree that is how the NYT believes journalism works. They follow the “flerp-handbook” of journalism whereby there is no need to actually include negative facts that would make readers distrustful of Trump. Instead, journalists can exclude those negative facts that would make their reporting “unfair” and “biased”, but on occasion use a mocking tone so that the readers who already dislike Trump can know that there is some additional information the reporter is privy to that he does not believe would be “fair and balanced” to include in an article that an undecided voter might read. Mocking tones tell those in the know that the reporter knows something too — the NYT reporter just doesn’t think it would be fair to Trump if undecided voters also knew it, but the mocking tone reassures those who are liberal that there is definitely something negative that the reporter knows would be too biased to mention. That makes folks like you think it is a negative story! Because the reporter hinted he knows something negative by his mocking tone!
That’s your excuse for lousy reporting? Oh, it might have SEEMED to sane-wash Trump’s unfitness, but don’t you know that news is presented in a “mocking” manner?
If you had taken the most basic high school level journalism class, you would understand the absurdity of your “flerp-theory” of good journalism, whereby instead of providing an accurate, fact-based report of what happened, a reporter can exclude quotes that make a candidate look bad in order to falsely present him as having plausible ideas and caring about an issue. Because – according to “flerp-journalism 101” – as long as a reader can detect a “mocking” tone, that means the reader will know that the reporter knows something that makes Trump mockable that the reporter doesn’t want to reveal.
Do you even see how the problem with your grasping for straws theory? Yes, the NYT intentionally excluded the word salad nonsense Trump spewed in the child care question, but what the NYT did report was said mockingly! At least in one story by one reporter, after other reporters wrote an article that was a wholesale sane-wash of Trump’s appearance.
“We can’t imagine why Trump is so popular” say the liberal reporters who sane-wash his words in every story (while they double down on finding something to undermine Kamala).
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You are reading these stories terribly. You have tunnel vision and are obsessed with the idea that the Nee York Times is trying to help Trump. Step away from the Times!
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So now the Dumb Trump wants to throw a new and/or higher tariff on goods from foreign countries, which, as we all know will jack up prices on all these goods making it even harder for the average wage earner to provide his/her family with a decent living. If Trump really believes that the leadership of other countries will just roll over and accept more tariffs then he clearly has lost all his marbles.
Then add in JD Vance’s brainless idea that childcare should be provided by Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Aunts, and Uncles. Vance is assuming that Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles are not working. He assuming these family members are healthy enough to take care of children. Vance is assuming that these family members are still living. I think that worm in his head did more damage than we know.
Trump and JD Vance do not have a clue what it is like for a family who, because of the current state of the economy, have to have both parents working to make ends meet. Assuming there are two parents in the family unit.
Trump and Vance must live on another planet or are smoking too much weed.
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Great comment, Moeone!
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Did Vance have a worm in his brain, too, or are you thinking of RFK Jr? I hope it’s not something that’s going around –especially amongst politicians, since MAGATS (many of whom seem brain dead themselves) would probably identify with it, see it as a plus & consider that a very good reason to vote for more candidates with that condition –along with people who have dementia, convicted felons, con-artists, haters and other crazies they adore…
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Apparently, once RFK jr admitted he had a brain worm, many other pols got one too. Chic.
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Trump’s word salad talk reflects the physical deterioration in his brain — but the corporate-owned media ignore his deterioration because they want to continue enjoying the tax cuts Trump gave them during his presidency and want to see him elected so that they get more tax cuts.
We should all be incessantly, ceaselessly bombarding the major media with demands that they cite Trump’s mental frailty, just as they did Biden’s.
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I may be one of the few people who remembers that Trump was just as word-salady in 2016.
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FLERP,
He’s worse.
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Trump is wacky even by trump standards. And to think that we were having a conversation about Joe Biden’s dotage so recently.
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When does Traitor Trump answer any questions from the media or anyone else? He evades and spews the same old lies and hate between rambling nonsense.
I know the answer to one question if anyone asked him while he was in front of a mike and/or on camera.
If re-elected this November, when will you become the greatest dictator, the world has ever seen?
Traitor Trump’s ANSWER: On day one. And this would be one of the few truths the traitor said that wasn’t a lie.
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From Daily Kos, how the NYT reported on Trump’s word salad response to child care costs, where a NYT reporter misinformed voters of something that didn’t happen – that Trump said he would PRIORITIZE legislation to address this!) :
“In fact, New York Times reporter Michael Gold sane-washed the answer for Trump:
What in Trump’s full answer suggests he would actually “prioritize legislation on the issue”? The question asked if he would prioritize it, but in his word salad, he never committed to any such thing. And there is no chance that legislation to meaningfully address the steep costs of child care would be considered in a second Trump presidency, much less passed.
Gold went out of his way to make Trump’s aside about tariffs sound semi-coherent, as opposed to the nonsensical pivot it really was. Or, to put it another way, Gold made it sound as if Trump gives a damn about child care when it’s clear from his answer here—as well as his current policy platform and his priorities during his administration—that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about it. He barely even knows how to talk about the issue, helpfully confirming for us that “you have to have [child care] in this country.”
(end of NYT quote)
“SANE-WASHED” is the word that so perfectly and accurately describes how most of the so-called liberal media, especially the NYT, covers Trump in all of its daily news reporting.
Which is truly f’d up given the way the NYT “insane-washed” Biden in every news story for weeks.
Not to mention the other favorite Republican narrative is reinforced: Trump CARES about these issues.
(We saw the “Trump cares” narrative when Maggie Haberman wrote lovingly how Trump struggled to address the abortion issue to try to accommodate his very real concerns about banning it completely, because the NYT believes voters really need to know that Trump genuinely believes that making abortion legal up to 16 weeks is a much better plan)
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“What in Trump’s full answer suggests he would actually “prioritize legislation on the issue”? The question asked if he would prioritize it, but in his word salad, he never committed to any such thing.”
Q: If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?
A: Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. . . . .
So Trump was asked if he would commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable. His answer was “I would do that,” and then he went on with word salad for a couple minutes.
We are really reaching unprecedented levels of Times Derangement Syndrome if this is the kind of analysis we’re engaged in.
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I’m not my sure what you meant here, but Trump had clearly given no thought to childcare, said something about Rubio and Ivanka taking care of it, then claimed his tariffs would raise so much money that childcare would be a drop in the bucket. The response is nonsensical, esp because Trump thinks tariffs raise money for us. They don’t. They raise prices.
The editor of the Atlantic Daily newsletter wrote about this statement by Trump, how it exposes his ignorance.
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What I meant is that to think that the New York Times article is somehow unfairly favorable to Trump requires being unable to read standard English and draw the kind of standard inferences that proficient readers are capable of drawing. Complaining about the Times has become a kind of illness among too many people.
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Sometimes the Times deserves criticism. Its editors are so worried about being called “liberal” that at times they bend too far over backwards.
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Sometimes, sure. But the nonstop obsession based on perverse close readings, it’s ridiculous and weird.
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It’s a waste of time to go through the Times article for NYCPSP, line by line, explaining what it says. She either can’t read or willfully refuses to read. The most likely scenario, I think, is that she skims over a piece in the Times or by you or by me until she hits on something she misunderstands but thinks she disagrees with and then leaves it there and goes online for multi-page rant against things the piece didn’t even say. And if you bother, patiently, to point out to her the exact passages in which the pieces says precisely the opposite of what she contends, IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. No amount of evidence makes any difference.
Article: When it rains, my driveway gets flooded.
NYCPSP: Driveways and sluiceways are obviously two different things. So, what you say is just false. A driveway is not a sluiceway.
You or me: I never said that driveways are sluiceways.
NYCPSP: Now you are denying what you just said because you don’t like getting caught in a baldfaced lie. Diane, are you going to let them keep lying about what I said and what they said like this. As Marcie Wheeler says in Emptyheaded Wheel, FLEP AND BOB ARE WRONG. Would Bernie and AOC not call out the problem if driveways were all flooding? They didn’t. And clearly, Atticus is presented as a white savior and unborn baby sings like Elvis. And the New York Times is normalizing these things.
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flerp!, I want to be fair to you and not put words in your mouth.
Are you saying that it was excellent and accurate reporting of reality for the NYT to inform readers that Trump said he would PRIORITIZE LEGISLATION ON THE ISSUE.
And NOT to inform readers of the word salad nonsense Trump spoke that made it clear Trump was NOT even remotely “prioritizing” child care? Limiting reporting of Trump’s exact words to this one quote to support the narrative that Trump cares: “As much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.”
It’s actually amazing that ONLY because JD Vance does not speak in word salad nonsense that is cleaned up by NYT and other reporters do we know that child care policy means asking an aunt or other relative to help for free.
Maybe Trump can teach JD Vance to word salad so the NYT can present Vance as confirming that Trump plans to PRIORITIZE legislation to address child care costs.
What is totally weird about people who suffer from Media Critic Derangement Syndrome is that they grasp at the weakest of straws to present their beloved NYT as doing perfect reporting that must never be criticized by anyone except a Republican (since it is so biased against Trump).
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If the Times did not explain that other countries do not pay the tariffs on their goods exported to the US and that Trump has this exactly BACKWARD, then it was not carrying out its journalistic duty. A solemn and really important duty.
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He did say he would prioritize the issue! He actually said that. And the article describes his answer as “jumbled.” And the article repeatedly mocks his presentation and policy positions, frankly more so than I would think proper for a news article.
Just because you think the article could have gone further in one direction does not mean a travesty of journalism has occurred. This is an obsession and it is perverse. I’m not singling you out in particular—this is a very popular sport these days.
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When Trump was asked if he would prioritize the issue, he said yes, then babbled about Rubio and Ivanka, then went on about tariffs. He knew nothing about child care and had no plans to “prioritize” the issue. He was lying, as usual. He never answered the question because he had no plans to do anything.
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Trump is just barely articulate, and that only sometimes. But if one reads the garbled stuff he said carefully, it DOES answer the question. It’s just that the answer is moronic.
He says (translating from Tourettotrumpian into English)
He will priorities childcare legislation.
Childcare is very expensive.
But our government is going to be paid so much money because of the tariffs we put on foreign goods, that paying for childcare will be easy. It will be, in comparison to what we bring in from tariffs, next to nothing.
That said, we might pause for a moment to look at HOW he tried to articulate this and observe that anyone who uses language like that has mush between his ears and should not be near the presidency. (Where this guy belongs is in an institution for the criminally insane.)
THEN, we should observe that Trump STILL doesn’t understand how tariffs work. The country on whose goods we place tariffs doesn’t pay the tariffs. The importer in the U.S. does. And then that importer passes on the expense in the form of higher charges to its customers here.
IT IS JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE NOT TO POINT OUT THIS COMPLETELY MISUNDERSTANDING ON TRUMP’S PART ABOUT HOW TARIFFS WORK. He is making this the keystone of his campaign this time (because the racism toward immigrants isn’t working as well this time around), and he hasn’t a clue what he is talking about. What a know-nothing imbecile. And a senile one at that. Just listen to him speak.
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“to think that the New York Times article is somehow unfairly favorable to Trump requires being unable to read standard English and draw the kind of standard inferences that proficient readers are capable of drawing.”
“standard inferences”?? “proficient readers”??
You mean those “proficient readers” who understand that mocking tones are preferable to including the negative facts that might make Trump look bad.
“unfairly favorable” is a meaningless word. The NYT reporting about Hitler that has been so widely criticized is not “favorable” per se. It is “balanced” and simply excludes (or minimizes) everything that would lead readers to understand what Hitler was advocating for RIGHT OUT IN THE OPEN.
Same with Trump. A both sides story can be somewhat “unfavorable” while giving a completely false picture of what Trump is.
But flerp!, you keep insisting that the NYT story informed readers accurately of Trump’s childcare policies. He has some! He cares! His policies may not work and he can’t always explain them accurately, but readers should be informed that Trump will be prioritizing child care and cares about the issue.
It really should not be an “opinion” that Trump is a con man with a long history of saying whatever nonsense gets him what he wants.
Just like it was not an “opinion” that Hitler was advocating for some of the most anti-Semitic policies that were truly frightening.
Sane-washing and normalizing what is IN THE OPEN with both of them just made it more and more acceptable for them to take it to a higher level.
scary times.
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The Times is the enemy of the people.
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flerp!,
“enemy of the people”?
Since you seem to believe the NYT is an enemy of the people, did you ALSO believe that the NYT was an enemy of the people when it was doing such a lousy job reporting on Hitler throughout the 1930s?
Whatever your opinion of the NYT is for the well-documented problematic reporting the NYT was doing that normalized Hitler and ignored or minimized what was not normal and what was dangerous about Hitler and what he was advocating for? You probably have the same opinion of the NYT coverage of Trump.
I know I do. I wouldn’t call it being “an enemy of the people” — that’s right wing neo fascist language of the sort Trump uses that has been normalized so much that you are now using it yourself.
But it is repeat of the 1930s, and it’s incredibly sad that the NYT has not learned any lessons but instead is determined to repeat what it did in the 1930s.
By the time the NYT felt it was “acceptable” to inform the public of what Hitler actually was instead of the normalized version, it was too late.
Instead of you constantly insulting the growing number of highly respected voices out there who have a far better understanding of media criticism than either you or I will ever have, how about recognizing that your knee jerk need to defend the NYT no matter what is starting to look like you are the one with a very strong bias.
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Does a worm live in it45’s “word salad?”
Just thought I’d “toss” that in…food for thought (or naught).
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“He did say he would prioritize the issue! He actually said that.”
Um, no he didn’t.
Trump said:
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. . . . .”
Do you not see your own derangement in you defending a reporter presenting this nonsensical answer as Trump making a commitment to prioritize childcare just because Trump’s nonsensical answer begins with “I would do that” before he continues on to explain more about what he meant by “that” – sitting down? Marco and and Ivanka being impactful?
FLERP!: Can you commit to prioritizing giving every reader of this blog $10,000 in cash, and if so, how specifically will you do that?
NYCPSP: Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Mayor DeBlasio and my kid, was so impactful on this, it’s very important…” gibberish gibberish gibberish nonsense nonsense
FLERP!: Great news! NYCPSP has committed to giving every reader of this blog $10,000 in cash! For real! I am absolutely confident that I am giving you accurate and vital information when I tell you that NYCPSP “actually said” that. Please ignore that deranged person with a syndrome who wanted me to tell you that what NYCPSP “actually said” was a delusional word salad of a response that began with these words: “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody…..impactful….and a lot of gibberish. Because it’s my job to make sure you are all correctly informed of reality. And the reality is that NYCPSP has committed to giving every reader of the blog $10,000 in cash! That’s all you need to know because my outstanding reporting is always 100% accurate. And only someone “deranged” would dare to challenge my accuracy.
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You really, really need to learn when to give it a rest.
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You really, really need to learn when to take your own advice.
(By the way, your double standard is noted, as usual.)
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What is A.A.? | Alcoholics Anonymous (aa.org)
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Bob, I’m guessing that if you thought there was the smallest chance I was suffering from the ravages of alcohol addiction, you would not even remotely consider that an amusing and appropriate reply would be for you to insult me and then post a link to AA to be “helpful”. But maybe my opinion that you are a kind and decent person is misplaced.
There is no need to be passive aggressive. You could have just posted “it bothers me a lot when you make a comment that seems rude and mean to flerp! and I want you to stop it.”
I’m sorry that it never bothers you if flerp! makes a comment that is rude and unkind to me. Perhaps you should consider what that says about your own implicit bias.
I’m also sorry I made the 9:48pm comment and stooped to that level. It was unnecessary. I apologize, flerp!
I do stand by my original reply about the Daily Kos analysis of Trump’s child care word salad answer and how the NYT misreported it. Trump did not “actually say” that he would “prioritize legislation on the issue”. He gave a word salad response to a question about whether he would prioritize child care legislation that started with “I would do that” and made it clear with every word that followed that when Trump said “do that”, he did not define “do that” as “prioritizing legislation on the issue”. If anything, the one thing Trump’s word salad answer made it clear is that when Trump said “do that”, he meant the OPPOSITE of “prioritizing legislation.”
Bob, I read your reply above where you personally insult me because I post (and defend) the views of OTHER people who are respected (albeit not by you, with your gratuitously nasty insult about Marcy Wheeler). What is wrong with you? We disagree. You defend your points, I defend my points, and you launch a personal insult at me. Please stop. Defend your points without making it personal. Defend your points without throwing in an unnecessary attack on Marcy Wheeler.
There is a later post by Diane about a NEW article in the NYT that actually reports on Trump’s word salad response.
Media criticism is important and the fact that the NYT – after writing multiple stories that gave an inaccurate characterization of Trump’s appearance at that event – finally bothers to report on the elephant in the room.
That’s because of the many RESPECTED media critics (not me) who have noted the problem in their earlier reporting.
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I agree with you that Trump’s response was a word salad. I agree that he isn’t going to do a damned thing about childcare unless he becomes convinced that he personally well get a big return out of it. But he did state a position, and I outlined, in English, above, the position that he stated. That he would do something about childcare. That childcare is very expensive. and that the expense won’t be a big deal because we will be rolling in cash due to the tariffs that other countries will be paying us under his next administration. It is incumbent upon journalists a) to point out how inarticulate such responses are, b) to question whether someone this inarticulate is presidential material, c) to explain what exactly Trump doesn’t understand about how the thing under consideration works (in this case, how tariffs work). They have a watchdog and an education function. They have been failing in both.
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Bob,
I have one correction. Trump will do nothing about child care. Nothing. He has not prioritized it. He has not thought about it. He doesn’t care about it. He’s already forgotten what he said.
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Oh, did I post this in response to you. My apologies. Just a general public service message. So sad and so common, this affliction. Marcy Wheeler of Empty [brain] wheel is also incapable, it seems, of reading clearly. If this is were what counts for “media criticism,” then the whole field would belong with other whackadoodle fringe nonsense like the British or Black Hebrews or Ancient Astronauts or Copper bracelets that cure cancer. But it isn’t, of course.
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He screws his own voters and they thank him for the privilege.
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what horrifies me most about Trump’s cuckoo childcare comments and the press reaction to these is that the press has not, except in very rare instances, explained why Trump’s idiotic commends about tariffs, which he repeats at EVERY RALLY and has made a keystone of his campaign, are based on complete misunderstanding of how tariffs work. This imbecile, this moron, was president for 4 years, and he STILL has no idea how tariffs work. He has no idea that the American consumer pays them. WHY TF don’t journalists point this out? THE GUY YOU ARE LISTENING TO HASN’T A FREAKING CLUE WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT.
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Ah, says Trump, my tariffs will flood the country with money. He thinks that tariffs are taxes on other countries. Will anyone explain to him that he is wrong?
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I agree with you about the media failure on tariffs.
I agree when you say “THE GUY YOU ARE LISTENING TO HASN’T A FREAKING CLUE WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT.”
But that’s what I mean by normalizing. After all this time, it’s almost irrelevant that Trump talks nonsense about tarriffs or childcare because is there anything he says that isn’t nonsense or simply a really bad sales pitch full of lies? What IS relevant that journalists are apparently either blind to or unwilling to report is that Trump is in every way unfit to be president – he’s a con man (which we know from Trump U., from his leadership of the birther movement, from his fake foundation, from his lies about winning the 2020 election.) Whatever Trump happens to say or promise on a given day is irrelevant. Trump is a broken clock and whether or not it happens to be telling the right time at any given moment is IRRELEVANT because the clock is broken. It can’t be used to tell the time. It should not be reported in newspapers that a clock says this is the correct time WITHOUT making it clear from the beginning that the clock is broken. Which speaks to why the journalist would even include in the article what time the broken clock says, as if whatever that time happens to be is relevant. What is relevant is that the clock is BROKEN! It can’t be trusted to tell someone the time. That’s the story. That’s what readers need to know.
These are the same journalists who spent 500+ articles in a single newspaper writing the same “newsworthy” story over and over again — that Biden was cognitively unfit to be president. There was NO DOUBT about that. That was the point of every single story, whether Biden talked about NATO issues or talked about the economy or talked about anything else. Every news story was about Biden’s unfitness and how soon he would step aside and why the Dems didn’t get rid of him already.
The reporting in the mainstream media has been abysmal and it’s only because more and more media critics and people in the media are willing to call it out that it possibly will get better. I am not holding my breath.
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Because it would require those journalists to go out and LEARN about tariffs.
And they’re far too lazy to do any such thing.
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For the record, Trump was specifically asked about tariffs at the first debate. Trump was allowed to give his lying, word salad response about how tariffs would bring lots of money into the coffers to pay for lots of good things people want.
And the moderator said “thank you, President Trump”
I also saw Biden refuting some and yes, he was not as his best, but anyone who believes that Kamala or Josh Shapiro or Bernie or even Pete Buttigeig could refute the nonsense Trump spews in the debate format is living on another planet.
It becomes a BOTH SIDES issue and it just reinforces whatever view the debate audience already had. That happened with she who may not be named in 2016. That happened with all Trump’s Republican opponents.
The ONLY way to get Trump to directly face his lies is for the moderator to call him out. That’s what happened with the National Assn of Black Journalists panel.
And the headlines (except in the NYT and some other liberal media) of Trump’s appearance at the National Assn of Black Journalists’ panel were along the lines of “Trump FALSELY accuses Harris of deciding to ‘turn Black’ during a combative panel with Black journalists”
What is likely to happen after the debate is the same kind of non-reporting, normalizing that Trump’s insane Wisconsin speech is getting. Trump’s constant lies are NOT in the headline and NOT the point of the story (the way every story about Biden for weeks was about his failing cognition).
Instead, it will be the same old tired narrative that the media has been saying about Trump for the last 8 years:
“Trump said this, and Trump said that, and Trump got a little muddled and said something Democrats claimed was false, but “undecided” viewers like Joe Smith were impressed by Trump.”
With Biden, every story in the media was about one narrative – how whatever happened showed that Biden is cognitively unfit.
With Trump, the press reports every story to push the narrative that Trump is NOT cognitively unfit. They minimize Trump’s craziness and make the story about whatever Trump decides to promise that day. “I care about abortion rights! I care about childcare. I will do something to make the economy great!”
The media believed it was their job to inform the public that Biden was cognitively unfit. The media believes it is NOT their job to inform the public that Trump is cognitively unfit because that is “biased”. However, it is their job to inform the public that Kamala isn’t giving enough policy details and she flip flops a lot because that is just good solid reporting.
The one thing Mayor Pete is good at is PIVOTING and re-framing the media’s questions to hurt Trump. That is the only way Kamala can maybe do ok at the debate, but I suspect even if she does what Mayor Pete does, she will be accused of being evasive. That narrative is already pre-written and nothing she does at the debate matters because it will be presented only in the context of that narrative and whatever she says won’t be “enough detail”.
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What do you mean by pivoting? I haven’t seen him pivot. I have seen him asking questions that are too the point and cut through the bullshit. And this is hardly “the one thing” that Pete is good at.
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cx: to the point
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yeah. I’m afraid that you are right, jsr. There is widespread ignorance among “journalists.” Aren’t they required to take political science and micro- and macroeconomics courses? And isn’t it bizarre that we do a poorer job of vetting the qualifications of someone running for president than we do of someone applying for a job managing a gas station?
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Trump could not be accepted into the military, because he’s a convicted felon.(Not that he ever wanted to join the military!)
Yet a convicted felon is not barred from running for President!
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Personally, being a retired from the military I would not want the likes of Trump in the military service of this nation. I am positive he would not even make it though boot camp before his fellow privates would conduct a blanket party for him. Being on the receiving end of blanket party is no place to be.
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Bob, I was not using “pivot” in a negative sense, but I realize it is often used that way, so mea culpa, another transgression you can add to the very long record of all the horrible things you say I do that you believe justifies your frequent nasty insults.
I should have said that Mayor Pete is one of the best I have ever seen in RE-FRAMING the “when did you stop beating your kids?” questions the press reserves for Democrats during interviews and debates.
Mayor Pete RE-FRAMES the “how do you answer these very important and serious Republican talking points about your untrustworthy and worrisome behavior?” questions in the perfect way, to amplify the true positive facts about what Democrats are doing, and include an allusion to the true facts the reflect very negatively on Trump as well.
But I expect the debate to be a lot like George Stephanopoulos’ first post-debate interview with Biden where George kept asking the same question over and over again and made it clear that Biden’s answer was simply not acceptable. Even Mayor Pete would have trouble if no matter what he answered, the reporter just kept repeating the same question “but when did you stop beating your kids”?
Remember the media had the chutzpah to call Kamala’s completely appropriate answer to a question about the Trump talking point that Kamala had just started being Black “evasive”. Because just saying “next” when the question is responding to a ridiculous Republican talking point is “evasive”. Or problematic. At least for Kamala. Trump can spew on for minutes of nonsensical word salad, as he did in the first debate, and the moderators will say “thank you”.
Unfortunately, the so-called liberal media has already legitimized the false narrative that the moderators will be anti-Trump and pro-Kamala, so that means that the debate moderators will have to go overboard to prove that they aren’t. Which means being extra solicitous of Trump while they treat Kamala as the candidate who just can’t tell the truth no matter what.
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My name’s not “Bob”.
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