Well, by now, we have all grown accustomed to Trump’s mad ravings, so they are no longer newsworthy. So says Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic. Some readers of this blog will say that he suffers from NY Times‘ derangement syndrome, but hear him out. To be fair, Tomasky almost forgave the New York Times after he read Peter Baker’s article about Trump’s incoherence and cognitive decline, which appeared soon after he wrote this piece, titled “The Media Is Finally Waking Up to the Story of Trump’s Mental Fitness.”
He wrote:
It’s a pretty sad commentary on the way our mainstream media cover Donald Trump that if you really want to know what Trump said at a given rally, you would be wasting your time going to The New York Times or The Washington Post and you really need to read Aaron Rupar.
He writes:
Who is Rupar? He’s a liberal Substacker and prolific tweeter who prints all the news The New York Times doesn’t deem fit to print. The latest case in point is Trump’s weekend rally at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin—an appropriately named venue for a speech in which Trump was barking out hatred and bile like a mad dog.
If you’re the sort of person really steeped in campaign coverage, you may have read about what went down; if you missed it, spoiler alert: Trump said something at this rally so insane and offensive that even the Times finally roused itself to cover it. Trump called Kamala Harris “mentally disabled” and added: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired; Kamala was born that way.”
That statement, whatever else we might call it, was obviously news, so the Times couldn’t help leading with it. Ditto the Post, which decided to produce a story that emphasized Trump’s violation of politically correct manners. The Post piece quoted a mental health advocate scolding Trump for his insensitive language—as if what he said was offensive only to people struggling with mental illness!
Meanwhile, here are some other things Trump said at the rally, which you had to read Rupar’s X feed to know about.
“These people are animals” (referring to migrants).
“I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We’re going to liberate our country.”
“You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re gonna lose your culture.”
And, finally, this gem: “They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.”
Let’s tarry over that last one for a bit. Here’s a man who wants to be the president of the United States saying of immigrants—all immigrants: women, children, old people, everyone—that they will invade your home and attack you in one of the most violent and painful (and terrifying) ways possible. They will cut your throat.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find that shocking, even coming from Trump. It’s one thing to say that Mexico is “sending rapists,” as he infamously did in 2015. Even making a general statement about how these people come here and commit crimes, while bad enough, isn’t nearly as bad as this. This is saying directly to every American that they will break into your house and cut your throat.
That sure seems like news to me. Yet it didn’t appear in either the Times or the Post account. The Times piece did have a sentence noting that Trump “continued to vilify” migrants and called them “stone-cold killers,” so let’s give them that, at least. But the plain implication of Trump’s statement here is that migrants are an imminent threat to one’s safety. This is an unambiguous incitement to preemptive violence. How can such a vicious statement not be thought of as news?
Here’s how. If your definition of “news” is simply that which is new, then OK, maybe. Calling his opponent who happens to be the sitting vice president of the United States “mentally disabled” was new, and ergo it was news. That I get.
But Trump attacking migrants isn’t new. Obviously, I would argue that a candidate for president raising the specter of people breaking into people’s homes and cutting their throats is new. Perhaps reasonable minds can differ on that, I guess. And if it isn’t new, it isn’t news…
Why is age fair game for discussion but mental infirmity taboo? Is it because of basic human emotional responses to each matter—that is, we all see people age, it’s familiar, we’re comfortable talking about it—whereas with respect to mental health, talking about it makes us uncomfortable? If so, that’s a pretty lousy excuse. It’s journalism’s job to raise uncomfortable questions.
My commentary:
As for me, I don’t think that the issue is Trump’s mental health, although he is apparently suffering cognitive decline as video clips of his meanderings demonstrate.
The fact is that his campaign is based on demonizing immigrants, without regard to facts. He has launched a hateful campaign against them, making them targets of fear. It seems as though he is encouraging his followers to beat them up.
If he carried out his proposed mass deportation of millions of immigrants, not only would it be an act of inhumanity, but it would cripple important sectors of our economy: agriculture, tourism, meat and seafood processing, construction, restaurants, and more.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for the “Times Derangement Syndrome” credit!
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Trump is definitely DERANGED. We cannot get accustomed to his LIES, INSULTS, and THREATS, even though that dumpster does this every time he opens his mouth. We cannot normalize that dumpster. He is a threat to democracy and sanity.
Trump likes to cause uproars, because this is all he has.
Sometimes, I think DonOLD says and acts in deranged ways, because he needs and wants a parent who will tell him, “NO!”
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Trump is not prepared to “liberate” people. If he wins, he intends to make us all victims of the whims of billionaires that support Project 2025. His tax cuts for the wealthy and tariffs will “liberate” the middle class from their paychecks. Trump’s reckless economic plans are estimated to cost working families between $2,000 and $4,000 depending on family income.
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Yvonne: I have often thought Trump WANTS to be stopped–it’s a continual dare–as for children, the unconscious need is often to get attention at any cost.
By the way, I read somewhere that the Haitians are suing. (Sorry for the absent resource. It was probably NPR or CNN newsletter-part of the firehose of mostly mainstream media I read every day.) CBK
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I too read that Haitians are suing Trump for defamation. Not likely to get far.
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Diane: Did you catch my “in moderation” note on another post forum about the Adult Foundational Education work being done about prisons and incarceration/education efforts? It’s long with several links but I thought you might want to read it and (perhaps?) make a post out of it? If not, at least to “pass” it through. In either or none, thanks for all you do here. CBK
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Sadly, Trump is like an overseas war. Initially Americans (generalizing here) get the news and reports and pay close attention. Then the war becomes entrenched and in spite of tens or hundreds of deaths – deaths! – a day, it’s on page 10 or maybe, just maybe in local news. Actually, the hurricanes are the same way – glued to tv for two days and then no news or not paying attention to the months of destruction to care for.
Trump’s attacks are daily, hourly in some instances. No matter what the platform, it’s “another day of trump’s ignorance, lies, blaming someone, or personal attack. Before 2016 any one of these would be in the headlines and people would be aghast. Now no news and he gets 40 million votes.
In a few years, the public will realize how heinous this is and gosh forbid if any is enacted. And kids will say to parents – “look me in the eye and tell me who you voted for?” Will those adults lie, too?
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Those parents will lie. They won’t have the integrity ro admit that they were enthralled by a malignant bully and con man.
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In an attempt to wonder about the motivation of the media, I recalled the German experience with British wartime propaganda.
The Germans had already made a remarkably bad name for themselves in East and West Africa in the Meji Meji Rebellion and similar revolts of the African populace to ill treatment at the hands of the imperialists. Well known by the Great War was the story of how, confronting opposition to forced labor on cotton plantations in East Africa, Germany simply killed most of the inhabitants of the region. There was such human carnage that the animals returned. In a West Africa rebellion, Herman Goering’s father had led the Germans in a genocide. This was a history well known in Europe as the war started. The British began to publish stories about the German troops throwing babies into the air and spearing them with bayonets on the way down.
The Germans protested vigorously that they were not doing this, a method that only served to lend credence to these specious claims of the British Propaganda.
Perhaps the best thing the media can do is to tell the public that Trump is just making false claims. At least with regards to The Eating Cats incidents, Vance was obliged to justify lying instead of claiming the truth was being told.
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In my opinion, the media should not tell the public that Trump is making false claims.
Instead, the media should report endlessly that voters are concerned and don’t trust Trump because he and Vance are making false claims.
If you go back and watch the 60 Minutes interview with Walz, that’s exactly how the media frames misstatements by the Democrats — it’s a matter of voter trust, so no matter how silly the misstatement is, it isn’t the misstatement itself, it is that the Dem did something that raises serious doubts in the voters’ minds that they can be trusted to be president. Walz was repeated pressed on this — he “lied” but the issue wasn’t how minor this lie was but that now voters can’t trust him. The premise of the questions was that Walz was untrustworthy because of that lie. The “negative news” about Dems – no matter how minor – is always framed as a “trust” issue. Kamala doesn’t give enough details, SO VOTERS DON’T TRUST HER. Trump doesn’t give any details, so let’s move onto the next subject and we apologize profusely for telling you that Trump doesn’t give any details because we are extremely anti-Trump to even mention it and we promise not to do so again.
With Republicans, Trump and Vance can lie with abandon about extremely serious issues because the media believes it is incredibly biased against Trump just to mention in passing that Trump lied and move onto the next subject. Trump and Vance can easily just deny they are lying because the question is never ” Many voters say they can’t trust you because you keep lying, and how can you win their trust back when you keep lying, Sen. Vance?” Walz has had to answer trust questions constantly – Trump and Vance never.
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I suggest that we stop drawing on Nazi Germany for references..
American history has plenty of examples of debated, racist behavior that gets papered over. Slavery, our terrible treatment of Indigenous Americans, the virulence reaction of Southerners at the end of Reconstruction, the founding of the KuKlux Klan come to mind.
White men and women screaming at small Black children when those children became the first to integrate schools.
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I think of Trump ‘s vile behavior and speech whenever I go to our local Dunkin’ Donuts. The franchise owner is Indian-American. The staff is almost entirely young people for whom English is their second language.
These people are invariably courteous and efficient. They know my husband and I, and sometimes have our standard order started as soon as they see us come in.
This is also true of the companies that we have hired for landscaping work. The owners might be American, but their crews are almost entirely Spanish-speaking.
Trump appeals to the very worst in us- our fears, our prejudice, our hate.
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Today’s NYT headline:
‘In Interviews, Kamala Harris Continues to Bob and Weave: Her media swing showed how she often responds to uncomfortable questions by acknowledging them, yet not fully answering them.”
In other words, Kamala Harris is doing what every candidate in history has done, and the NYT headline and framing amplifies this as suspect and questionable, and presents it as a very credible and important reason why voters do and should have serious doubts and concerns about her.
In fact, if someone took the time to read through the entire article about how Kamala’s bobbing and weaving is why voters don’t trust her, they will see a mention of stuff that Trump does that SHOULD be reported on every day. The stuff that is missing from all the daily news reporting that normalizes Trump.
The NYT has “only” written a dozen or two dozen or 100 articles whose subject is how voters don’t trust Kamala because she fails to answer questions, or bobs and weaves, or her VP “lies”, or blah blah blah.
The coverage of Trump is virtually never about how voters don’t trust his policies because Trump is a liar who has no policies and Trump has never explained how he would pay for any of his policies. The two Peter Baker stories – each a month apart – were followed by weeks of endless “Trump is normal” reporting that intentionally sane washed Trump’s worst actions, despite Trump’s continuing bad actions that should have been used to support that clearly true narrative that Trump is a liar and is untrustworthy.
The right wing narratives undermining trust in Kamala are casually presented as truth in virtually every story about Kamala. The true narratives undermining trust in Trump are excluded from every news story about Trump, except for some once a month “analysis” that the NYT says is proof that they are much harder on Trump than on Kamala.
The most inane excuse is when NYT stenographer/reporters explain that “everyone knows” all those negatives about Trump so that’s why they never report them or even mention them, but since everyone doesn’t yet know all these “bad” things about how untrustworthy and dishonest Kamala is, their duty as journalists is to write many stories about Kamala’s “bobbing and weaving” and “refusing to answer questions” and also reinforce that by prominently noting in every general story about Kamala that voters don’t trust her because of all those terrible things Kamala does that were mentioned in all those articles about Kamala bobbing and weaving and generally being untrustworthy.
It’s a double standard. Anything mildly negative about Democrats is reported in “flood the zone” stories about how serious this issue is and gives voters reasons to distrust Dems. Anything extremely negative about Republicans gets a one day story and is never mentioned again because “voters already know”.
The arrogance of the NYT and network news reporters is that they are so certain their reporting has been extremely negative about Trump that in their hearts they believe Trump voters are simply extremely racist, xenophobic, violence-supporting folks who would eagerly vote to destroy our democracy and install authoritarian rule if it means their enemies could be punished. NYT reporters would rather demonize and disparage Trump voters by claiming those voters already know all the negatives about Trump and embrace him for it, than to acknowledge that maybe some of the Trump voters are NOT being informed by their lousy, normalizing, both siderism reporting.
But I realize that if those reporters had to admit that maybe all Trump voters aren’t as supportive of violent, lying, authoritarian, anti-democratic rule as NYT reporters claim they are (since they “already know” the truth about Trump), those reporters would no longer have an excuse for their cowardice. They would have to treat negative Trump stories the way they treat negative stories about Kamala and Walz.
I am NOT holding my breath waiting for a NYT reporter to explain they they are never again going to mention how Kamala’s economic plan will be paid for or mention Walz trip to Hong Kong or include anything negative about Kamala in their Kamala stories because “everyone already knows”.
It is unethical and dangerous journalism for reporters to abdicate their job of informing the public of the corruption of one party because of their absurd claim that they should NOT inform them because “everyone already knows”. And it is even more dangerous that those reporters tell themselves that since everyone does NOT know all the bad things about Kamala and Walz, their job as journalists is to beat the public over the head with dozens or hundreds of news stories about any minor issue that reporters present as definitely raising questions about the untrustworthy Dems. Because that’s “fair and balanced” reporting.
It doesn’t surprise me one bit that Kamala is now getting the Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, “she who must be named” treatment. All those Dems were running against extremely questionable and unfit opponents, so the media decided the big issue of the campaign was how it was really the Dem who shouldn’t be trusted.
Arguably, the LEAST unfit Republicans – Dole and McCain and Romney – got the same negative treatment that the liberal media uses to cover Dems. I don’t know why reporters decided that McCain and Romney did not deserve the kid gloves treatment they reserve for more unfit Republicans like GW Bush and Trump. But whenever the media treats the Republicans the way they treat Democrats, the Democrats win the election.
The reason our democracy is in so much danger is that the more unfit and corrupt a Republican is, the harder it is for the liberal media reporters not to at least mention it in a single story or even two. That’s why the extreme trashing of Dukakis and Gore and Kerry was necessary – to “balance” out that the media could not avoid including some of the negatives about their Republican opponents in their story.
But since Dole/McCain/Romney could mainly be criticized on their policies, not for being seriously unfit, that meant the so-called liberal media didn’t have to gin up fake scandals to smear their Dem opponents to “balance” having to write a single negative story about the Republicans.
Why is it that Republicans win with their WORST and most unfit candidates? Because the worse the Republican candidate is, the more our brainwashed co-opted liberal media believes it is their sacred duty to demonize and attack the Democratic candidate to show they are “fair and balanced”.
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Keep monitoring the NYT, you’re doing important work!
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Keep monitoring me, you’re doing important work! (No thanks, necessary. I’m happy to affirm whatever that voice in your head keeps telling you! )
Just curious – do you agree with Trump supporters that critics of Trump suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome”?
I always wonder how people like you distinguish between critics of Trump (or the NYT) who have valid points and critics of Trump (or the NYT) who are “deranged” and suffering from a “syndrome”. Are the deranged ones the ones who cite specific examples?
I’d rather be “deranged” the way Michael Tomasky is, than have the mean and disparaging “syndrome” that his critics have. I will never understand the joy some people get from hurling belittling insults at others.
Funny how often the same people are accused of suffering from both Trump Derangement Syndrome and NYT Derangement Syndrome.
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He uses fear as a means of getting votes. “I am the only person who can save you from these killers”.
He has nothing else to run on. No plans other than to make money for himself and his friends. And, possibly, to plunge our nation into chaos to appease his buddy in Moscow.
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Gitapik,
“If you don’t elect me, you won’t have a country anymore.”
“The immigrants will rape and murder you.”
“They will cut your throat.”
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Honestly, I don’t understand why this kind of rhetoric is allowed in an election for a single person who will hold this much power.
With what we’ve learned through history, the intent is obvious. I would like to figure out a way to make this illegal.
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The complicit NYT reports these Trump lies as “Today at a rally, Trump said that immigrants will rape and murder and cut your throat. Although some law enforcement officials agree with Trump, many do disagree with him on this issue.”
NYT reporters believe reporting Trump’s statement in this way – normalizing it – is an example of very anti-Trump reporting, and that’s why they need to balance this anti-Trump statement with at least 5 stories about how voters don’t trust Kamala or Walz because of their non-stop dodges and lies and Kamala’s lack of any economic plan or policies.
Or usually NYT reporters will simply leave out Trump’s most ugly statements because they believe in their heart that if they reported Trump accurately, they would be demonstrating how anti-Trump they are. It’s sad to see reporters censoring any mention of Trump’s statements that would make voters question his trustworthiness. Their guiding rule is that their sacred duty is to question the trustworthiness of Democrats in every story, but stories about Trump must make him look as good as possible. How else can they prove they aren’t anti-Trump?
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Couldn’t agree more, NYC.
I’d add that they’ve been cheerleading the education “reform” movement from the gitgo. They know where the money is and will set their sails in that direction. They’re nothing like Fox or The NY Post, but I go to other sources for more in depth coverage of people and issues that represent wealth.
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