Ted Cruz Turns to Anti-Trans Issue to Save His Senate Seat

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2024 //
31

The Texas Monthly writes that Texas has all kinds of pressing needs and problems. But in the closing days of the campaign, Ted Cruz has fastened in a single issue in his battle for re-election: Hate transgender people. They threaten our daughters.

It’s not clear exactly how large the Texas trans population is, but it can’t be large enough to threaten the women of Texas or even the girls.

Cruz, with Colin Allred coming close in the home stretch, concluded that care and hate were his best messages to his constituents.

Michael Hardy of The Texas Monthly wrote:

Texans face a multitude of challenges. The border crisis. Incompetent utility regulators. Rising home and rent costs. Rural hospital closures. So naturally, as campaigning for the U.S. Senate enters its final week, incumbent Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, Dallas-area Congressman Colin Allred, are locked in a fierce battle over . . . transgender rights. Earlier this month, Cruz and an allied political action committee launched a barrage of ominous television advertisements accusing Allred of supporting “boys in girls’ sports,” “drag shows on American military bases,” “taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries” for military service members, and the use of “taxpayer funds to sterilize minors.” The ads are part of a nationwide push by Republican candidates, who have spent more than $65 million on antitrans ads since August. 

“I remember reading the polls saying that the race was within two or three points and wondering what Cruz was going to do about it,” said veteran Texan lobbyist Bill Miller, who has worked with Democratic and Republican candidates. “And then I was watching TV and Cruz’s transgender ad came on. As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s the issue they’re going to beat Allred with.’ ”

In 2023, Allred voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a Republican-backed bill that would have barred athletes assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ sports. The bill passed in the House of Representatives on a party line vote but was not taken up in the U.S. Senate. Earlier this year, Allred signed a letter opposing Republican efforts to ban drag shows on military bases and restrict gender-affirming care for transgender service members and their families. In a written statement to Texas Monthly, Allred campaign manager Paige Hutchinson said “Colin believes we must stand united against all forms of prejudice and discrimination.” 

Cruz campaign spokespeople did not respond to an interview request to discuss Cruz’s strategy. The senator’s campaign website boasts that “Ted is proud to stand alongside all female athletes and will continue to fight for their right to play sports on their own terms, without fear of being forced to compete against biological men.” 

At first glance, the senator’s going all in on transphobia for his closing argument might seem puzzling, given that he’s spent most of his campaign stressing immigration and jobs. A recent poll conducted by the University of Texas at Austin asked voters to name their top political issue. A plurality (18 percent) chose the economy, which was followed by immigration, inflation, democracy, and abortion. Pollster Jim Henson told me that hardly anyone cited transgender issues as their foremost concern. A national Gallup polltaken in September asked voters to evaluate the importance of 22 campaign issues. “Transgender rights” came in dead last.  

So why the last-minute pivot to transgender issues? “It’s an easy way for a Republican to paint their opponent as an extremist,” Henson said. “Even if it’s not a particularly salient issue, it’s very effective in signaling to moderates that your opponent is out of the mainstream.” Last year, a UT-Austin poll found that 63 percent of Texans—including 33 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents, and 89 percent of Republicans—agreed that the sex listed on a person’s original birth certificate should be the only way to define gender, with just 25 percent disagreeing. (Twelve percent of respondents said they weren’t sure.) “I suspect the Cruz campaign’s internal polling is showing what the external polling shows,” Henson said, “which is that for a Republican candidate, this is a pretty good issue.” 

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Texas

Massachusetts: Vote YES On Question 2 to Remove State Test as a Graduation Requirement

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2024 //
13

Massachusetts has one of the highest performing school systems in the nation on the national test called NAEP (National Assesmrnt of Educational Progress). Some attribute this success to the state’s testing and accountability program. Others believe that the state test–MCAS–is overused and misused as a high school graduation requirement. Critics of the high-stakes exam as graduation requirement say that it was not designed to be an exit exam, that it has no value for diagnostic purposes, and that the small number of students who don’t pass it are disproportionately made up of students with disabilities and students who are not native-English speakers.

More than 90% of tenth graders pass the MCAS on their first try. Ultimately only hundreds out of more than 65,000 students don’t pass the test, and 85% of those who fail either have disabilities or don’t speak English.

Opponents of MCAS as a high-stakes graduation requirement have placed a referendum on the ballot called Question 2.

I urge voters in Massachusetts to vote YES on Question 2.

Belief in standardized testing as a remedy for low test scores has been misplaced for decades. Some believe that facing a test compels students to study harder, but we now know that the results of the standardized tests reflect family income and education more than student effort and ability. Those at the bottom of the scores inevitably are students with disabilities, students who don’t read English, students living in high poverty.

If high-stakes standardized were the solution to poor academic performance, the U.S. would have no failure at all. We have been administering those tests for more than 20 years. After the initial increases that are associated with test prep, improvement ground to a halt and score gaps between racial and economic groups stubbornly persisted.

Massachusetts teachers know that good things happen to students when schools have ample resources, small classes, and time to help the students with the greatest needs.

The YES vote is supported by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, many local school boards, and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The NO vote is supported by Governor Maura Healey and the business community.

The campaign to keep the MCAS as a graduation requirement just received a donation of $2.5 million from former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg ran the New York City schools with a firm belief that high-stakes testing, charter schools, and firing professionals would fix the schools. They didn’t, but he hasn’t learned anything from his stewardship of the schools.

The Boston Globe reported:

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $2.5 million to the group trying to beat back a ballot question that would eliminate the MCAS test as a graduation requirement, offering a significant infusion into the heated campaign just ahead of Election Day.

Bloomberg’s seven-figure donation is the largest contribution the “Vote No on 2″ campaign has received, and accounts for more than half of the $4.8 million it has reported raising this election cycle, state data show.

It’s not the billionaire’s first time pouring money into a Massachusetts ballot campaign. Bloomberg donated $490,000 in 2016 to a failed ballot question that would have expanded charter schools in Massachusetts.

If approved by voters, Question 2 would repeal a provision of the state’s landmark 1993 education law that makes earning a high school diploma contingent on students passing MCAS exams in English, math, and science. In its place, the ballot measure would establish a new mandate: Students would need to complete coursework certified by their districts in those subjects that meet state academic standards. The state would be able to add new subjects to that list.

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, writes on his blog that the entry of Bloomberg clarifies the actors. He says it is capital vs. labor, the oligarchy vs. the teachers’ union.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Elections, Massachusetts, Standardized Testing

Trump calls Kamala and Her Team “Scum” and “Garbage”

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
43

Bring out the fainting couches! Biden made a comment that offended the Republican Party! Biden says he was calling the comedian who insulted Puerto Ricans “garbage,” they say he meant that every Trump supporter was “garbage.” Republicans did not accept his prompt clarification. It all depended on an apostrophe (supporters vs. supporter’s).

But the Lincoln Project helpfully assembled the many times that Trump has called other people “garbage.” He calls Kamala “low IQ,” “garbage,” and “scum.” He has also called her and other Democrats “radical left, Socialists, Marxists, fascists, and Communists.

Watch this Lincoln Project video!

We expect him to scrape the gutter for his insults.

Categories Bigotry, Extremism, Fraud, Harris, Kamala, Trump

James Fallows Interviews Himself about the Election: Is Trump Closing the GOP Tent?

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
3

James Fallows is a veteran journalist with an illustrious history as a writer and editor. In addition, he was chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. In this article in his blog, he interviews himself about the election and wonders why Trump is not appealing to anyone other than his rabid base. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is getting endorsements from Republicans who want to stop Trump from returning to the White House, the latest being Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Fellows writes on his Substack blog “Breaking the News”:

Do we know what is going to happen?

No.

Oh, come on.

Last week I quoted the famed Democratic strategist, James Carville, and the famed Republican, Stuart Stevens, on the reasons both of them were confident that Kamala Harris would win. 

For myself, I think that if what has been a hair’s-breadth race might “break” at the last minute, it would break in Harris’s favor. To put it in political-operative terms: Donald Trump might have solidified his base but reached his ceiling. Kamala Harris, by contrast, might not yet have “closed the deal,” as the pundit cliché goes, but still have potential for extra last-minute support.

If so, that would mean that polls had yet again missed the fury of many female voters, as happened before the midterms two years ago. They could also have missed the unease and disgust of Republican and centrist voters about everything associated with Donald Trump. The reasons would start with January 6 and the Dobbs decision and go on from there. 

I hope that is the “surprise” in store for us. But I don’t know.

And is Donald Trump even trying to win the vote any more? Or is he just thinking about winning the count?

That’s the darkest fear: That Trump has given up even trying to draw newcomers into a majority-rule “big tent.” The fear is that he has skipped his sights past November 5 and is concentrating on what comes next. Intimidation, threats of violence, election-day victory claims, post-election lawsuits that reach an obeisant Supreme Court. That would be the logic behind revving up “Stop the Steal!” rhetoric now, to condition his followers to think a loss must have been rigged.

Only twice in the past few months did Trump strike me as running a “general election” campaign, aimed at more than the MAGA base. Significantly, both were while the vulnerable Joe Biden was still in the race. One was the opening 30 minutes of Trump’s fateful debate with Biden, when Trump was patient and relatively polite as he watched Biden dig himself into a deep hole. The other was the opening 30 minutes of his acceptance speech at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, when he more or less stuck to the “president of all the people” prepared text. 

In each case, when those 30 minutes were up, Trump could no longer resist and let loose with insults and lies. But since that time, and after Kamala Harris’s debut as nominee, from Trump it’s been all grievance and lies, all the time. His rallies are all the same. Except for off-the-cuff economic promises—no taxes on anything, stiff tariffs on everything—they seem almost scientifically calculated to drive away anyone not already in his thrall.

From Trump himself, we assume this is not calculation but pure impulse. On that point everyone who knows him seems to agree. But for the party as a whole? Can they really be so calm as they watch their standard bearer rant and offend? Or are they acting so calm because they know that November 5 is just the beginning, and that far more disciplined strategists will get to work, on terrain they’ve already mapped out?

I mentioned my hope for a last-minute break in the votes. This is my corresponding fear: About the reserve army for the post-November 5 battle, which ranges from the Proud Boys to the majority on the Supreme Court.

Oh, come on (again). And was this latest Trump rally actually that bad?

Yes. It was.

Obviously you want to be careful with Nazi comparisons. Nothing in the modern Western world matches what Hitler’s Third Reich became, from industrialized mass slaughter to all-frontiers invasions and world war.

But Hitler started someplace. And while the United States in the 2020s could hardly be more different from Weimar Germany after World War I—the strongest and richest nation in the world, versus one defeated and bankrupted—the rhetoric and references between Donald Trump’s current appeals and those of the nascent Nazis are strikingly similar. Listen to the Madison Square Garden rally three nights ago. And compare it with the rhetoric of the 1934 Nuremberg rally shown in Triumph of the Will. Vermin. Poisoning our blood. Bad genes. The enemy within. Round them up and send them out. Floating island of garbage. It’s a closer parallel than you’ll find with any other major US party rally since World War II.

Categories Elections, Trump

Kentucky Catholic School Student: Vote NO on Vouchers

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
4

This post appeared originally in the Louisville Courier-Journal. It has since been posted by The Network for Public Education, whose contents are curated by Peter Greene.

Liam Amick: Trinity won’t let me write about Amendment 2. Here’s why I’m against it.

Liam Amick is a senior at Trinity High School, a Catholic school in Kentucky, where vouchers are on the ballot next week in Amendment 2, a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would okay vouchers. Trinity has made support of the Amendment mandatory. Amick would like to disagree, and does so in the Courier Journal.

Every day when I drive into school, I’m greeted by yard signs blazing with the message “YES on 2!” To see these put up at Trinity, a school that generally requests little political discussion at school, was quite a shock.

I’m a “private school kid.” I went to St. Francis of Assisi for first through eighth grades, and I am now a senior at Trinity High School. I will always be indebted to those schools for providing me with fantastic educations and experiences in the most formative years of my life. But to say I am disappointed with Trinity’s stance on Amendment 2 — a Kentucky ballot measure that would allow public tax funding to be used for private schools — would be an understatement.

An even bigger disappointment has been Trinity’s and the Archdiocese of Louisville‘s responses to criticism of their position. When both Trinity’s Student Government and Faculty Senate asked if the “YES on 2!” signs could be taken down, they were told that the archdiocese had asked us to put them up and there was absolutely no chance of them being taken down. Also, the administration doesn’t allow our school journalism program to report on any political topics and or criticisms of Trinity and its policies, so I felt that to share my views I had to look outside of the school.

In my opinion, the desire of non-public schools to support Amendment 2 is logical, but closed-minded. What’s important to remember is that, in Kentucky, 65% of non-public schools are found in Louisville, Lexington and the general Northern Kentucky area. Out of 120 counties in Kentucky, 89 have no access to a non-public school, and well-run, accredited non-public schools aren’t going to magically appear in those counties after the passage of Amendment 2. So, the “school choice” amendment would in fact offer students in these areas no “choice” to go to a different school.

Supporters of Amendment 2 often bring up Kentucky’s 2023 $1 billion budget surplus, claiming that that money will be used to provide funding to public schools and said schools will lose no money. However, that surplus money already has a destination. According to House Appropriations and Revenue Chair Jason Petrie, the extra money has “provided the opportunity to invest more than $2.7 billion over the next two years to improve road, rail, river, air, and water infrastructure.” Although Petrie claims they are also making “targeted investments in school facilities,” the bottom line is that significantly fewer tax dollars would go to public schools, leaving no replacement funding in their wake.

Read the full op-ed here. You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/liam-amick-trinity-wont-let-me-write-about-amendment-2-heres-why-im-against-it/

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Religion, Separation of church and state, Students, Vouchers

Jonathan V. Last: Oligarchy is on the Rise

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
7

Jonathan V. Last writes at The Bulwark, the always interesting gathering spot for Never Trumpers. He wrote that he has been stewing about the intervention of Jeff Bezos, billionaire owner of The Washington Post, to stop the editorial board from endorsing Kamala. after Bezos locked the editorial, three of the 10-member editorial board stepped down.

He wrote:

ON FRIDAY, after the Washington Post’s publisher announced that the paper was suddenly abandoning the practice of the editorial page endorsing presidential candidates, news leaked that—on the very same day—Donald Trump met with executives from Blue Origin.

Blue Origin, of course, is the rocket company owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

What we witnessed on Friday was not a case of censorship or a failure of the media. It had nothing to do with journalism or the Washington Post. It was something much, much more consequential. It was about oligarchy, the rule of law, and the failure of the democratic order.

This was neither a coincidence nor a case of Bezos and Trump being caught doing something they wished to keep hidden. The entire point of the exercise, at least for Trump, was that it be public.

When Bezos decreed that the newspaper he owned could not endorse Trump’s opponent, it was a transparent act of submission borne of an intuitive understanding of the differences between the candidates.

Bezos understood that if he antagonized Kamala Harris and Harris became president, he would face no consequences. A Harris administration would not target his businesses because the Harris administration would—like all presidential administrations not headed by Trump—adhere to the rule of law.

Bezos likewise understood that the inverse was not true. If he continued to antagonize Trump and Trump became president, his businesses very much would be targeted.

So bending the knee to Trump was the smart play. All upside, no downside.

What Trump understood was that Bezos’s submission would be of limited use if it was kept quiet. Because the point of dominating Bezos wasn’t just to dominate Bezos. It was to send a message to every other businessman, entrepreneur, and corporation in America: that these are the rules of the game. If you are nice to Trump, the government will be nice to you. If you criticize Trump, the government will be used against you.

Which is why Trump met with Blue Origin on the same day that Bezos yielded. It was a demonstration—a very public demonstration.

But as bad as that sounds, it isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is the underlying failures that made this arrangement possible.

My friend Kristofer Harrison is a Russia expert who runs the Dekleptocracy Project. This morning he emailed,

America’s oligarch moment makes us more like 1990s Russia than we want to believe. Political scientists can and will debate what comes first: oligarchs or flaccid politicians. 1990s Russia had that in spades. So do we. That combination corroded the rule of law there, and it’s doing so here.

Russian democracy died because their institutions and politicians were not strong enough to enforce the law. Sound familiar? I could identify half a dozen laws that Elon Musk has already broken without enforcement. Bezos censored the Post because he knows that nobody will enforce the law and keep Trump from seeking political retribution. And on and on. The corrosive effect on the rule of law is cumulative.

The Bezos surrender is our warning bell about entering early-stage 1990s Russia. No legal system is able to survive when it there’s a class not subject to it because politicians are too cowardly to enforce the law.

And that’s the foundational point. The Bezos surrender isn’t just a demonstration. It’s a consequence. It’s a signal that the rule of law has already eroded to such a point that even a person as powerful as Jeff Bezos no longer believes it can protect him.

So he has sought shelter in the embrace of the strongman.

Bezos made his decision because he calculated that Trump has already won—not the election, but his struggle to break the rule of law.

Yesterday, Timothy Snyder issued a call to Americans to not obey in advance. He is correct, of course. We should continue to resist fascism as best we can. The stakes have not changed.

If Trump wins? Well, I suppose we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

What should change is our understanding of where our democracy currently sits on the continuum. We are not teetering at the precipice of a slide into autocracy. We are already partway down the slope. And that’s even if Harris wins.

But Bezos and Trump have just taught America’s remaining small-d democratic leaders: The time for normal politics, where you try to win bipartisan majorities by focusing on “kitchen-table” issues is past. The task in front of us will require aggressive, systemic changes if we are to escape terminal decline.

The hour is later than we think.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Trump Called the U.S. “a Garbage Can for the World”

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
9

“Garbage” is the word of the week.

A comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage,” presumably referring to the people because Puerto Rico is a very beautiful island.

Puerto Rican leaders were deservedly outraged. All sorts of people criticized Trump’s campaign for allowing such a vicious comment. The comedian’s script was reviewed before it was put on the teleprompter.

When President Biden denounced the comment, he created a media firestorm by seeming to suggest that Trump’s supporters were also garbage. Google Garbage, Biden, Trump–it’s the story of the week.

Biden said: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [supporters/supporter’s]–his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

The White House put out a transcript with the apostrophe, to prove that he was speaking about the comedian–one person–but the damage was done. Republicans leapt to the attack, thrilled that they could change the subject from the MSG hatefest.

The Trump campaign and Trump himself treated the comment as comparable to Hillary Clinton calling his supporters “deplorables.”

Trump yesterday pulled a stunt where he dressed up as a garbage man (like pretending to be a worker at MacDonald’s for 15 minutes). Trump said he did it to honor Biden and Harris and call attention to the terrible defamation of his supporters.

Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC last night produced video of Trump at a rally calling Kamala and all those around her “scum” and “garbage.” No outrage. No firestorm. No media frenzy. O’Donnell said archly that Trump’s insults are so commonplace that they are not newsworthy.

Only days ago, Trump referred to the U.S. as “a garbage can for the world.”

ABC News reported:

Former President Donald Trump escalated his anti-immigrant rhetoric at a rally in battleground Arizona on Thursday, calling the United States a “garbage can for the world.”

“We’re a dumping ground. We’re like a — we’re like a garbage can for the world. That’s what, that’s what’s happened to us. We’re like a garbage can,” Trump said at a rally in Tempe, Arizona, on Thursday.

Trump made the comments as he criticized the Biden-Harris administration for its handling of the border, a key voter issue — especially in Arizona, a border state and swing state that President Joe Biden flipped to edge out Trump by 0.3 percentage points in 2020. Trump also made the comments with less than two weeks until Election Day — and as the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris duke it out in what’s expected to be a close contest.

Trump has said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” that they are rapists and murderers, that they are the refuse of prisons and mental institutions from their native lands.

Hitler used the term “blood poisoning” in his manifesto “Mein Kampf,” where he criticized immigration and the mixing of races. He wrote, “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”

That’s ridiculous. We are a polyglot nation.

Trump says things like this about other people almost daily, and he is occasionally called out. But we are so accustomed to his rants that they lack the originality to unleash a firestorm of criticism. He gets away with it.

But he, the master of trash talk, now lectures Bidennand reacts with shock.

Categories Biden, Bigotry, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Hypocrisy, Trump

Trump Says He Will Protect Women “Whether They Like It or Not”

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
12

The New York Times reported on Trump’s rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin yesterday, where he laid out the Trump Paternalism Doctrine.

He said he would protect women “whether they like it or not.”

Like he “protected” women by stripping away their reproductive rights?

Like he “protected” the women who accused him of sexual assault?

Women want to make their own decisions.

The story in the Times by Nicholas Nehamas and Erica L. Green pulled no punches, offered no “both sides”:

Former President Donald J. Trump said at a rally on Wednesday that he would protect American women “whether the women like it or not” — remarks that he cast as paternal but only served as reminders to many of his critics of his history of misogynistic statements and a civil court case that found him liable for sexual abuse…

Ms. Harris quickly sought to respond, writing on X: “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not.” Her campaign posted a series of videos on social media emphasizing Mr. Trump’s remarks. And it sent out a news release that blared: “In Wisconsin, Trump reminds women how little he values their choices…

Over the course of the campaign, Mr. Trump and his allies have made a series of misogynistic, sexualized attacks against Ms. Harris. In August, Mr. Trump used his social media website to amplify a crude remarkabout her that falsely suggested she had traded sexual favors to help her political career. On Sunday, at his Madison Square Garden rally, one speaker referred to Ms. Harris as having “pimp handlers.” And a super PAC financed by his ally Elon Musk released an ad that called her a “C word,” although the ad eventually revealed that the word was “communist,” rather than the slur for women.

Mr. Trump has been accused by roughly two dozen women of sexual misconduct. In 2016, the “Access Hollywood” tape caught him boasting about grabbing women by the genitals, remarks he later dismissed as “locker room banter.” The writer E. Jean Carroll said he raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. In civil proceedings, Mr. Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll, and ordered to pay hefty fines. Mr. Trump is appealing the case.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Gender, Trump

Talking Points Memo: The Phony Firestorm Over Biden’s Gaffe

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2024 //
13

David Kurtz writes about the media’s supercharged response to President Biden’s comment about the comedian who called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage.” He said that the people at the Madison Square Garden event were garbage, but he meant that calling Puerto Rico a garbage island was garbage.

The media and the Republican Party leapt on the story because it diminished attention to Kamala’s excellent speech in Washington, D.C.

Kurtz writes:

Here We Go Again

Like sharks with blood in the water, leading national political reporters went into a feeding frenzy last night after Republicans faked outrage at remarks from President Biden that they construed as calling Trump supporters “garbage.”

This dance is so predictable, rehearsed, and tired that everyone has their roles to play and feels compelled to play them despite how intellectually and journalistically bereft the whole exercise has become.

Among the tells in the coverage:

  • Top-tier political reporters quickly jumpedon the perceived gaffe;
  • The parsing of what Biden said quickly gave way to “meta” analyses that it didn’t matter because it was a gaffe anyway;
  • Republican professional fake outrage was treated like a genuine groundswell of umbrage.

On that last point, “firestorm” was the word of choice:

  • Axios: Biden sets off election firestorm with “garbage” comment
  • Politico: Biden sparks a firestorm on the right over ‘garbage’
  • NBC News: Biden sets off a firestorm with his response to Trump rally comedian’s Puerto Rico comments

Among the bigs, the WaPo managed to come closest to capturing the actual dynamic: White House, Trump campaign clash over whether Biden called Trump supporters ‘garbage.’

I’ve grown weary of explaining how these kinds of journalistic set pieces require suspending good, independent news judgment; rely on old, hackneyed journalistic tropes; and traffic in erroneous assumptions about Republicans (and journalists themselves) representing the “real America.”

This kind of coverage has been deeply problematic for a long time, as TPM has pointed out relentlessly for two decades. It has become more egregious and even less defensible when gaffe-based, double-standard coverage is deployed in covering an election with democracy on the ballot.

The coverage lacks intellectual rigor in too many ways to list here, but here’s one example to illustrate the point. When Biden – who isn’t even on the ballot any longer – says something imprecise or wrong-headed, he and the White House scramble to correct the record, say that’s not what he means and not what he thinks, and emphasize what he does actually mean and think. It’s an elaborate self-disavowal. When Trump says something truly outrageous, on purpose, he usually doubles down in the face of withering criticism and confirms that’s exactly what he meant. It’s the former and not the latter that is prone to getting the “firestorm” coverage.

The fact that this manufactured outrage and the race to cover it comes five days after Trump called America a “garbage can for the world” makes the whole thing beyond absurd.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Washington Post: Trump’s Vulgarity Drags the Nation’s Politics into the Gutter

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2024 //
22

I did not cancel my subscription to the Washington Post despite the fact that I was outraged by billionaire Jeff Bezos’s censorship of the editorial board, which intended to endorse Kamala Harris.

I expected that the response of the editorial board and the opinion writ were a would double down on their contempt for the insurrectionist, lying former president.

As this editorial today shows, the editorial board will not be silenced. In this editorial, it draws a straight line between democracy and civility, a character trait that Trump knows not.

Unless Bezos replaces the editorial board with MAGA types, the WaPo editorials will dole out contempt for Trump every day that remains of the campaign. The last paragraph, in particular, is a gem.

Think of it as slow-walking its endorsement of Kamala.

Democracy depends on many things: institutions, traditions, public legitimacy and, yes, a culture of civility. The peaceful transfer of power requires people to have at least a minimum degree of trust in their fellow citizens — that the stakes are not existential. In this regard, former president Donald Trump showed, in his closing argument at a raucous rally at Madison Square Garden, that whether he wins or loses on Nov. 5, he has already done severe damage to American politics by coarsening and corroding public discourse.

Seeking to limit the fallout after a rally speaker referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt lamented on Monday on Fox News: “It’s sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian rather than the truths that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had.”

Here are some of the “truths” from the other “phenomenal” speakers, none of which the Trump campaign disavowed: Businessman Grant Cardone likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute. “Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country,” he said. David Rem, billed as a childhood friend of Mr. Trump’s, called Ms. Harris the “Antichrist” and “devil” while waving a cross onstage.

Radio host Sid Rosenberg called Hillary Clinton a son of a b—- and dropped an f-bomb as he said that all Democrats are “degenerates … lowlifes.” Rudy Giuliani, disbarred over his misconduct as a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s effort to block the 2020 election results, said Ms. Harris is “on the side of the terrorists” in the Israel-Gaza conflict. Donald Trump Jr. claimed Democrats want to “replace” Americans with immigrants.

The stand-up comedian who made that nasty crack about Puerto Rico, Tony Hinchcliffe, made other tasteless ethnic jokes about African Americans, Latinos and Jews. The Bulwark reported that Trump campaign staffers reviewed a script of Mr. Hinchcliffe’s routine in advance and asked him to excise only a line that referred to Ms. Harris as a “c—.”

Even so, a pro-Trump group funded by Elon Musk, who also spoke at Sunday’s rally, posted on X, the platform he owns, and later deleted a video that referred to Ms. Harris as the c-word. After some innuendo, the video’s narrator clarifies that they mean she’s a communist.

To be sure, Mr. Trump has been destabilizing civil discourse since even before he started his 2016 campaign: It was in 2011 that he started voicing support for the false notion that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Yet in the final weeks of this election, he seems to be making the normalization of incivility one of his campaign’s de facto objectives.

He opened a rally this month in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, by commenting on the size of golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia. Mr. Trump told the crowd that night that his wife, Melania, has urged him to use less foul language and that evangelical leader Franklin Graham wrote him a letter pleading the same case. His punchline is that he cannot help himself because Ms. Harris has been a “s—” vice president and everything she touches turns to “s—.” The crowd started chanting “s—” in Latrobe. A top-selling shirt outside his rallies describes Ms. Harris as a “hoe.”

True, Mr. Trump’s campaign is not only a cause of this society’s spreading incivility but a consequence of it. Moreover, norms regarding profanity follow a cultural dynamic separate from politics, and the culture is more permissive about such things than it once was. This may explain why Ms. Harris has also occasionally been using four-letter words on the stump. She swore up a storm in a Rolling Stone interview and said being vice president has made her more profane. Her running mate, Tim Walz, called Mr. Musk “a dips—” during a rally last week. Not a great example. But Mr. Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally and events like it are in a class by themselves, not least in their threatening tone.

When he finally took the stage on Sunday, the former president declared without irony: “The Republican Party has really become the party of inclusion.” Then, over 80 minutes, he promised to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport undocumented immigrants, called Democrats “the enemy within” and the mainstream media “the enemy of the people,” described the United States as “an occupied country,” and predicted Nov. 5 will bring “Liberation Day.” Even without a vulgarity, it was the most offensive language of all.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Media, Trump
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