Michael A. Cohen: This Debate Might Make a Difference

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2024 //
12

Michael A. Cohen (NOT the ex-Trump lawyer) writes that this debate might change the views of independent, uncommitted voters. Trump’s behavior and Harris’s cool were a stark contrast. Republicans are complaining that the moderators fact-checked Trump but not Harris, and were biased. But a few of Trump’s many lies were so egregious that the moderators were compelled to correct him, such as his debunked claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating pets, and his claim that Democrats support “post-birth” abortion. The moderators pointed out that the pet story was a hoax and that no state allows murdering a baby after birth.

Cohen writes:

Presidential debates usually don’t matter. A trove of political science literature suggests that most debate watchers have already decided whom they are supporting. While a winning candidate might get a temporary boost from a strong performance, the polling bump often fades. 

However, last night’s showdown between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump could be the exception to the rule. Why? Because never before in American presidential politics has there been a debate as one-sided as what we saw Tuesday night in Philadelphia. 

If this had been a heavyweight fight, a towel would have flown across the ring and the referee would have stopped the bout. This was such a rout that even conservative pundits bemoaned Trump’s disastrous performance. Over and over, Harris threw fresh chum into the water. In practically every one of her answers, she included at least one line that she knew would firmly lodge itself under Trump’s infamously thin skin. 

She needled Trump about his boring political rallies and pointed out that his alma mater, the Wharton School of Business, had thrown cold water on his economic plans. She listed his litany of criminal indictments and prosecutions. She repeatedly called him a disgrace and an easy mark for foreign leaders.

And each and every time, without fail, Trump took the bait. The result was a series of angry, disjointed and incoherent rants at ever-increasing decibel levels. He claimed without evidence that “many of those [Wharton] professors … think my plan is a brilliant plan.” He defended his political grievance fests by claiming they are the “most incredible rallies in the history of politics.” And in the debate’s most bizarre moment, he falsely claimed that immigrants in Ohio are stealing and killing pet animals. The contrast between sullen, angry Trump and polished, even-keeled Harris couldn’t have been starker. While much of the analysis from last night will focus on Trump’s lunacy, Harris’ performance may have been more decisive.

By and large, voters know what they think about Trump. Nine years in the political spotlight will have that effect. But Harris has been a 2024 presidential candidate for just seven weeks. If recent polling is to be believed, going into last night many voters saidthey want to know more about her. In a New York Times poll released Sunday, 28 percent of voters “said they felt they needed to know more about Ms. Harris, while only 9 percent said they needed to know more about Mr. Trump.” The number is close to half among the small segment of undecided voters. Along with last month’s Democratic convention, Tuesday’s debate was one of Harris’ best opportunities to introduce herself to the public. Did last night seal the deal? CNN’s instant poll taken immediately after the debate showed Harris trouncing Trump 63-37. That’s almost a mirror image of its poll after the Biden-Trump debate earlier this year. It’s similar to the margins for Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney in the first debates of the last three presidential elections — each of which led to a bump in the polls.

But a strong debate performance is no guarantee of victory. In 2004, John Kerry trounced George W. Bush in all three presidential debates. The same was true for Clinton against Trump in 2016. In 2012, Romney wiped the floor in his first debate with a listless Barack Obama. None of those three ended up in the Oval Office. 

Still, the differences between Harris and Trump were so significant — and considering the potential boost to a candidate not as well known as her opponent — it’s hard to imagine last night’s debate will not have at least some effect on voter opinion. At the very least, she might have given the sliver of the electorate still unsure about Harris enough information to win their vote in November.In the near term, the debate should generate days of coverage about the former president’s mental state. Perhaps it will also move the news media away from continuing to claim that Harris has not explained herself and her plans to the American people.

But ultimately, the question for Democrats is: Did Harris swing enough voters in her direction to ensure she wins the White House? Even if her poll numbers improve in the next week, will those gains remain in place until Election Day?

Time will tell. But if Trump remains a high-floor, low-ceiling candidate, with a strong base of support and a limited ability to bring in new voters, even a small move of undecided voters to Harris could be decisive. And it’s hard to imagine any presidential candidate having a better night than Harris did on Tuesday. Democrats can’t ask for much more than that from their new standard bearer.

Michael A. Cohen

Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for MSNBC and a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He writes the political newsletter Truth and Consequences. He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of three books, the most recent being “Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.”

Categories Elections, Fake, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Chris Tomlinson: Will the Debate Matter?

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2024 //
54

Chris Tomlinson of the Houston Chronicle believes that the debate will not matter to the partisans on either side. Not so clear is the impact of the debate on those not aligned with either party.

He writes:

The Sept. 10 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was must-see TV for people who closely follow politics. For those who love the genre, the candidates delivered an instant classic.

Trump brought his stump speech to national television, while Harris proved up to the task and avoided any major gaffes. But will it make a difference?

The June debate between Trump and Joe Bidendrew 51.3 million viewers, well below the 73 million people who watched their 2016 debate. Overnight numbers, which tend to underestimate viewership, estimated 65 million people tuned in Tuesday night.

Folks who watched the debate live more than likely tuned in to watch their champion do battle with their opponent. While nearly two-thirds of uncommitted focus groups said Harris dominated, Trump’s and Harris’ partisans declared their candidate the winner. No surprise there.

This week, I wrote about Colin Allred’s campaign to unseat Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate. I said Allred was naive to believe he could attract Republican voters. Reader emails confirmed that party affiliation is far more critical than any politician or their policies.

“Many of us would otherwise vote for Allred if control of the Senate was not at risk.  As is, we cannot take the chance of losing a Republican Senate seat,” Clay Spires wrote.

“I can’t bring myself to send Chuck Schumer another rubber-stamp vote in that highly polarized environment,” Greg Groh wrote about his ballot. “Only when both parties run moderates will voters have to start thinking again.”

By this reasoning, many Republicans will hold their nose and vote for Trump, no matter what he says. He really could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.

If the debate has any impact on independents, it will likely take place on social media, where people who didn’t watch it live will see snippets. The highly partisan editing, though, risks turning off voters disgusted by politics.

The real wildcard came after the debate when Taylor Swift felt compelled to make her position clear to 283 million Instagram followers that AI-generated images of her endorsing Trump were false. The world’s most famous childless cat lady has spoken.

Voter enthusiasm will decide this election, and women will likely make the difference, not the debate.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Politics, Trump

Karl Rove on the Big Debate: A “Train Wreck” for Trump

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2024 //
9

Karl Rove was the strategist behind the rise of George W. Bush. When he speaks, Republicans listen. He wrote the following article in The Wall Street Journal. The headline writer at the conservative journal described Trump’s performance as “catastrophic.” Trump has repeatedly described Harris in demeaning terms as dumb, a “DEI hire,” and a woman who rose in politics by giving out sexual favors. Yet she made mincemeat of him on the debate stage.

Rove wrote:

Tuesday’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined…

Mr. Trump had to know the vice president would try to get him to lose his cool. She did. She went after him on his multiple indictments. She called him “weak” and belittled him as a six-time bankrupt, spoiled inheritor of wealth. She said his former national security adviser thought him, in her words, “dangerous and unfit” for the Oval Office.

As is frequently the case with Mr. Trump, he let his emotions get the better of him. He took the bait almost every time she put it on the hook, offering a pained smile as she did. Rather than dismissing her attacks and launching his strongest counterarguments against her, Mr. Trump got furious. As her attacks continued, his voice rose. He gripped the podium more often and more firmly. He grimaced and shook his head, at times responding with wild and fanciful rhetoric. Short, deft replies and counterpunches would have been effective. He didn’t deliver them…

There was no sustained, specific indictment of her record on almost any issue. Mr. Trump offered angry responses, pursed lips and eyes darting mostly down, seldom looking at her. And what was it with his makeup that left white circles around his eyes? This was his most important opportunity to make an impression of strength and relative stability.

Both candidates made significant misstatements. Ms. Harris said her opponent “left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression” and Mr. Trump declared inflation under Biden-Harris “probably the worst in our nation’s history.” But his false statements far outnumbered hers by my count…

It matters how debating candidates carry themselves. There, it was no contest. Ms. Harris came across as calm, confident, strong and focused on the future. Mr. Trump came across as hot, angry and fixated on the past, especially his own. She mastered the split screen, projecting confidence and wordlessly undercutting him by smiling while shaking her head as he spoke…

Trump enthusiasts will be upset that the ABC interviewers fact-checked the former president far more than they did Ms. Harris. Then again, he gave them plenty of material to work with—such as repeating the bizarre claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating the pets of local residents. That was probably Team Trump’s lowest moment.

Will this debate have an effect? Yes, though perhaps not as much as Team Harris hopes or as much as Team Trump might fear. But there’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Mr. Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as “dumb as a rock.” Which raises the question: What does that make him?

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Politics, Trump

South Carolina: State Supreme Court Overturns Vouchers

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2024 //
8

Republican-controlled states have been on a crusade to enact vouchers, with the alone stimulus of billionaire lobbying dollars. We know from Michigan State University scholar Josh Cowen that most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. Thus, vouchers are a subsidy for people who can afford private schools, not for low-income students. Cowen also has demonstrated that the academic outcomes of vouchers are disastrous for kids who transfer from public schools (the evidence is contained in Cowen’s excellent new book: The Privateers).

The South Carolina State Supreme Court just overturned the state’s voucher program. Three judges recognized that the program violated the state constitution. Courts in other Republican-controlled states have decoded that the state constitution does not mean what it says.

Peter Greene writes in Forbes:

In many states, the challenge of creating a school voucher program is a constitutional requirement that public tax dollar are designated only for public schools. South Carolina’s legislature thought they had found a workaround; today the State Supreme Court said no.

The 3-2 decision came as a surprise. But the basis for the “relief granted in part” was straightforward.

The petitioners in the case make the claim that the voucher program violates Article XI, Section 4 of the South Carolina Constitution:

“No money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the State or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

The language is exceptionally direct and clear, but legislators thought they had created a workaround in the form of the Education Scholarship Trust Fund. The premise, seen in many taxpayer funded voucher programs in other states, is that once the money passes into the hands of a third party, it somehow sheds its public nature.

As the ruling puts it:

Respondents’ primary argument is that the funds start out as public funds but lose their public character once the Treasurer places the funds in the ESTF.

The court is unconvinced that the ESTF is a true trust. And the court points out that even if it is a trust, the nature of a trust is that the trustee holds legal title to the estate, and in this case, the trustee is the state. The court notes that “this is not the first time we have encountered an attempt to deploy a trust to avoid constitutional limits on the use of public funds” and cites O’Brien v. S. C. ORBIT.

The other argument by the state is that ESTF funds benefit the families, and do not provide “direct benefit” to the private schools. “[T]hey read our Constitution as allowing public funds to be directly paid to private schools as tuition as long as the funds are nudged along their path by the student.”

The state argues that this is not like the last time vouchers were struck down (Adams v. McMaster) because this time the vouchers can be used for private or public schools. Therefor the program does not provide direct benefits for private schools. However, responds the court, “just because the benefit is diffuse does not mean it is not direct.”

State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver responded to the ruling.

“Families cried tears of joy when the scholarship funds became available for their children, and today’s Supreme Court ruling brings those same families tears of devastation. The late timing of the initial filing and subsequent ruling on this case midway through the first quarter of the new school year wreaks havoc on the participating students and their families.”

The ruling is certainly inconveniently timed for those students who have already used the vouchers to start their new school year. It’s not clear what will happen to them.

Previously, Kentucky’s Supreme Court also struck down their state’s voucher program, arguing that the twists and turns built into the program did not conceal it’s fundamental nature—the use of public taxpayer dollars to fund private and religious schools in violation of the state constitution. In Kentucky, that has led to an attempt to rewrite the constitution. We’ll see what the South Carolina legislature tries next.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, South Carolina

Liz Cheney: A Profile in Courage

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2024 //
14

Liz Cheney is a conservative. She supported Trump during his term in office. She is opposed to abortion. But, unlike other conservatives, she was outraged by what Trump did on January 6, 2021. She was outraged that he refused to accept his loss and the peaceful transfer of power. She was so outraged that she agreed to co-chair the January 6 Commission.

And now she has announced that she will vote for Kamala Harris. Trump has threatened to prosecute her for treason if he regains office. She is not afraid of Trump. She is, she said in this interview with ABC News, afraid for her country.

She sacrificed her career and stood on principle. Her principle is the dominance of the Constitution and the rule of law.

She is a profile in courage.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Justice, Trump

Kamala Harris Was Great in the Debate!

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2024 //
119

I admit that I was very nervous before the debate. Trump is a polished entertainer, Harris is an experienced prosecutor.

She beat him. She baited him and he took the bait every time. He got angrier and angrier. He was furious. His face was contorted with rage. He sulked, he pouted. She stayed cool, collected, calm, and smiling. She was fearless and strong. She looked at him with amusement and disdain. She was never defensive.

She was terrific on abortion. She spoke about women who were having a miscarriage, bleeding in the back of their car because the doctors are afraid to give her the abortion she needs, because doctors are afraid of being arrested. She made it real.

Trump lied. He said that “everyone” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned–Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Every legal scholar, he said, wanted it gone. Lies.

Daniel Dale, the CNN fact-checker, said that Trump told 33 lies, Harris told one. Open the link to see the fact check.

The funniest moment was when Trump said that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and other pets in Springfield, Ohio. This story was circulated yesterday and was debunked by the police and city manager in Springfield. Why didn’t anyone on Trump’s staff let him know.?

I don’t know whether the debate will affect the vote. I hope it does.

Trump looked like a tired old man. She looked presidential.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Fred Smith: Nine Weeks Before Christmas!

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2024 //
9

Fred Smith usually write a Christmas poem but this year he decided to write an election poem.

Here it is:

The days are swift passing until it’s December

But Christmas will dawn on the 5th of November.

Two months ‘fore Election Day and throughout the land

Joy is a-stirring, hopeful relief near at hand.

Just one month ago, there was a sense of despair.

Optimism was fading and breathing foul air.

Then Biden withdrew; ‘twas all very sudden.  

Harris stepped up, and light started to flood in.

Cheerful Kamala smiled without missing a beat,

Catching a bone-spurred bully off guard on flat feet

She’s a Black-Asian woman who married a Jew.

See your priest or your rabbi if that troubles you.

So, Karma took over when Joe lost the debate;

Poetic justice, at last, dictating Trump’s fate. 

Running strong against Donald whose gospel is hate

Whose bloody rage keeps him in a constant red state.

She picked as her running mate, Governor Walz,

A true everyman, who responds to all calls.

When fast off they flew to swing states and rallied,

As Trump more and more scowled and dilly dallied.

He who had chosen JD Vance as his veep

Whose loyalty outweighed how much he’s a creep.

A wide-eyed senator dreaming on his love couch;

A perfect match partner for the impious grouch.

And as Grumpy campaigns with his sidekick Goofy,

This ragged tag team has been double down doofy.

Years back, there were signs Trump was non compos mentis,

Strutting his ruthlessness skills on the Apprentice,

Firing everyone at his ultimate whim

With unchecked power reserved only to him.

And twenty years ere that reality show

Wayne Barrett mapped the deets of Donald’s M.O.,

His inherent racism, the shield of Roy Cohn,

Dirty dealing and cheating, this all was well known.

This self-proclaimed titan whose casinos went bust;

A big entrepreneur no contractor could trust.

Now Trump’s mainly consumed by the size of each crowd,

Ranting in blue whale-ish suits that fit like a shroud.

With MAGA fanatics clinging to every word,

His saga of falsehoods far beyond the absurd.

Carrot-faced, his puss locked in a fixed grimace,

Stewing up gripes in a big steamy tsimmes

That he feeds to his base in a crock full of lies,

Which he always refills with unending supplies:

About how he built walls to bar immigration

That’s turning us into a third world nation.

And why it made sense to oppose vaccination,

Or how he lowered our high rate of inflation.

He has no policies, just makes rash decisions,

Blurting out confused, head-spinning revisions.

So, let’s figure out where he stands on abortions,

As he bends yes – no – maybe into contortions.

And he’s only become more misogynistic

With a baseline temper that starts at ballistic.

Who’s used the court system to dodge Judgment Day.

But like Yertle, he’s doomed to crash down the same way.

As Karismatic Harris along with the Coach

Continue to roll out, facing little reproach.

While last week’s convention put more wind in their sails,

And Felonious Trump stares at his choice of jails.

As he increasingly takes his roadshow on tour,

We get a chance to recount each faux pas du jour.

Effronteries and distractions almost non-stop:

Those losers at Arlington now serve as a prop;

And will he face Harris; will his mike be open;

And what might he say when he is gropin’?

But we must be careful.  Victory’s not in the bag

With twisted judges flying the upside-down flag,

Abetting Trump, concocting legal protections

Re the insurrection and stealing elections.

Yet there’s one Harris Poll that counts most of all,

When people show up to cast ballots this fall,

And tell Donald Trump where to go with his fury.

Voters will reach the verdict. We are the jury. 

Fred Smith retired from the New York City public school system

as an administrative analyst. His occasional poems and op-eds

have appeared in the Daily News and other newspapers.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Tom Nicholson: The First Question for Trump Should Be….

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2024 //
5

Tom Nicholson is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years. In this article, he proposed the first question for Trump:

Over the weekend, Donald Trump fired off a threat to arrest his political opponents if he wins the election. This should be the first—and maybe the only—thing he’s asked about tomorrow night.

I find it exhausting to have to point out that Donald Trump has—yet again—threatened to engage in violent and dictatorial behavior, and that—yet again—the collective reaction by some in America seems to be a numb acceptance that this is just who Trump is.

But as I wrote this past spring, Trump’s goal is to exhaust people who care about democracy: That’s why he regularly inundates the nation with his rancid word salads. His screeds are aimed at making us all so tired that when he actually attempts to carry out these schemes, we’ll hardly have the energy to notice. Oh, he’s ordering Homeland Security to arrest people in unconstitutional dragnets? Yeah, I’ve been hearing stuff about that for a long time.

Here is part of what he posted early Saturday evening over at his personal rantatorium, Truth Social:

CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.

This post is the 45th president of the United States putting in writing that he must win, and that after he wins, he will mobilize the machinery of government against his opponents because there was clearly fraud anyway.

(I will just note that I refuse to believe that Trump really coughed up a word like skulduggery on his own. Spelling it incorrectly does point to him, but the likelihood that someone else is writing these posts is a reminder that Trump is surrounded by people who have no objections to his plans and will willingly carry them out.)

Some of this was drowned out by Trump’s other deranged statements last week. Just before he issued his Stalinist threats, he dropped a piece of pure weapons-grade nuttery about kids getting gender-changing surgery during a normal school day in America. “Can you imagine you’re a parent,” he said at a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday, “and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?”

You cannot imagine it because it’s never happened. Any parent knows that most schools completely plotz if they even have to give a kid some ibuprofen, but on Planet Trump, school nurses can apparently do surgery in the office. At the same rally, Trump threatened to round up undocumented immigrants en masse and admitted it would be a “bloody story.”

To recap: In one day, Trump threatened the use of mass government violence inside the United States, asserted that kids are getting secret medical procedures at schools, and promised to lock up his political opponents. One might reasonably assume that when Trump takes the stage with Vice President Kamala Harris tomorrow night, the first thing the moderators will ask is: Are you out of your mind?

Well, maybe not in those words, exactly. But the very first question at the debate should reflect a basic paradox in this election: How can any meeting between Trump and Harris be a “debate” if Trump has already made clear that he rejects the foundations of the American system of government?

Debates are based on good faith and shared assumptions about democracy. Trump bellows at us, over and over, that he couldn’t give a damn about any of that. He’s running because he wants to stay out of prison, get revenge on his enemies, exercise untrammeled power, and gain access to even more money. Are we really expecting a give-and-take about, say, child care (a subject on which Trump was spectacularly incoherent a few days ago) between a candidate who will govern as a traditional president and a would-be junta leader who intends to jail his opponents—including, possibly, the woman standing next to him and the reporters grilling him?

I can’t give you a lot of headlines about all of these mad comments because, for the most part, they don’t exist. (Reuters summed up the raving on Saturday as “Trump Revs Up Small-Town Base in Wisconsin,” which is true, in the way that a 1967 headline saying Mao Encourages Chinese Intellectuals to Aid With Agricultural Efforts would be true but perhaps incomplete.) The New York Times had nothing about Trump’s weekend comments on its front page today. This morning’s Washington Post homepage simply said: “Harris Hunkers Down for ‘Debate Camp,’ Trump Opts for ‘Policy Sessions’ as Showdown Looms.” This headline is no doubt an accurate account of what’s happening in the campaigns, but “Trump says he will inevitably win and prosecute his opponents for fraud anyway” is probably more important than whether he is being briefed yet again on policies he doesn’t care about or understand.

Politico, meanwhile,boldly suggested yesterday that the “shadow of Tulsi Gabbard” now “looms” over Harris. Yes, if there’s one thing we’re all wondering, it’s how the shadow of …

Wait, what? Tulsi Gabbard?

For those of you not steeped in the current weirdness of American politics, Gabbard is the former representative from Hawaii who was masquerading for a few years as a standard Democrat before quitting her job in Congress and coming out as a fringy attention seeker. In a 2019 Democratic primary debate, she managed to rough up Harris on a question about crime.

When Harris is about to step onstage with Trump—a convicted felon, the instigator of a violent insurrection, and an avowed threat to democracy—does anyone at Politico believe that millions of Americans are tuning in and thinking Gosh, I remember that big Tulsi Gabbard moment; I wonder if that shadow is looming here?

Several writers at The Atlantic, including our editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, have raised the issue of the “bias toward coherence” that prevents many journalists—and millions of Americans—from saying out loud that the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States is emotionally unstable and a menace to the Constitution. This is not going to change in the next two months. But if Trump’s comments this weekend are not the first questions at the debate—if his threat to democracy is not the only question—then there is no point in debates at all.

Categories Elections, Shame, Trump

Lawrence O’Donnell Shows How the New York Times “Sane-Washed” Trump

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2024 //
9

In this excellent clip from last night, Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC shows in detail how the New York Times “sane-washes” Trump’s nonsensical assertions.

In an article yesterday about Trump’s incoherent and rambling response to a question about whether he planned to lower the cost of child care for American families, the Times published his comments in full.

The article attempted to make sense of what he said, commenting that he believed the vast sums of money collected by tariffs would pay for everything, including child care. Trump thinks that tariffs are a tax on foreign nations.

As O’Donnell explains, tariffs raise the price of imported goods. They are not a “tax” on foreign nations.

But the Times does not explain this basic fact. Instead the article says, “In itself that would be a disputable policy assumption.”

Watch Lawrence O’Donnell eviscerate this lame article and the Times‘ failure to acknowledge that Trump’s claims were demonstrably wrong, not “a disputable policy assumption.”

Categories Economics, Elections, Failure, Media, Trump

Margaret Sullivan on “Sanewashing” Trump

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2024 //
119

Margaret Sullivan is an experienced journalist who previously served as the Public Editor (ombudsman) of The New York Times. She now has a blog, where she writes about the media.

In this post, she explains the phenomenon called “sanewashing.” What is this term? It’s recently invented, presumably in reaction to current events. It refers to framing a news story to describe an incoherent rant as a thoughtful policy discussion.

She writes:

Like whitewashing a fence, sanewashing a speech covers a multitude of problems. The Urban Dictionary definition: Attempting to downplay a person or idea’s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public … a portmanteau of “sane” plus “whitewashing.”

Here, as an example, is a Politico news alert that summarizes a recent Trump speech: “Trump laid out a sweeping vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs and light-touch regulation in a speech to top Wall Streets execs today.” As writer Thor Benson quipped on Twitter: “I hope the press is this nice to me if I ever do a speech where no one can tell if I just had a stroke or not.”

Trump has become more incoherent as he has aged, but you wouldn’t know it from most of the press coverage, which treats his utterances as essentially logical policy statements — a “sweeping vision,” even.

After the intense media focus on Joe Biden’s age and mental acuity, you would think Trump’s apparent decline would be a preoccupation. He is 78, after all, and often incoherent. But with rare exceptions, that hasn’t happened.

I will give the Washington Post some credit here for the way it covered the speech mentioned above, specifically his answer to a question about how he would fund child care.

“Trump offers confusing plan to pay for U.S. child care with foreign tariffs,” the headline said. But many others, including the New York Times, sanewashed what he said, which went like this:

“Well, I would do that and we’re sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, who was so impactful on that issue … But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’ve talking about because the childcare is childcare, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.”

And then he went on to say that his idea of tariffs on China will take care of the cost of pretty much everything, which might remind you of how he claims deporting immigrants will pay for affordable housing.

Sweeping vision, you say?

But why does the media sanewash Trump? It’s all a part of the false-equivalence I’ve been writing about here in which candidates are equalized as an ongoing gesture of performative fairness.

And it’s also, I believe, because of the restrained language of traditional objective journalism. That’s often a good thing; it’s part of being careful and cautious. But when it fails to present a truthful picture, that practice distorts reality.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Fake, Language, Lies, Trump
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