The Media Covers A Make Believe President
The greatest sin of the American press is that they have, for the last three years, reported on him as if he were not a mentally incompetent madman.
by Justin Rosario
One of the most egregious failings of the press during the error and era of Trump is that they have been lying to us from Day One. The vaunted American media does not cover Donald Trump. The media covers a make believe president.
I don't mean that they spent almost two full years propagating his lies as president before making a halfhearted effort to push back. Nor do I mean that they've spent the last three years working as hard as possible to normalize Trump's insanity and his cult's white nationalism. Both of those things are dire threats to our democracy in and of themselves, but they're not the worst failing of the press.
The greatest sin of the American press is that they have, for the last three years, reported on him as if he were not a mentally incompetent madman.
Just to be clear: I am not being hyperbolic. I mean that literally. Trump is both intellectually diminished and clearly deranged. The press reports on him like he is a normal president. He is not. The damage this does to the nation is impossible to calculate.
It goes beyond stupidity
Trump is not, and has never been, a particularly bright individual. One of his professors recall him being a, shall we say, untalented student, and the myth of his business acumen is just that; a myth. This is a man who took the hundreds of millions of dollars his father illegally funneled to him and squandered it on multiple bad investments. Terrible steaks, a money losing airline, crap vodka, a scam "university," and more, Trump has a decades long reputation as a loser.
For the love of Dog, the idiot bankrupted a casino!
Trump’s current “success” comes from inexplicable, loans from Deutsche Bank, "loans" from the Russian mob, and what appears to be an enormous real estate money laundering scheme.
So, yeah, Trump is not a smart guy. But he wasn't intellectually diminished. Take a look at what I mean. Here's an interview Trump did in 1992:
He's still Trump, self-aggrandizing and a bit of a prick, but he's coherent. You can follow what he's saying. He completes his thoughts and stays on topic.
That is not who Trump is today. 1992 Trump spoke in coherent sentences and made sense. Trump in the later half of the second decade of the 21st century is almost incomprehensible.
Trump really is a dotard
Here's a direct transcript from a fundraiser in Iowa this past June:
You see what’s happening in California, where they just announced a plan to give free health care to illegal immigrants, when it could very well be used — all of that money — to provide housing and hospitalization and medical for the rising number of homeless people. Then the Democratic-run cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco — do you see what’s happening to those cities? Can you even believe it, what’s going on there? People are getting sick just by walking down the street. They’re getting actually sick, including police officers, who are incredible, the job our law enforcement does is incredible.
He skips from immigration to homelessness to the the police. All in under 30 seconds. And this is one of his more coherent passages. He manages to finishes his sentences, something that is by no means guaranteed most of the time. Trump will often stop in the middle of a sentence and go off on a wild tangent.
His speeches and press conferences and interviews are usually stream of consciousness rambling. Part of this has to do with the fact that Trump is extremely lazy and does not like to read in preparation. But a lot of it simply has to do with the fact that he is incapable of maintaining his focus. Even when he has a teleprompter to read from, he either reads it word for word in a lifeless tone because he's bored, or he flies off script because it's too difficult to stay on topic.
Yet, somehow, when the press reports on Trump, the impression that they give the public is that the man running the country is the man from 1992: Coherent. Competent (mentally, if not professionally). In possession of his faculties.
Trump's cult hang on his every word and have been conditioned to accept his rambling as inspired prose from the lips of White Jesus himself. He says what they're thinking, after all. And after 20-odd years of Fox, AM Hate Radio, right wing hate sites, and now OAN, what they're thinking is just as incoherent and muddled as what Trump says. This should worry you a lot more than it currently does.
But for the rest of the country, if the press had spent the last three years reporting on Trump's incoherence accurately, a lot more people would be far more invested in having him removed for the safety of the country.
Instead, we needed an Australian reporter to point out how dangerous this is. Here’s Lenore Taylor, editor of the Guardian in Australia:
In writing about this not-especially-important or unusual press conference I’ve run into what US reporters must encounter every day. I’ve edited skittering, half-finished sentences to present them in some kind of consequential order and repeated remarks that made little sense.
In most circumstances, presenting information in as intelligible a form as possible is what we are trained for. But the shock I felt hearing half an hour of unfiltered meanderings from the president of the United States made me wonder whether the editing does our readers a disservice.
I’ve read so many stories about his bluster and boasting and ill-founded attacks, I’ve listened to speeches and hours of analysis, and yet I was still taken back by just how disjointed and meandering the unedited president could sound. Here he was trying to land the message that he had delivered at least something towards one of his biggest campaign promises and sounding like a construction manager with some long-winded and badly improvised sales lines.
I’d understood the dilemma of normalising Trump’s ideas and policies – the racism, misogyny and demonisation of the free press. But watching just one press conference from Otay Mesa helped me understand how the process of reporting about this president can mask and normalise his full and alarming incoherence.
"...made me wonder whether the editing does our readers a disservice." Yes. Yes, it goddamn well does. Most people don't take the time to watch Trump speeches and rallies and whatnot. Especially since he loves to hear himself speak so much. They'll skim an article or two in the morning with breakfast or listen to the evening news as they discuss what Trump said, perhaps showing a short clip or two.
That means they are not exposed to the real Trump. The rambling, babbling, incoherent torrent of nonsense that comes out of his mouth. And I don't even mean his policy positions, which change from minute to minute anyway. I mean his fundamental inability to speak in full sentences like a functional adult.
"...helped me understand how the process of reporting about this president can mask and normalise his full and alarming incoherence." And that's it on the nose. Trump from 1992, not too bright but otherwise capable, has degenerated into a shambling pile of incoherence. He cannot keep a thought in his head for more than a few seconds. Less if he's agitated, which he often is these days.
And don't forget his pre-existing mental disorders
On top of his failing faculties, Trump was already a pathological narcissist and a sociopath. If you're not sure what a pathological narcissist is as opposed to just a run of the mill narcissist, here's a handy little animated video.
If you didn't have time to watch it, the highlights are that a pathological narcissist has a "grandiose view of oneself," "problems with empathy," "a sense of entitlement," and "a need for admiration" to such a degree that it takes over their life. It's all they think about.
Does any of that not sound 100% like Trump?
His entire life that we know about how been one long scream of "Me Me Me Me Me!!!!" and none of that changed when he ran for president or stole the election. From being incapable of expressing the slightest bit of emotion for others, on either a personal or national level, to taking glee in inflicting systemic harm on immigrants and refugees and Americans with brown skin, Trump has all the warmth of a serial killer and none of the social graces. (cont reading below)
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These kinds of severe personality disorders were ignored by other rich and famous people because when you've got money, you're allowed to be a monster. Your privilege protects you.
It's a little more difficult to hide your inhumanity when you're the president and it's flat-out impossible to hide when your emotional response to tragedy is something a robot would find cold and off-putting. Unless, of course, the press presents you to the world through the lens of "every other president."
Which is exactly what they've been doing for the past three years.
Oh, they've commented that he's not doing a good job being the moral leader of the nation but they have still been treating him like a regular president instead of a soulless monster who is manifestly incapable of human emotions other than rage and hate and spite.
If the press had spent the last three years adequately communicating that Trump does not care about the country because he literally cannot care about it, people would be less likely to view impeachment as a dastardly plot by the Democratic Party. With this more accurate framing, impeaching Trump would be more like a moral imperative to purge a cancer from the White House.
Normalizing the right is what the press does
At the end of the day, we really shouldn't be surprised that the press has failed in such a spectacular way. It's a core component of the American press to sand the sharp edges off of the right no matter how insane they get.
This is why we have seen articles explaining how Trump voters, including literal neo-Nazis, are just like you and me. This is why antifa throwing milkshakes is just as bad as white nationalists committing acts of terrorism and racking up a body count in the hundreds. This is why Democrats holding Trump accountable to the law is just like the GOP abusing their power to set the country on fire.
Why can't both sides just agree to meet halfway and let the right have some fascism while the left gives up most of its power? That's fair, isn't it?
The most amazing thing to watch will be after Trump is voted out of office, and then dragged out of the White House, the press will magically decide that they will hold the next Democratic president accountable like never before. Every little move will be questioned and challenged and scrutinized! Power of the press!
And right about the time a Republican gets elected again, after 8 years of dragging Democrats through the mud, the press will get tired of doing their job. Just like that, it will be time to stop speaking truth to power.
We saw this exact same dynamic in play from Clinton (impeach him!) to Bush (questioning a wartime president is treason!) to Obama (tan suits!) to Trump (we can't call them lies!). Why would we think it's going to be different this time?
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The reason the Liberally Biased Mainstream Media™ has normalized Drumpf is because the owners and decision makers of all these media outlets are just as greedy and narcissistic as Drumpf. From eyeballs for their advertisers, to the tax cuts they've received from him and the GOP, these so-called gatekeepers have decided Drumpf is good business for them. Personally and professionally, despite all the threats this usurper president has hurled at the journalists covering him. This is what former CBS president and leaver of toxic slime Leslie Moonves told a group of shareholders in a private meeting in the winter of 2016. Conflict sells for them. And Drumpf provides endless conflict.
This is why NBC can replace a turd hack like David Gregory with another turd hack like Chuck Todd as host of Meet The Press, instead of someone who can hold the feat of any Republican stooge to the fire.
And this is why the Liberally Biased Mainstream Media™ can normalize Drumpf's many serious crimes, in and out of the White House, while Hillary Clinton's nothingburger about her email server is considered A MILLION, BILLION, TRILLION, CAZILLION TIMES FAR, FAR WORSE THAN WATERGATE!!!!!
Until the attitudes of these hack institutions radically changes for the better, we are stuck with this glorified dog and pony show, ad nauseum. And I'm not holding out hope they will.
A big part of this has to do with his bullying. While it's hard as adults to admit that it could still have such a strong impact, everyone from the press to the politicians is cowered by it. Surely there is also a strong "both sides" journalistic bias, but on a subconscious level anxiety is a major part of the issue. And unfortunately he knows it, as a good sociopath would.
That he is a mentally handicapped person needs to be reiterated endlessly. In that way the anxiety can be replaced with understanding.