Media Still Struggles With Covering Supervillain’s Presidential Campaign

The trouble with Trump

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is an adjudicated rapist and a convicted felon. I mention this because the mainstream media usually forgets and just covers Trump as if he’s a normal political candidate who offers actual ideas rather than what Hillary Clinton correctly described as “a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.”

Last Thursday, Trump gave another disaster press conference, where what remains of his sanity further deteriorated before our eyes. He claimed he drew bigger crowds than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington. He told an imaginary story about almost going down in a helicopter with either Willie Brown, Nate Holden, or some entirely different Black man.

None of this was particularly sane or rational. However, instead of Crazy Man Seeks Nuclear Codes Again, the headlines were more sedate. From ABC News: “Trump lashes out about Harris crowd size, attacks her intelligence at press conference,” with the subhed “The former president continued to make false claims about the election.” (That’s a senile delusion at this point, like a 78 year old who insists he’s Napoleon.) The Hill: “5 takeaways from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago news conference.” (There’s actually only one: He’s absolutely deranged.) The Washington Post: “Trump holds meandering news conference, where he agrees to debate Harris.” He didn’t agree to debate Vice President Kamala Harris so much as he fell apart like wet tissue paper after trying and failing to pull the okie-doke on her (she doesn’t fall for that). “Meandering” is also too generous a description for Trump’s incoherent caravan of lies and slander. “Meandering” more aptly describes taking nine seasons to tell your kids how you met their mother. (She was the bass player at their aunt and uncle’s wedding. Done.)

And of course The New York Times delivers this nonsense: “Trump Tries to Wrestle Back Attention at Mar-a-Lago News Conference.” The subhed minimizes Trump’s mental breakdown: “In an hourlong exchange with reporters, the former president criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for not doing the same, insulted her intelligence and boasted about the size of his rallies.”

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He didn’t boast about the size of his rallies. He repeatedly lied. He declared, “In South Carolina, I had 88,000 people. In Alabama, I had 68,000. Nobody says that.” According to The Post and Courier, the South Carolina event was actually a major football game where Trump appeared briefly. “He made no remarks,” reporter Caitlyn Bird wrote. “He just smiled and waved.” (That reads like the last tragic line in a Faulkner novel.)

Way too many journalists praise Trump for giving interviews where he just lies and insults people. And when Harris does speak to the press, they only ask her about Trump’s racist gibberish. (Watch below.)

The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg argues that the media has a “bias toward coherence” with Trump. As Tom Nichols explains, “so much of what Trump said seems too bonkers to have come from a former president and the nominee of a major party that journalists are left trying to piece together a story as if Trump were a normal person.”

Political analyst Amy Walter at Cook Political Report posted last month on social media, “If this election is about policy like inflation/immigration, Trump wins. If it is about Trump, well, there’s the opening for Harris.” With respect, this is a bonkers statement. Hillary Clinton was right in 2016 when she said Trump had no serious policy positions, and that remains true today. Trump is incapable of not making this election (or anything else) entirely about himself, but the media seems intent on playing Weekend at Bernie’s with his mental state.

The New York Times liveblogged the latest Trump train wreck, and Jonathan Weisman wrote at one point, “This is an interesting dance. Trump has spent much of this news conference hitting Kamala Harris on crime. Now he is pointing to his own record on overhauling the criminal justice system.”

The Charleston is an “interesting dance.” You could even say it’s the bee’s knees! But Trump is a convicted criminal who’s been indicted for multiple felonies. His actual criminal record is more relevant here.

Reid Epstein at the Times offered this “both sides” bromide: “Trump’s rambling, disconnected-from-reality monologues have long been a staple of his political persona. Biden, especially in the debate, also delivered rambling digressions that often left people confused and left voters with a sense of despair about both candidates.”

Biden, at his worst, could sound like an average 81-year-old who lost his train of thought. He might even tell you about the time he wore an onion on his belt, but that’s far different from Trump’s unhinged, psychotic rhetoric.

Trump, the supervillain candidate

The media’s insistence on normalizing Trump reminds me of the Harley Quinn TV show storyline where the Joker runs for mayor. He’s literally in the middle of robbing a bank and the press is asking him generic political candidate questions such as, “What do you hope to accomplish as mayor of Gotham?” The Joker does have some interesting proposals for education and health care, because between him and Trump, he’s the more coherent psychopath.

Treating Trump like a normal candidate requires constantly forgetting the truth about him, which he doesn’t bother hiding. It’s as if mainstream political reporters are very stoned and their short-term memories are completely fried.

For instance, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the Times reported last weekend that Trump has “called [Harris] ‘nasty,’ on Fox & Friends, and a ‘bitch,’ repeatedly, in private, according to two people who heard the remark on different occasions.” This is believable, because if only one person in human history has ever called someone a “bitch” or the “n-word,” it’s Donald Trump. The Times gamely includes this response from Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung: “That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala, and it’s not how the campaign would characterize her.” That is left unchallenged, even though Trump was caught on tape saying, “I moved on her like a bitch.” He’s not Mitt Romney, who’d probably shout “oh fudge!” if he stepped barefoot on a rusty nail. Cheung does leave wiggle room for Trump using the gendered slur but just not in reference to the woman who’s leading in the polls and might publicly humiliate him. I appreciate that journalists don’t like to make themselves the story, but Haberman personally knows how Trump responds when a woman offends him. He’s repeatedly called her “Maggot Hagerman,” which is not normal.

This passage is also concerning:

Mr. Trump told one aide that Democrats were trying to “steal” the election again from him — comparing the reshuffling of the Democratic ticket to when state legislatures changed voting rules midway through the 2020 election cycle because of the Covid pandemic.

Trump is the one who tried to steal the 2020 election. He’s currently facing state and federal charges for his role in an attempted coup. Haberman and Swan present his pathetic whining as a reasonable opinion that a normal person might have. Harris replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee is not election theft, and state legislatures expanded voting access during a pandemic in the interests of public safety. The rules changes didn’t privilege Democrats over Republicans, as down-ballot House races showed. Trump is the fool who discouraged his own supports from mailing in their ballots.

The media won’t report on the active threat Trump poses, and how if he loses, he’s bound to reject the outcome and incite more violence. Trump is mentally unwell, but the media simply ignores the evidence. The latest smoking gun was a bizarre social media rant where Trump claimed that Harris used AI magic to make it seem like there was a massive crowd waiting for her in Michigan.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane.”

Trump goes on to accuse Harris of “ELECTION INTERFERENCE” and “CHEATING.” He’s already moved on to post-election coup preparations. A healthy political party would consider this all disqualifying.

The Joker is evil but not technically insane. He doesn’t suffer from delusions and is fully aware of his actions. Trump, however, is completely disconnected from reality, and if Harris brings the 2008 pain to his ass, the media will somehow act shocked when Trump’s narcissistic collapse results in another January 6 but worse. Trump isn’t normal and responsible journalism should cover him like the comic book villain he truly is.

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