Hey, Does Anyone Want to Talk About Donald Trump’s Infirmities?
It’s been a pretty dark time, where the press has surprisingly strayed from the truth about the Trump administration. Parker Molloy, TNR contributor note that, after Trump responded to the No Kings protest with an AI-generated video showing him dumping gallons of shit on the protests from a fighter jet, the media had great difficulty erasing the edges of the story. There was a time when even the perception of this type of antipathy towards ordinary citizens – for example, when you call them “deplorables”? – aroused the fury of the media. (Hell, there was a time when the political media issued a fatwa against Howard Dean for shouting at his own rally.) But it never really turned into a scandal — although I admit the Democrats could have done a better job on the issue.
And as we learned this week, prodding can do wonders. Steve Bannon, as usual, sowed the media pasture with his announcement that there is a “plan” in place to run Trump for a third term. From there, an entire news cycle blossomed, in which reporters peppered Trump with questions about his plans to run again, all of which he evaded—and thus those same reporters told their readers: that he does not exclude it. Perhaps my favorite bit of “Will Trump commit another crime?” » boomlet was a Time magazine article title “Why Trump Keeps Talking About a Third Term,” which suggested: “Whether Trump is actually considering running for president again, in defiance of the Constitution, just raising the possibility, some observers say, may be strategic in itself.”
The only problem with this statement is that Trump didn’t talk about it…a group of journalists wereand in doing so, he turned what should have been a confrontation (“Why do your allies keep saying you’re considering repealing the Constitution?”) into a joke joke where they help Trump consider his options. (We reliably know that the president finds the maneuver of running for vice president “so cute.”) Trump, for once, seemed to understand what game was afoot. “Am I not ruling it out?” he responded to a question: “I mean, you’ll have to tell me.” » And that’s what they did, in the pages of their publications.
