His rallies and press conferences are rich sources of material, fountains of molten weirdness that blurp up stuff that would sink the career of any other politician. By the time they’re over, all of the attendees are covered in gloppy nonsense.
And then, once everyone cleans up and shakes the debris off their phones and laptops, 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….
Reporters might listen to Trump and then understandably be reluctant to start typing stories that must feel like spec scripts for The West Wing pieced together by a creative-writing circle:
The former president, lying about abortion laws, said women murder their own babies in the delivery room. He megalomaniacally claimed that he gets bigger crowds than anyone in history, and compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr. He descended into fantasy by telling a story about surviving a helicopter emergency that never happened with a man who wasn’t there.
Instead, The New York Times ran this headline: “Trump Tries to Wrestle Back Attention at Mar-a-Lago News Conference.” The Washington Post said: “Trump Holds Meandering News Conference, Where He Agrees to Debate Harris.” The British paper The Independent got closer with: “Trump Holds Seemingly Pointless Press Conference Filled With False Claims,” but CNN went with “Trump Attacks Harris and Walz During First News Conference Since Democratic Ticket Was Announced.”
All of these headlines are technically true, but they miss the point: The Republican nominee, the man who could return to office and regain the sole authority to use American nuclear weapons, is a serial liar and can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy.
I don’t think I’ve been as frustrated by the MSM, but particularly the NY Times, since the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, so it did my heart good to read this interview with Bernie Sanders conducted by the NY Times, which is dripping with righteous disdain for the NY Times.
There’s a generational thing going on here, I know. But the fact is that old guys like Bernie and me—and even old conservative Never Trumpers like Nichols— understand something that too many kids in media these days don’t, which is that underneath the “vibe” there’s reality, and it matters.
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