The Media Has Three Weeks to Learn How to Tell the Truth About Trump
Donald Trump keeps getting worse
and worse. Last Friday in Aurora, Colorado, he gave
a speech that was both bonkers and fascist, asserting that the
city—where crime is down 17 percent—had been “conquered” by Venezuelan gangs
and announcing that he’d use a 1798 law to deport them. Sunday morning, he said
on Fox that “the enemy within” who might be planning any Election Day
chaos—“sick people, radical left lunatics,” but presumably for the most part
citizens of the United States—should be handled by the National Guard or even
the military.
Of course, these things received
coverage. The New York Times’ account
of the Aurora speech was really quite good. The first paragraph said outright
that in the speech, Trump “repeated false and grossly exaggerated claims about
undocumented immigrants that local Republican officials have refuted.” It went
on to explain that the demagogic claim about the gangs started as a housing
dispute, was quite isolated, and was taken care of by local law enforcement.
It quoted the city’s Republican
mayor as saying: “The city and state have not been ‘taken over’ or ‘invaded’ or
‘occupied’ by migrant gangs. The incidents that have occurred in Aurora, a city
of 400,000 people, have been limited to a handful of specific apartment
complexes, and our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns and
will continue to do so.”
What more could the Times have
done? Well, here’s one thing: Anyone who has spent any time in this industry
knows that, for better or for worse, the headline is what’s likeliest to stick
with the reader. It’s often the only thing that a reader even reads. So it’s a
problem that all that straightforward and laudable reporting appeared under a
euphemistic and mealy-mouthed headline: “Trump Rally in Aurora, Colo., Is
Marked by Nativist Attacks.”
I write headlines. I know you have
to make them fit. I can see that “Marked by” has the virtue of not taking up
many characters. But seriously. “Marked by,” “nativist,” and “attacks” are all
euphemisms that water down what actually happened. Who made the “nativist
attacks”? It was Trump! This headline almost implies that he was the passive
victim of some nativism that broke out nearby.
Looking for brief, punchy, and true?
Try these on for size: “At Colorado Rally, Trump Spreads Racist Lies.” “In
Colorado City, Trump Plays Up Problem That Doesn’t Exist.” “Trump, in Colorado,
Fans Flames with Xenophobic Lie.”
I could go on.
Look, maybe the daily coverage of
what Trump does has improved, even if the all-important headlines could still
be a lot better. But the frustration many people feel with the way the
mainstream press is covering Trump isn’t limited to the reporting about what he
did or said yesterday. It also involves what we call in the biz “enterprise
reporting”—that is, reporting that isn’t based on what happened yesterday but
that a news organization decides to do on its own, not in response to the daily
news cycle but to bring a matter to its readers’ attention.
Here’s the sharpest example this
year of what I’m talking about. We all know about Trump’s plan to deport up to
20 million people. Every outlet has written about this. Some places have done very
good reporting on it. This Washington
Post Philip Bump piece from back in May was excellent. The Times’ biggest piece looks like this
one, from July.
But the single best article about
this, by far? It was by the
criminal-justice journalist Radley Balko on his Substack, also in May. It
must have been 10,000 words long, maybe more, and it was absolutely harrowing—the
details about the size of the army that would be needed to round people up, the
number of buses and airplanes involved, the size of the camps that would have
to be built, and much more.
Balko has a reputation and a
following. But he isn’t The New York Times, The Washington Post, the
AP, or a network news channel. None of our major outlets come up with coverage
that equals the effort that this one Substacker (who was actually on the
staff of The Washington Post until October 2022) managed to provide
on the topic. Why? And do they have plans to revisit this topic in the next
three weeks—or is it “old news” because it’s “already been covered”?
“Already been covered” is how
journalists’ brains may work, but it isn’t how regular people’s brains are
wired at all. This is arguably the most consequential action any presidential
candidate has proposed in the recent history of the country. And lately, Trump
has expanded it to
include people who live here legally, like the Haitians of
Springfield, Ohio. Far from simply booting those who have entered the country
illegally, or deny hearings to migrants seeking asylum, Trump and his acolytes
have recently been talking about “remigration”—a
euphemism for picking and choosing legal and naturalized citizens to shove out
of the country against their will.
This plan will alter the fabric of
the nation in a way nothing ever has. We’re talking about up to 5 percent of
the people living in the United States being rounded up, taken from their homes
and families, locked in a camp somewhere, and forcibly flown out of the country
where they have lived in many cases for years. We’re also talking about
something that will cost—and
this is a conservative estimate—$315 billion. Plus it will blast big,
billion-dollar holes in tax revenues and create an estimated loss to gross domestic product between 4.2 and 6.8 percent. This isn’t just an evil plan, it’s a costly plan.
The media can’t just let voters
forget this because it’s “old news.”
January 6 is “old news.” Trump’s
catastrophic handling of Covid, which may have caused 400,000
unnecessary deaths, is “old news.” So is the Muslim ban (which will be
returning if he’s elected), so is the favoring of Vladimir Putin over U.S.
intelligence agencies, and so is the Big Lie, and so are a lot of things.
They’re old news. But they’re horrifying and un-American things.
The bottom line is this. Trump
simply can’t be covered like most candidates, for two reasons. One, he was
president before (something that hasn’t happened since Grover Cleveland), so we
have a track record to examine and reexamine. You could call Trump’s four years
in office “old news” if you want, but that sample size is still the best guide
for what his future presidency will be like.
Two, the things he’s proposing are
radical and dangerous. Call that a subjective judgment if you want. But by now
it’s the subjective judgment of a hell of a lot of people. General Mark Milley,
whom Trump once suggested should be executed (speaking of ways in which Trump
is unlike all other presidential candidates!), called
Trump “fascist to the core.” So the sentiment is hardly limited to editors
of liberal magazines.
Admittedly, some of the
responsibility falls on Democrats here. These are topics that they should be
speaking out on whenever they’re in front of a reporter or a television camera.
But the press is supposed to play a civic role in a democratic society. We’re
supposed to point out and resist threats to democracy. Donald Trump is that,
and obviously so. There are not two sides to that story. And as long as Trump roams
the landscape, it’s news.
