October 1, 2024

Tuesday, October 1, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

The issue is the Normalization of Donald J. Trump.

Members of Media and Democracy Project joined Rise and Resist's protest outside the New York Times offices in Manhattan on September 18th, 2024.

What is Normalization? What can we do?

First, here are two articles identifying the normalizing of the dangerous demagogue threatening our nation.

Oops, They Did It Again: The Mainstream Media Buries Trump’s Outrage

The former president spent the weekend spewing dangerous nonsense at a rally. The press spent its weekend polishing it into palatability.

It’s a pretty sad commentary on the way our mainstream media cover Donald Trump that if you really want to know what Trump said at a given rally, you would be wasting your time going to The New York Times or The Washington Post and you really need to read Aaron Rupar.

Who is Rupar? He’s a liberal Substacker and prolific tweeter who prints all the news The New York Times doesn’t deem fit to print. The latest case in point is Trump’s weekend rally at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin—an appropriately named venue for a speech in which Trump was barking out hatred and bile like a mad dog.

If you’re the sort of person really steeped in campaign coverage, you may have read about what went down; if you missed it, spoiler alert: Trump said something at this rally so insane and offensive that even the Times finally roused itself to cover it. Trump called Kamala Harris “mentally disabled” and added: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired; Kamala was born that way.”

That statement, whatever else we might call it, was obviously news, so the Times couldn’t help leading with it. Ditto the Post, which decided to produce a story that emphasized Trump’s violation of politically correct manners. The Post piece quoted a mental health advocate scolding Trump for his insensitive language—as if what he said was offensive only to people struggling with mental illness!

Meanwhile, here are some other things Trump said at the rally, which you had to read Rupar’s X feed to know about.

“These people are animals” (referring to migrants).

“I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We’re going to liberate our country.”

“You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re gonna lose your culture.”

And, finally, this gem: “They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.”

Let’s tarry over that last one for a bit. Here’s a man who wants to be the president of the United States saying of immigrants—all immigrants: women, children, old people, everyone—that they will invade your home and attack you in one of the most violent and painful (and terrifying) ways possible. They will cut your throat.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find that shocking, even coming from Trump. It’s one thing to say that Mexico is “sending rapists,” as he infamously did in 2015. Even making a general statement about how these people come here and commit crimes, while bad enough, isn’t nearly as bad as this. This is saying directly to every American that they will break into your house and cut your throat.

That sure seems like news to me. Yet it didn’t appear in either the Times or the Post account. The Times piece did have a sentence noting that Trump “continued to vilify” migrants and called them “stone-cold killers,” so let’s give them that, at least. But the plain implication of Trump’s statement here is that migrants are an imminent threat to one’s safety. This is an unambiguous incitement to preemptive violence. How can such a vicious statement not be thought of as news?

Here’s how. If your definition of “news” is simply that which is new, then OK, maybe. Calling his opponent who happens to be the sitting vice president of the United States “mentally disabled” was new, and ergo it was news. That I get.

But Trump attacking migrants isn’t new. Obviously, I would argue that a candidate for president raising the specter of people breaking into people’s homes and cutting their throats is new. Perhaps reasonable minds can differ on that, I guess. And if it isn’t new, it isn’t news.

But what if your definition of “news” is a little broader than that? What if, say, “news” is any meaningful piece of information that might be relevant to voters as they prepare to make their decision about whom to vote for? This is a reasonable and in fact better definition of news than simply that which is new, because it’s reality. Trump constantly saying extreme, racist, violent stuff can’t always be new. But it is always reality. Is the press justified in ignoring reality just because it isn’t new? Are we not allowed to consider his escalations as dangerous, novel developments in and of themselves? And should we not note the coincidence that his remarks seem more escalatory as the pressures of the campaign mount?

I know the mainstream media really doesn’t want to go here, but whether Trump is mentally fit to serve four years in the world’s toughest job is a very real and pressing question. But the press won’t raise it. That is to say, they have lately lost their taste for it. Not long ago, the press was perfectly comfortable talking about Joe Biden’s age. That seemed like a pretty urgent matter. But they absolutely will not talk about Trump’s mental fitness. Say what you want about Biden’s struggles with age, he never once threatened an entire group of human beings with political violence.

Why is age fair game for discussion but mental infirmity taboo? Is it because of basic human emotional responses to each matter—that is, we all see people age, it’s familiar, we’re comfortable talking about it—whereas with respect to mental health, talking about it makes us uncomfortable? If so, that’s a pretty lousy excuse. It’s journalism’s job to raise uncomfortable questions.

Another quote from Prairie du Chien that’s getting around on the internet is this one, referring to Customs and Border Patrol: “They have a phone app so that people can come into our country … these are smart immigrants, I guess, because most people don’t have any idea what the hell a phone app is.”

Ummm … what? OK. Thinking in 2024 that most people don’t know what phone apps are does not, I suppose, disqualify a person from being president. But if someone—The New York Times, say!—were to do a big story stringing together the many remarks like this Trump has made over the last two or three years, then we might have the conversation the electorate needs and deserves to hear about whether this man is competent to know the world’s deepest intelligence secrets and have his finger on the nuclear button.

I admit—the Times deciding to do such a piece would constitute a conscious decision to inject the issue of his mental well-being into the campaign. That’s not a decision editors should make lightly. On the other hand, not doing such a piece is a conscious decision too. It benefits Trump, but even more importantly, it keeps buried a question that is obviously relevant in this campaign and that voters should be asked to think about. The sanewashing continues.
(Michael Tomasky, editor, The New Republic).

The three phases of normalizing Trump's attack on Harris in Wisconsin.

The media did what it always does, and it's not good enough.

The use of neutral language. If you merely read about Donald Trump’s deeply offensive rally this weekend in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, you probably thought it was about immigration. And about Trump up to his usual tricks of disparaging his rivals.
Here the lead of the report from Axios, for example:

“Former President Trump, in a self-described ‘dark speech,’ told a rally in Wisconsin yesterday that his opponent, Vice President Harris, is “mentally impaired’ and “mentally disabled.’”

Axios, which favors bullet points and boldface help for the tuned-out, let us know “Why It Matters”: “Even for Trump, it was weird, nasty and nonsensical — when he needed to be swaying ‘national security moms’ and other undecideds.”

Or here’s the top paragraph of the Washington Post report: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized Vice President Harris’s mental capacity Saturday, falsely claiming she was born ‘mentally impaired’ and comparing her actions to that of a ‘mentally disabled person.’ The remarks prompted criticism from advocates for people with disabilities.”

Here’s the Associated Press’s headline: “Trump lists his grievances in a Wisconsin speech intended to link Harris to illegal immigration.”

But if you watched the speech, or even snippets of it, you saw something quite different — an absolutely ugly and brutal attack on Kamala Harris, full of lies and racist misogyny. In case you missed it, watch a bit of it here.

Somehow, “the remarks prompted criticism from advocates for people with disabilities” just does not get the job done. Nor does “lists his grievances.”

Nor does Bloomberg’s news alert: “Donald Trump sharpened his criticism on border security in a swing-state visit, playing up a political vulnerability for Kamala Harris.” Is that really what happened here?

The lack of substantial followup. Once the outrageous rally was over, and the stories with their neutral language written, the political media was ready — more than ready — to move on. The media does know how to follow up, as you may recall from, for instance, President Biden’s bad debate this summer. But in the case of Trump’s unhinged and ugly attack on Harris’s intelligence, the spot-news coverage was about it. I did not see countless outraged opinion pieces; I did not see days of stories examining every aspect of this. It was just, cover the speech and let’s get out of here.
The pivot to safety. Like waves rushing to the shore, the media relentlessly returns to the familiar. The thinking seems to go something like this: Whew, that was a pretty crazy rally, but let’s leave that behind and get back to what we’re good at. When in doubt, cover the horserace. One thing I did see after Saturday’s rally were many, many, many stories about polls. A New York Times headline Sunday rendered it this way: “Harris and Trump are Neck and Neck in Michigan and Wisconsin, Polls Find.” And that’s about as horserace-oriented as it gets.

I used to think that Trump’s rallies and speeches should not be shown live because that only gave him a media megaphone for his propaganda. I believed, and often wrote, that such coverage should only come later, accompanied by plenty of fact-checking and context. But I’m not so sure any more. Maybe, in order to get across how unhinged and offensive this really is, it needs to be seen in its full live form, complete with the red-capped faithful cheering on his every ugly insult.

One thing I’m sure of is that the current politics coverage is really not getting the job done.

Giving credit where due: I was impressed by a Trump investigation that led the New York Times Sunday print edition, an extensive investigation into his “pursuit of retribution” while in office — how he deployed the powers of the presidency against 10 individuals. Reporter Michael Schmidt clearly spent months on this deep dive, which covers more than two inside pages. (Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian).

One more thing.

Here is the New York Times editorial endorsement for Kamala Harris.

The Only Patriotic Choice for President.

The Editorial begins this way.

It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline — that he most lacks.

Those disqualifying characteristics are compounded by everything else that limits his ability to fulfill the duties of the president: his many criminal charges, his advancing age, his fundamental lack of interest in policy and his increasingly bizarre cast of associates.

This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.

For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.

Nevertheless, toward the end of their endorsement for Kamala, the Times Editorial Board continued to normalize Trump.

“ That’s not to say Mr. Trump did not add to the public conversation. In particular, he broke decades of Washington consensus and led both parties to wrestle with the downsides of globalization, unrestrained trade and China’s rise. His criminal-justice reform efforts were well placed, his focus on Covid vaccine development paid off, and his decision to use an emergency public health measure to turn away migrants at the border was the right call at the start of the pandemic.”

Remembering the million Americans who died as Trump was telling people to inject disinfectant into their veins to fight disease, I felt sick at this Times nod toward Trump.

What is with our press!

To read the whole Times editorial, click here.

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Where is the outcry against Trumpian violence?

Do you remember that the man who then was occupying the White House asked our military about shooting peaceful protestors?

This past weekend he said the way to stop crime was to let cops have, “one really violent day… one rough hour and I mean real rough…”

I posted this before, but please don’t let this pass. Don’t behave like our Press and media! Share this. Denounce Trump violence. Demand the Press and our leaders denounce him too.

Getting the record straight on Hurricane Relief.

Thank you, Heather Cox Richardson.

Where do you read or hear the Press and media denouncing - not occasionally but consistently and with loud outrage - the egregious GOP preposterous and obstructive votes which inevitably is followed by more GOP lies and boasts as they take credit for themselves on issues they voted against?

The partisan claim discussed below 👇 from Tennessee’s Republican leadership is a lie.

What rooftop can you shout it from?

September 29, 2024. Letters from an American.

Late Friday night, Tennessee House Republican Caucus chair Jeremy Faison posted “President Biden has finally approved [Tennessee governor Bill Lee’s] state of emergency request,” making it sound as if the delay in federal support for the state during the devastation of Hurricane Helene was Biden’s fault.

In fact, while Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina all declared emergencies and requested and received federal approval of those declarations before the hurricane hit, Governor Lee did not.

Instead, in keeping with an April joint resolution from the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature calling for 31 days of prayer and fasting to “seek God’s hand of mercy healing on Tennessee,” Lee proclaimed September 27 “a voluntary Day of Prayer & Fasting.”

Lee did not declare a state of emergency until late on September 27, after flash flooding had already created havoc. President Biden approved it immediately.

The extraordinary damage from Helene in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia continues to mount. At least 91 people have died, and search and rescue teams are at work across several states. More than 2 million people are without power, and western North Carolina is isolated after its roads washed out. A fire at a chemical facility in Conyers, Georgia, outside Atlanta forced the evacuation of 17,000 people nearby. The National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, wrote to the residents of the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia: “This is the worst event in our office’s history.”

Faison’s implication that Democratic president Biden, rather than Republican governor Lee, was to blame for the slow federal response to Helene in Tennessee illustrated the Republicans’ attempt to create a fake world to motivate their base with fear and anger while leaving Democrats to come up with real world solutions. And since those solutions are popular, Republicans are claiming credit for them.

In the past two days, Republican lawmakers who just days ago voted against funding the federal government and who have railed against government spending have been out front claiming credit for getting federal disaster relief.

More Trump lies and discord, this time over Hurricane relief.

This happened yesterday.

Trump falsely says Georgia's governor was unable to talk to Biden about storm damage

One more thing. Truth.

The Vice President spoke from FEMA Headquarters about Hurricane Helene relief and damage.

Watch her 3+ minute words. 👇 You will be proud you support her. You will want her even more.

Joe Biden will go to North Carolina on Wednesday. The Vice President’s schedule for visits to hard-hit areas is not yet set, but it will happen.

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What the Harris-Walz Campaign is doing.

Inside a Kamala Harris Ad That Draws an Implicit Contrast on Character.

The Ad itself.

Kamala’s ad. Touch this link to watch the ad.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is running this 30-second ad on television stations in at least four battleground states and has spent more than $5 million since first airing it in mid-September, according to AdImpact.

Here’s a look at the ad, its accuracy and its main takeaway.

On the Screen

The first few seconds of this ad are pulled directly from Ms. Harris’s appearance on Sept. 10 in a presidential debate against former President Donald J. Trump. Viewers see a composed vice president who leans on her career as a prosecutor to argue that she will represent Americans across political parties if she wins in November.

Photos show Ms. Harris as a prosecutor and then as vice president. Video clips show her alongside her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as she greets supporters at a market in Wisconsin and a campaign office in Phoenix. They show her speaking expressively to construction workers in Philadelphia and with volunteers at a Planned Parenthood in Minnesota. And they see her smiling, hugging or shaking hands with workers in a record shop and a nursery in Washington, D.C., a Georgia solar-cell factory, and a Wisconsin union hall.

The Script

HARRIS
“As a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or a witness, ‘Are you a Republican or a Democrat?’ The only thing I ever asked them: ‘Are you OK?’ And that’s the kind of president we need right now. Someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first. I intend to be a president for all Americans and focus on investing right now in you, the American people. And we can chart a new way forward.”

Accuracy

There are no verifiable claims.

The Takeaway

This ad is meant to portray Ms. Harris as more presidential than partisan. The promise of governing for all Americans has become a bit of a rote message — and Mr. Trump has promised to do the same — but her campaign is putting serious money behind the idea that voters still want to hear it.

The ad showcases Ms. Harris’s qualifications and does not make explicit mention of Mr. Trump. Yet it draws an unmistakable contrast between her behavior and that of the person who was standing just several feet to her right at the debate.

And it foregrounds what Ms. Harris has long considered one of her best career attributes: her years as a prosecutor who protected victims and cracked down on violent offenders.

Voters have signaled that they want to know more about Ms. Harris, and that the character of both candidates is a significant concern to them. The ad frames their choice as between a candidate who is empathetic, pragmatic and focused on moving past the political divisions of the past decade, and an opponent whose character is so well known that it needs no explicit description here. (New York Times).

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Let the lawsuits begin.

As you may have heard, earlier in the month, Trump’s friends on the Georgia State Election Board - Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King, whom he praised by name in a rally in Georgia, issued a new rule requiring Georgia Counties to count all ballots by hand.

Last week, Republicans in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania issued a comparable “hand counting” rule.

The article below makes clear why the MAGA attempt to impose “hand counting” rules must be stopped, first in Georgia and then wherever they appear.

Trump allies are doing all they can to create chaos, prevent an individual’s vote from counting toward the results, and disrupting the 2024 elections.

Democrats Sue Over Georgia Requirement That Ballots Be Counted by Hand.

The lawsuit claims that the new rule would invite chaos on election night, delaying some reporting and putting the security of ballots at risk.

Democrats sued the Georgia State Election Board on Monday, claiming that a new rule ordering counties to count ballots by hand would invite chaos on election night, create delays in reporting results for large counties and put the security of ballots at risk, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The New York Times.

The lawsuit, filed by the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Georgia with support from Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, argues that the state election board went far beyond its authority in passing the rule, and notes that the board is not a lawmaking body and that the rule conflicts with the process established by the Georgia General Assembly.

The rule, passed by the Georgia State Election Board this month, requires local election officials to count ballots by hand after polls close to ensure the total number of ballots matches the machine-counted totals. (The hand count would not require officials to consider for whom each ballot was cast.) Before the vote, both the secretary of state and attorney general of Georgia warned the board that it was likely exceeding its authority in passing such a rule and was changing the election process far too close to Election Day.

“To protect the sanctity of the state’s laws and to prevent election night chaos, this Court should declare that the Hand Count Rule exceeds SEB’s statutory authority,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit comes as the Georgia State Election Board has inserted itself directly into the political storm of one of the most closely contested battleground states. Ever since a 3-2 right-wing majority emerged this summer, the board has passed a host of rules and measures that closely align with that faction’s policies and political goals.

Former President Donald J. Trump has praised the three majority members of the board, including calling them out by name at a rally in Atlanta this summer and referring to them as “pit bulls” fighting for “victory.”

This is the second such lawsuit filed by the Democrats against the Georgia State Election Board in the past six weeks; the other lawsuit, against a state election board rule upending the election certification process, is scheduled to begin trial on Tuesday.

Democrats filed the lawsuit on Monday, though it has not appeared on the Georgia superior court docket yet; the Democrats say that delay is because Hurricane Helene affected the court system, creating a significant backlog in the filing system. The clerk’s office at Fulton County Superior Court confirmed it has a backlog because the office was closed on Friday.

Mike Coan, the executive director of the State Election Board, said in an email that “the counting of ballots rule simply makes the process uniform across the state and provides a greater confidence to the voters that the numbers are accurate.” He added that the Democrats filing a second lawsuit against the board “illustrates that Lawfare is alive and well in Georgia.”

During debate over the rule at the board meeting this month, Janelle King, one of the members who voted in favor of the rule, argued that the board was “creating more stability in our election process” by bringing more transparency to the process and giving election officials the opportunity to ensure that the final results are accurate.

The board has been met with near universal resistance from election officials at the state and local level in Georgia. Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, has repeatedly said the board is “a mess” and warned that its rules were making elections in Georgia less safe and secure.

Local election officials, represented by the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, have denounced the board for making changes so close to the election, with many counties having already trained their poll workers.

In a statement, Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager for Ms. Harris, said the hand-counting rule was an attempt to undermine the post-election process in Georgia.

“We agree with Georgia’s Republican Attorney General and Secretary of State: This rule is unproductive and unlawful, and we are fighting it,” Mr. Fulks said. “Democrats are stepping in to ensure that Georgia voters can cast their ballots knowing that they will be counted in a free and fair election.”

The lawsuit also notes that the origins of the hand-count rule have close ties to false conspiracy theories about election machines that proliferated among the far right of the Republican Party in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and “is also in direct conflict with at least six Election Code provisions.”

“Nothing in the Election Code permits the kind of hand counting contemplated by the Hand Count Rule,” the lawsuit states.

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Tomorrow night is the Vice Presidential Debate.

9 PM ET. CBS presiding.

Do you think the expose Rachel Maddow offered last night will reach the CBS moderators?

The Maddow Expose

It turns out that JD Vance’s favorite thinker is Curtis Yarvin, who says Americans need to "get over their dictator phobia." He says what we need is a “National CEO, aka a Dictator.”

This 👇 includes some of Yarvin’s more “moderate” positions too.

Vox says,

“Yarvin is arguably the leading intellectual figure on the New Right — a movement of thinkers and activists critical of the traditional Republican establishment who argue that an elite left “ruling class” has captured and is ruining America, and that drastic measures are necessary to fight back against them. And New Right ideas are getting more influential among Republican staffers and politicians.

Trump’s advisers are already brainstorming Yarvinite — or at least Yarvin-lite — ideas for the second term, such as firing thousands of federal civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists. With hundreds of “election deniers” on the ballot this year, another disputed presidential election could happen soon — and Yarvin has written a playbook for the power grab he hopes will then unfold.”

Hard to take this in. We will undoubtedly hear more about Yarvin and his philosophy embraced by Vance and others on the Right in the final weeks of the Election.

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Your Daily Reminder.

Trump is a convicted felon.

On May 30th, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts by the unanimous vote of 12 ordinary citizens.

The Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11th and September 18th. He will now be sentenced on November 26.

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Happy Birthday Once Again, President Carter.🎂

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