Is our media learning? (unironic for once)
By Credit where credit is due, no “Donald Trump expresses interest in genetic studies” headline for Politico:
Good article behind it too:
Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.
Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”
He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.
In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks.
There’s no conflict between this reporting and traditional standards of journalism — it’s simply an accurate description of what Trump is repeatedly saying. It’s sanewashing Trump that involves the purely subjective judgment of reporters to take precedence over accurately informing the Republic about Trump’s speeches.
Speaking of which, what the hell is the Post doing here:
I wrote a post about why I don't do that kind of thing:https://t.co/zt7JCleJvM— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) October 12, 2024
Whether the media chooses to tell the public what Trump is saying at his Nuremberg rallies or to invent a totally different, much more reasonable person and pretend he’s actually the Republican candidate for president is one of the factors American democracy hinges on.