Donald Trump’s MAGA media propagandists are so deep in the tank for the former president that they’ve been praising him for repeatedly falling asleep during his New York City hush money trial.
Since April 15, Trump has regularly been in a Manhattan courtroom, where he faces charges of falsifying business records in order to conceal payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say these payments were intended to keep Daniels’ claims that she had an affair with Trump from becoming public during the 2016 presidential election.
Trump, age 77, often mocks President Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” suggesting that Biden is too old and frail to fulfill his duties. But reporters in the courtroom have repeatedly observed Trump appearing to fall asleep during the trial — most recently on Monday morning before opening statements began.
That evening on Fox News’ Special Report, chief political anchor Bret Baier suggested that news outlets are providing too much coverage of the first-ever criminal trial for a former president, and criticized them in particular for covering the spectacle of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s inability to stay awake in the courtroom.
“You know, we cover it every day,” Baier said of the trial, “and we will — all the details of each day in court — but there are some places that are obviously covering it ad nauseum and have gone through every single detail, including four times that he might have fallen asleep, everything that happens inside the courtroom.”
Meanwhile, Baier’s colleagues and their ilk spent last week attempting to turn Trump’s proclivity for nodding off in public into a virtue — apparently unphased by their years of denigrating Biden as an addled old man whose energetic speeches can only be the result of performance-enhancing drugs.
“I mentioned that Maggie Haberman posted this update from the courtroom, ‘It appears that Trump might be sleeping’ — this was on day one,” Republican political operative and Fox host Sean Hannity said on his April 18 radio show. “By the way, I think I’d fall asleep if I was there,” he added.
And Hannity wasn’t the only Trump flunky to attest that they, too, would sleep through a trial just like their beloved former president.
“I'd be falling asleep at that trial too,” Hannity’s colleague Laura Ingraham said on her April 15 Fox show.
“That’s exactly how all of us would act in, like, the ‘Intro to Gender Studies’ class at the University of Missouri,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his radio show.
Others praised Trump for falling asleep in court and urged him to be even more disrespectful during his trial.
“Did Donald Trump nod off for a moment? Good for him. These things are boring,” Newsmax host Greg Kelly offered on April 16.
“Trump appearing to sleep and be bored is exactly the response this Kafkaesque persecution deserves,” Fox host Greg Gutfeld said on the April 16 edition of The Five. “He is America, who, unlike this frothing infantile media, doesn't see this as some mutant form of entertainment and justice.”
“Trump should go to trial, bring a big book, big fat John Grisham novel, just sit there and read,” Gutfeld added. “Just sit there and read. That's the only response this manufactured mayhem deserves — is just contempt.”
Co-host Jesse Watters replied that he was going to send Trump’s team a copy of his new book so Trump “can open it up inside the courtroom.”
On Sunday’s MediaBuzz, Fox contributor Tomi Lahren praised Trump’s “excellent job” and claimed that journalists are “trying to distract from Joe Biden” by pointing out that Trump keeps falling asleep.
“I don't think anybody's buying it,” she said. “Good job media, but I don't think that it's resonating when you've got the current guy, President Joe Biden, in the office, who quite literally falls asleep.”
Less than 24 hours later, Trump apparently once again dozed off in court.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
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How The Right Is Turning ‘Political Correctness’ Into Another Tool Of The 1 Percent
You may have noticed that when the right isn’t busy being outraged at the left for being outraged by comments by Republican reality stars, radio hosts and elected officials, they’re busy being outraged at the left for “offensive” comments about Republicans.
The current target is MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, who featured a brief segment on her show last weekend with panelists joking about Mitt Romney’s black grandchild. This was an issue so urgent, apparently, that Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus felt the need to demand an apology from the host just hours after the story broke.
While Republicans spent most of the last few decades being revolted by the idea of “political correctness,” there is now a conscious effort on the right to set the terms of discourse and play the role of the offended victim, whenever doing so is convenient. Then, just as quickly, conservatives will switch back to defending outrageous comments from the right and attacking “PC” thought by framing themselves as the defenders of free speech.
“Political correctness” is a term that — if you believe Wikipedia — originated in the Stalin-era USSR to describe acceptable thought to the regime. In the ’90s it became an epithet the right used to describe the intolerance of left-wing academic thought as progressives tried to reshape society to protect and encourage those who have been historically discriminated against. The great educator Herbert Kohl pointed out that the smear was meant “to insinuate that egalitarian democratic ideas are actually authoritarian, orthodox and Communist-influenced, when they oppose the right of people to be racist, sexist, and homophobic.”
The idea that rich, powerful people need to be protected from both bullying and the consequences of bullying comments often targeting minorities requires an agility and intellectual dishonesty that has been perfected by the right-wing media and spread to the movement’s more outlandish politicians, who thrive on the perpetual outrage of the Tea Party movement.
The perfect example of this is, of course, Sarah Palin. In 2009, she encouraged conservatives to “screw the political correctness.” A few months later she was demanding that President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel be fired for allegedly using the word “retarded” in a meeting.
The right is investing in the outrage industry. Fox News is the Standard Oil of outrage, but a new breed of organization, born and thriving in social media, is designed to gin up and sustain outrage by using features unique to online marketing.
Ben Shapiro, who some call the right’s next Andrew Breitbart, is the face of a new venture called TruthRevolt, which is funded by The David Horowitz Freedom Center.
“The media must be destroyed where they stand,” its mission statement reads. “That is our mission at TruthRevolt. The goal of TruthRevolt is simple: unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases.”
The group’s blog is updated several times a day with stories that reinforce the right-wing worldview and fume at those who say things they disagree with. Additionally petitions help the site build its mailing list with campaigns against villains who refuse to honor “religious liberty” by expecting reality stars not to say things like homosexuality leads to bestiality.
TruthRevolt is a new project and characteristic of Shapiro’s desire to “fight fire with fire” and by using a tactic the right used to decry.
Twitchy — which was started by the Pope of Outrage Michelle Malkin and was recently purchased by the owners of Town Hall — is apparently trying to fight fire with a mob wielding digital torches.
After Melissa Harris-Perry gave in to the demands to apologize for the segment on her show, Twitchy decided the apology didn’t count because it was tweeted with a hashtag. What would the Founders think?
Being mentioned on Twitchy doesn’t just make you the target of vague scorn. It’s a batsignal to the right wing that you need to be attacked directly. Active Twitter users who have been vilified by the site are likely to see abusive mentions for days.
Perry, who is the product of an interracial relationship, is primarily a target because she’s on (slightly) left-leaning MSNBC. The right is in the process of racking up scalps from the news network.
Now-former MSNBC host Martin Bashir responded to Sarah Palin’s comparison of debt to slavery by describing a practice in which slaveowner Thomas Thistlewood forced one slave to defecate in another’s mouth as punishment. He concluded his point by saying, “She confirms if anyone’s truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, she would be the outstanding candidate.”
The right wing went into outrage overdrive to condemn the host, who apologized twice before leaving his job, likely involuntarily. Bashir suffered from a lack of a political base—and the fact that his indefensible comments involved human waste and a woman’s mouth.
“My role is to accept his apology and be humble enough to accept it and move on,” the ever-humble Palin said on Fox News. “But I just hope that unprovoked attacks like that don’t result in people being hesitant to jump in the arena anyway.”
A few weeks later, Palin was defending the “free speech” of a guy who suggested homosexuality could lead to sex with animals.
The former Republican nominee for vice president is worried about those who might be hesitant to speak out in favor of policies that benefit the rich and enforce historic discrimination. But she’s not as concerned about a gay teen who may be hesitant to go on living because his desires make him someone society is encouraged to despise.
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr