Tag: american media
How The Press Rewards Republican Cowardice In The Trump Era

How The Press Rewards Republican Cowardice In The Trump Era

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

After Donald Trump ignited a firestorm by launching a racist attack on four Democratic members of Congress, the Beltway press last week temporarily revised a time-honored journalism tradition of forcing members of the president’s party to respond publicly to controversial behavior. The results were utterly predictable, of course, with most Republicans refusing to criticize Trump’s latest bout of open bigotry. But even the recent media questions for the GOP seemed muted, given the stunning and historic nature of Trump’s racist behavior.

The sad truth is, the press mostly gave up a long time ago on holding Republican lawmakers accountable for Trump’s erratic behavior. Faced with a party that has completely capitulated to Trump’s unbalanced ways, reporters seem to have lost interest in the pursuit.

Why isn’t there constant, nonstop coverage detailing how radical the Republican Party has become, and how any hints of dissent in the age of Trump are cultishly hidden from view? Instead of vivid portraits of a party abandoning its principles as GOP lawmakers obediently fall in line behind Trump’s nasty behavior, we get coverage about how savvy Republicans are for holding their tongues about Trump and refusing to hold him accountable—about how strategic Republicans are being in allowing someone like Trump to maintain a stranglehold grip on the party.

Indeed, Republicans seem to have cracked the media code: By remaining devoutly loyal to Trump—or, at least, obediently silent—they’ve drained the oxygen the press needs to file stories about the type of turmoil Trump may be creating in the party with his buffoonish and offensive antics. Now entirely bored with the prospect of asking nonemotive Republican lawmakers for their take on Trump’s latest outrage, journalists for the most part have stopped trying to hold party members accountable for Trump’s actions.

We saw a brief flurry of activity in the wake of Trump’s racist tirade in recent days. But the media pursuit of Republicans seemed restrained compared to the avalanche of coverage that would accompany demands that basically every elected Democrat in the country provide a comment if a Democratic president ever acted as hatefully and erratically as Trump has this week—or for the last two years.

Newsrooms seem to have simply accepted GOP silence. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “makes a practice of avoiding comment on remarks by President Trump that have electrified social media,” The New York Times recently reported. Republicans “also believe that, in most cases, the firestorm lasts only so long and will be quickly followed by the next iteration, making it pointless to get caught up in the repeating cycle.” Oh, well; I guess that takes care of that. Apparently now, if a political party essentially takes a vow of silence with regard to hateful behavior by the head of that party, the press shrugs its shoulders and moves on, abandoning all efforts to hold public officials accountable for those they support politically.

After being worn down by the GOP’s cowardly capitulation to Trump, reporters have most often given Republicans a pass. Simultaneously, the press has decided to devote its time and resources to playing up dissension within the Democratic Party, where members are more open and honest about their interparty conflicts. The Beltway press in recent weeks has given significant time and space to the story of internal dissension with the Democratic House caucus, which centers on a handful of freshman Congresswomen and their policy conflicts with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The press has consistently leaned on the “civil war” narrative in reporting on Democrats, as fewer than five House members wage a public battle with the leadership. Contrast that to how reporters are playing Republican reaction to Trump in recent days.

“While a smattering of Republicans chastised Mr. Trump on Monday, most party leaders in the House and Senate and much of the rank-and-file remained quiet about the president’s weekend tweets directing dissenters to ‘go back’ where they came from,” the Times reported. Interestingly, that language also perfectly sums up the so-called Democratic civil war, in which most “party leaders” and “much of the rank-and-file” have remained quiet on the issue. But for some reason, the two similar scenarios are covered quite differently. When just a handful of Republicans criticize Trump, it illustrates party unity. And when just a handful of Democrats criticize Pelosi, it illustrates a civil war.

Obviously, the circumstances are different in that a lot more Republicans ought to be criticizing Trump for his blatantly racist attacks on sitting members of Congress. And I’m not suggesting the internal strife within the Democratic Party isn’t news, because it is. But there is a double standard in play with how the press treats each party in terms of members having to answer for prominent party leaders.

We also saw that recently with coverage of Joe Biden and Trump. Both made headlines for how they have treated women in the past, although the actual behavior couldn’t be more different. But only one party was pressed on the issue of accountability. Last month, longtime advice columnist and writer E. Jean Carroll claimed that Trump had once raped her inside the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City, when he lunged at her and pushed her up against a fitting room wall. That disturbing news story broke on a Friday afternoon and was completely ignored by all the Sunday network morning shows two days later. None of the Republicans who appeared on the show were asked about Trump’s behavior, or asked to condemn it. Yet last winter, when some women complained about the way Joe Biden interacted with them, especially with unwelcome touching in public, the allegations were covered extensively on the Sunday shows.

Note: Democrats were repeatedly pressed about whether Biden’s behavior was “disqualifying,” while Republicans weren’t even asked about a rape charge against Trump.

The signal the press is sending remains clear: Republican cowardice in the age of Trump gets a pass.

The American Media’s Endless Search For A “Presidential” Trump

The American Media’s Endless Search For A “Presidential” Trump

Like Captain Ahab spotting a breaching Moby Dick in the distance, there seemed to be palpable pundit excitement last week about the prospect of the elusive “presidential” Donald Trump finally being sighted in the wake of the United States’ bombing mission in Syria.

Eager to bestow a mantle of seriousness and normalcy upon him, some commentators rushed to proclaim the U.S. military strike on an airfield to be a defining moment for the still-new president; to stress how the bombardment meant that Trump had elevated himself in stature and was now conducting himself in a somber, statesmanlike manner.

We’ve seen this excited commentary regularly with Trump, perhaps most notably when a portion of the pundit class was eager to announce that a serious, “presidential” Trump had finally emerged following his address to a joint session of Congress in February. (It was yet another false sighting.)

Media declarations late last week about how Trump “became President Of The United States” with the Syria attack and “turned the page” on his troubled presidency presented the brief military incursion as a sweeping demarcation line for Trump’s presidency in terms of grading his seriousness.

We were told Trump had experienced an epiphany of sorts and suddenly understood how to use Oval Office power for good around the world. Indeed, Trump led with his “heart,” The New York Timesannounced in the wake of the strikes.

But the “presidential” spin isn’t based on fact. It’s well-established that Trump is an Olympic liar who pushes falsehoods about topics large and small alike. So why would journalists suddenly assume that Trump’s telling the truth about the motivation for the bombing attack on Syria?

The “presidential” narrative seems more like it’s the media projecting into the news cycle how they think the President of the United States should act during a time of crisis. But Trump is not normal, and his relentlessly strange behavior cannot be explained away, let alone normalized.

In its page-one analysis of the Syria bombing, the Times stressed Trump had been moved to action out of sympathy for Syrian victims of a chemical attack that authorities believe was ordered by President Bashar al-Assad.

Suddenly able to read Trump’s mind and peer into his heart (or listening intently to White House spin), the Times claimed unequivocally that the bombing raid was “an emotional act by a man suddenly aware that the world’s problems were now his — and that turning away, to him, was not an option.” (The Times also excitedly concluded the one-day bombing raid would “change the course” of Trump’s presidency.)

The Associated Press stressed that “the weight of world’s problems” had sunk in and forced Trump to act. Like the Times, the AP tried to read Trump’s mind and concluded that there’s “a growing awareness that an American president — even an unconventional one like him — is looked to as [a] defender of human rights and a barometer of when nations have violated international norms.”

TheWashington Postsuggested, “The Syrian chemical weapons attack seemed to awaken Trump’s sense of moral responsibility as leader of the world’s sole remaining superpower.”

But other than launching some missles at an airfield, where’s the evidence that Trump did any of those things? Where was the evidence he had suddenly transformed himself into a “defender of human rights,” or that a “moral responsibility” seemed to “awaken” in him?

If, according to one preferred media telling, the gruesome pictures of children being gassed to death last week represented an epiphany of sorts for Trump, why didn’t Trump simultaneously lift his proposed travel ban and welcome suffering Syrian refugees into America?

Trump relentlessly used the victims of the Syrian civil war as political punching bags during the presidential campaign. Yet parts of the Syria bombing coverage last week politely set that aside in order to suggest Trump had become more “heartfelt” and “presidential.”

He can’t have it both ways.

And this has been part of the on-going riddle for the press: How to treat seriously someone like Trump who is categorically un-serious. And how to treat seriously a president who seems to be profoundly uninterested in the details of policy. Or telling the truth.

This is why the pursuit of “presidential” Trump often seems like wishful thinking: Journalists desperately want Trump to meet them halfway. Lots of journalists seem completely willing, if not eager, to uniformly lower the bar for Trump in terms of acceptable behavior for a sitting president. They’re willing to rewrite the rules for him, which includes consciously looking away for very long periods of time in order to pretend he falls within the mainstream of American politics and our history of Oval Office inhabitants.

But if they’re going to craft new rules for Trump, the least he could do is alter, or improve, his behavior and meet them halfway.

But Trump’s going to keep doing what he wants to do, which is to often act abhorrently.

Still, when there appears to be even the slightest glimmer of normalcy emanating from this president, journalists overreact and pronounce that The Change, or The Pivot, has finally occurred and Trump is now ready and willing to act like an adult while serving as president.

He’s not, and he hasn’t. Yet the media’s “presidential” pursuit continues.

IMAGE: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers an statement about missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 6, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria