FATUOUS: When CBS News interviewed Donald Trump...

SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 2024

...its performance was an embarrassment: On Monday, August 19—the first day of the Democratic National Convention—CBS News was given the chance to conduct a brief interview with Candidate Donald J. Trump.

The interview produced zero discussion. The reason for that is clear.

As we noted yesterday, we weren't aware of this interview until August 25. On that day, the brief one-on-one session was mentioned in a news report by the New York Times. 

According to the Times report, Candidate Trump was trying to show that he was willing to be interviewed by major reporters, unlike his allegedly unintelligent opponent in the current White House campaign.  

Within that context, we decided to see what had been asked, and what had been answered, in the course of the CBS interview. 

When we searched, we could find no transcript of the interview. We couldn't find a videotape of the full interview session. 

We did find an August 19 news report about the interview—a news report by Kathryn Watson of CBS News. When we read Watson's report, we were surprised by what it contained.

Watson is a good, decent person. Headline included, here's how the official report from CBS News began:

Trump defends personal attacks on Harris, discusses election outcome, release of medical records

Former president and GOP nominee Donald Trump said in an exclusive TV interview that he would release his medical records, as he faces off against Vice President Kamala Harris in the race for the White House. Trump, 78, also defended his repeated insults of Harris' intelligence and said he would accept the election outcome if he believes the election is "free and fair."

He spoke with CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns in Pennsylvania Monday, as Democrats kick off the Democratic convention in Chicago. 

"You will release your medical records to the public?" Huey-Burns asked the former president. 

"Oh sure, I would do that very gladly, sure," Trump responded. 

Say what? Could that possibly have been the biggest news to emerge from the CBS interview? Candidate Trump says he will release his medical records at some undisclosed point in time?

We were surprised to see the news report start with that non-disclosure disclosure. As far as we knew, no one had been asking the two candidates to release their medical records. 

As far as we know, this hasn't been any sort of issue as the fall campaign approaches. But there it was, presented by Watson as the leading piece of news to emerge from the interview session.

That seemed like an odd way for the news report to start. But as we continued to read the report, matters got much, much worse. Continuing directly, Watson now offered this:

Barely a month after an attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that no, he isn't suffering from any post-traumatic stress disorder and hasn't experienced any other lasting effects after a gunman grazed his ear with a bullet. 

The Republican nominee said he just had a medical exam and received a "perfect score," and two cognitive tests, which he said he "aced." 

"I got everything right," Trump said. "And one of the doctors said, 'I've never seen that before, where you get everything right.' No, I have no problem. I'd go a step further, I think anybody that runs for president, whether they're 75 or 65 or 45, I think should take a cognitive test." 

Everyone should take a cognitive test, the mental giant proclaimed.

Question: As of August 19, had anyone suggested that Candidate Trump was "experiencing any lasting effects" from the July 13 assassination attempt? 

As far as we know, no one had made any such suggestions as the five weeks had passed. 

In fairness, there was nothing "wrong" with asking some such question in the course of an interview session. But again, we were surprised to see that offered as the leading topic in the interview—and then, Dear God, there was this:

Once again, for the ten millionth time, the candidate was being quoted about the way he had managed to "ace" those two alleged "cognitive tests."

As every journalist surely knows, Trump has been talking about "acing those cognitive tests" since the dawn of time.  As every journalist surely knows, his claims about his unprecedented "perfect score" on the so-called "cognitive tests" have come to us straight outta the Kingdom of High Delusion.

Has the candidate taken a new set of "cognitive tests' in the wake of the assassination attempt? Reporter Watson didn't say. But in this peculiar way, CBS News was telling the world about the major points which had emerged from its interview session with Trump!

Can it really be true? Can it be true that Caitlin Huey-Burns, the CBS correspondent who conducted the interview, was subjected to the candidate's latest recitation of the brilliant, unprecedented way he'd :"aced" his cognitive tests?

We assume that Huey-Burns was subjected to some such nonsense, but we can find no documentary evidence in support of this report. 

As noted, CBS News never produced a transcript of the session Trump. On one of the network's streaming shows, CBS News did broadcast edited videotape of the interview session—videotape which ran a bit less than six minutes.

(In order to watch that videotape, you can click right here.)

That said, whoever edited that videotape had enough sense to eliminate Trump's transparent foolishness concerning those cognitive tests. For unknown reasons, reporter Watson chose to elevate Trump's vacuous comments about the cognitive tests to the very top of the CBS report.

So it went at CBS News as Huey-Burns interviewed Trump and Watson reported what happened. 

It would be easy for progressives to wonder about Watson's approach to the material. She's a graduate of an evangelical college (Biola University, class of 2011) and before coming to CBS News, she spent five years working for a pair of conservative orgs, including The Daily Caller.

Fairness suggests a different judgment. Judging from the six minutes of tape, Huey-Burns's interview with Trump hadn't given Warson a whole lot to work with. For example, here's what happened when Huey-Burns raised the question of the possible PTSD:

HUEY-BURNS (8/19/24): We are one month removed from the assassination attempts on your life. I'm wondering if you are experiencing any PTSD from that experience?

TRUMP: No, not at all. But I do—I'm thinking about it. It's a miracle that I wasn't killed, as you know. You saw the flight of the bullet and everything else, You saw—they say an eighth of an inch away. An eighth of an inch! And there has to be a reason, and I do believe in God, and I also believe perhaps God has a purpose, that he wants to save this country. And I think that may have really been a reason.

We have to save our country Our country's going bad. We're a failed nation, we're failing very badly. Just take a look at the mess that's happening right now in Chicago. 

The answer is, it was a very close, it was a very close call. An eighth of an inch and I wouldn't be talking to you right now. And I think God has a reason for doing things. and his reason might very well be that he wants to save this country—maybe save the world.  

We don't know why Huey-Burns chose to ask that particular question. Whatever the reason might have been, the question gave Trump a chance to ruminate, for the ten millionth time, about the way God had plainly spared his life, quite possibly in order to save the world.

A more serious reporter might have chastised herself at that point for having triggered this latest, highly familiar presentation with that somewhat unusual question. By way of contrast, Huey-Burns reacted in the manner shown:

HUEY-BURNS (continuing directly): Have you suffered any other kinds of effects?

TRUMP: No, not at all. I haven't. I got better, I healed well, and I haven't. But it could have been—it could have been very bad. 

This pointless exchange had now burned away about one-fourth of the six minutes seen on the videotape. In her news report, Watson selected this as the interview's major finding. 

She even mentioned Trump's discussion of the way he allegedly aced his cognitive tests, a bit of material which was mercifully edited out of the videotape CBS News chose to air.

Why did Huey-Burns ask the question about PTSD? We have no idea. A bit later, she turned to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Her question was a bit of a softball. She then stood by in silence as Candidate Trump offered a rambling, repetitive filibuster which began, and eventually ended, with what is universally known to be a howling misstatement of fact:

HUEY-BURNS: You were influential in picking three Supreme Court Justice to overturn Roe v. Wade. Do you have any regrets about the overturning of Roe v. Wade?

TRUMP: Well, they've wanted to overturn it for 52 years. Fifty-two years, they've worked to overturn Roe v. Wade. They wanted to bring it back to the states. All legal scholars, all Democrats, all Repub—everybody wanted to bring it back. This is for years and decades and decades. 

And they brought it back to the states. And now, the states are controlling it—it's in the hands of the states, and people are voting. And frankly, I believe in the exceptions, like Ronald Reagan believed in the exceptions. I think most people, most Republicans, do believe in the exceptions. And we are having a great response. 

Ohio voted—and by the way, they voted more liberally than some people might have wanted. Kansas voted. Many of the states have voted, or are in the process of voting, and what it did is it brought it back to the states and allowed the people to vote. And after 52 years, we can clean up something that frankly has been a very hot bone of contention. We want to unify our country, and people have different thoughts on it and all. 

And I will say this—that in some cases, it was a more liberal vote, or a more progressive vote, than some of these states would have thought, and in some cases it will perhaps be the other. But it's now in the hands of the people—and again, Democrats and Republicans, everybody, wanted to do this for 52 years, and I got it done. And we should never be in the federal government—the federal government should have nothing to do with this issue. It's being solved at the state level and people are very happy. 

Mercifully, the rambling filibuster finally came to an end. That said, the filibuster began and ended with an absurdly inaccurate claim—with the ridiculous claim that all legal scholars, and all Democrats, had wanted Roe v. Wade to be overturned.

The candidate constantly makes this claim. Everyone knows how absurdly false it is. 

In this instance, Trump used the ridiculous claim to begin and end his rambling statement. It's hard to know why any journalist wouldn't have responded by noting the sheer absurdity of this absurdly false claim. 

Huey-Burns just stood there and took it! Incredibly, she "followed up" with this—and Trump began rambling again:

HUEY-BURNS (continuing directly): So no regrets?

TRUMP: No regrets, no. I wouldn't have regrets. Again, I did something that was, most people felt, undoable. They didn't want it in the federal government. It shouldn't be in the halls of the federal government. It should be in the state governments. And I was able to bring it back to the state governments and now the people are voting. And again, they're voting in many cases with the exceptions—the three exceptions, like Ronald Reagan, like myself.

Trump filibustered further. By now, he had burned two full minutes off the clock in discussing the way he had managed to do what everyone always had wanted.

Huey-Burns is a good, decent person, That said, her journalistic performance was so bad, as she spoke with Trump, that it barely fits on the charts. 

In the roughly six minutes which CBS aired, she had started by asking the following question. This question dealt with a very serious topic—but it was the wrong question all the way down:

HUEY-BURNS: Will you accept the results of this election?

That's the first question on the videotape aired by CBS News. It deals with a very serious topic, but it's the easiest question in the world to answer. 

It's also the wrong question to ask about this deadly serious topic. In fairness to Huey-Burns, many other high-end journalists have approached this topic this way.

In response to that question, Trump burned time off the clock, assuring Huey-Burns that he would indeed accept the results if the election is "free and fair." It's very easy to say such things, and such statements commit the candidate to no future behavior.

The more salient question involved in this topic would go something like this: 

Why do you keep telling jam-packed audiences that the last election was stolen? You've had almost four years to present a white paper offering justification for this inflammatory claim. In the absence of some such evidence, why do you insist on making this angry claim?

That's the obvious way to approach this highly important matter. Like other high-end mainstream journalists, Huey-Burned lobbed a softball at the candidate, and Trump burned time off the clock.

This mist be one of the worst interviews we've ever seen a journalist perform. Even more embarrassing is what happened after the six minutes of videotape stopped playing on The Daily Report with John Dickerson, the CBS streaming broadcast to which we have referred.

Jericka Duncan was guest hosting that evening. Incredibly, her reaction was this:

DUNCAN (8/19/24): CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns joins me now with that great interview. I can only imagine sort of on the spot and being able to ask those questions about policy, one after the next.

Incredibly, Duncan marveled at the moxie Huey-Burns had displayed in conducting "that great interview."  Duncan could only imagine being able to ask such fabulous questions!

On that same evening's CBS Evening News, Norah O'Donnell aired less than two minutes of the utterly worthless interview. Like Duncan, she and Robert Costa further embarrassed CBS News with their praise for Huey-Burns.

For the record, we chatted with Norah long ago, way back when she was just starting out at The Hotline. She was very bright and very pleasant. It was always obvious that was going to be a big star.

Back in 1999, we repeatedly praised her for the way she pushed back on Hardball against Chris Matthews in his sudden, developing "war against Gore." Norah O'Donnell has plenty of smarts and she displayed plenty of moxie at that time until, in the end, she gave up.

Robert Costa is plenty sharp too. Chatting with O'Donnell that night, he made reference to "Caitlin's excellent interview." In such ways, discourse dies.

Walter Cronkite, a serious person, was once the face of CBS News. We can go no further today, so we'll close by saying this:

A major nation is in big trouble when its major mainstream news orgs have become as silly and as pitiful, as fatuous / feckless as this.

How dumb is our American discourse?

FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2024

But also, how vulgar and crass?  In our view, the New York Times has taken a major step in the right direction with a lengthy, detailed report by Bensinger, Yourish and Gold. 

It starts to go where the rubber is meeting the road. Its dual headline says this:

Trump Keeps Turning Up the Dial on Vulgarity. Will He Alienate the Voters He Needs?
Donald J. Trump has been reposting racially and sexually charged insults of Kamala Harris, continuing a history of crass attacks.

In the lengthy, detailed report, the three reporters describe the vulgar and crass, racially and sexually charged insults which that candidate relentlessly traffics. This kind of reporting has been long overdue. 

Yesterday, the Times report appeared online; it hasn't yet appeared in print editions. We hope it appears on the Times front page this Sunday morning. The report describes a major change in the moral and intellectual content of American political life.

As part of this same descent, Candidate Vance recently told a crowd at a campaign event that Candidate Harris "can go to Hell." The Washington Post asked Vance if he thinks this kind of language is appropriate.

At that point, The Dumbness comes in! Headline included, here's how the Post's subsequent news report starts:

Vance defends telling Harris to ‘go to hell’ for nonexistent cemetery criticism

Former president Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, doubled down Wednesday on telling Vice President Kamala Harris to “go to hell,” falsely repeating that she had feigned outrage over an altercation between Trump’s campaign and an Arlington cemetery worker when she had not.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Vance defended his attack on Harris—saying “go to hell” is “a colloquial phrase”—and tied it to broader criticism of the administration’s handling of an Islamic State attack that killed 13 U.S. troops during the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Don’t focus on Donald Trump showing up to grieve with some people who lost their children. Focus on your own job. Don’t do this fake outrage thing. If Kamala Harris was really outraged about what happened, then she would do her job differently, start a real investigation, and fire some of the people who are involved.”

Sad! Vance had told Harris to "go to Hell" for voicing outrage about the incident at the Arlington National Cemetery—as the Post report explains in detail. for something she hasn't done. 

We'd call that a tiny bit crass. Concerning the dumbness quotient, look again at that third paragraph:

Vance is wondering why Harris doesn't "start an investigation," then "fire some of the people who were involved" in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

Question! Would some such investigation show that someone should be fired? “Sentence first, verdict afterward,” as the Queen of Hearts once said.

A bit of Wonderland lurks in that statement. In the main, the dumbness to which we refer enters the picture here:

On what basis could Candidate Harris decide to launch an investigation, then start firing people? It's as we've been noting in the past few weeks:

Amazingly, people like Vance seem to think that vice presidents are the people who are in charge inside an American White House.

This may seem like a minor point—but on its face, the dumbness here is undisguised. As we've noted, the peculiar idea that Harris can do whatever she wants, and has been in charge for the past three years, has been driving the discourse among Fox News pundits for the past month, morning, noon and night.

That framework is very, very dumb. Here's the question we would ask:

Why doesn't Candidate Vance start an investigation, then start firing people? The answer to that is amazingly simple:

Whatever the merits of that suggestion might be, Candidate Vance doesn't possess that authority to do some such thing. But then again, neither does Vice President Harris!

That specific brand of dumbness has been ruling the airwaves at Fox. Regarding the crass and vulgar behavior of one of the two major candidates, the Times has finally decided to treat that behavior as actual news, which is what it quite plainly is.

We hope their report appears on page one. When it does, or perhaps if it doesn't, we'll show you what the three Times reporters have said.

FATUOUS: We'd never heard of that CBS session!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2024

Also, Fox News goes there again:  We hadn't heard of the interview until six days later.

For reasons which would become obvious, the interview(s) in question hadn't been widely discussed. We heard about them on August 25, in this news report by the New York Times' Bender and Gold:

Trump’s Carefully Scripted Week Kept Veering Off Script

[...]

In a concerted effort to draw a contrast with Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump, who regularly assails the mainstream media, embarked on a series of interviews, granting brief one-on-one sessions to CBS News, NBC News and CNN, among others.

Whether the effort worked to contain Ms. Harris’s momentum was unclear. But midway through his week of policy events, Mr. Trump made his disdain for the exercise clear as he mocked advisers who had urged him to limit personal attacks.

According to Bender and Gold, Candidate Trump had been trying to show the world that he wasn't afraid to speak to the press! 

We'd never heard of those interviews. We decided to check them out.

As it turned out, the "brief one-on-one session" with CBS News had taken place on Monday, August 19—the first day of the Democratic National Convention. As best we can tell, the session ran maybe ten minutes, though it may not have run that long. 

As best we can tell, the brief sessions with NBC News and CNN had been even briefer.

CBS News never transcribed its session with Candidate Trump. On that Monday evening, it aired less than two minutes of the interview on The CBS Evening News.

(To view that short report, you can start by clicking here.)

That same evening, CBS News did air almost six minutes of tape from the interview on The Daily Report with John Dickerson, a nightly, hour-long streaming program. To view that report, click this.

Even there, Candidate Trump filibustered away much of the time with standard, time-honored, non-answer answers—non-answers which were larded with groaning misstatements of fact and with familiar elements of delusion.

As we tried to research this brief interview session, we were struck by the extremely low journalistic performance by CBS News writ large. We were struck by the peculiar nature of the questions Candidate Trump had been asked, and by the failure of Caitlin Huey-Burns to challenge or question the candidate's obvious groaning misstatements.

We were also struck by the limited way the interview was reported by CBS News.  

In fact, the interview had produced nothing resembling news—and Huey-Burns' superiors seemed to know it. That didn't stop Robert Costa from referring to "Caitlin's excellent interview" on the CBS Evening News that night—the "excellent interview" which had produced less than two minutes of usable content.

As for the way the interview was presented on The Daily Report with John Dickerson, substitute anchor Jericka Duncan offered this cringeworthy remark after airing less than six minutes of the basically worthless session:

"CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns joins me now with that great interview. I can only imagine sort of on the spot and being able to ask those questions about policy, one after the next."

Good God! Tomorrow, we'll show you what those on-the-spot policy questions actually were. In the meantime, let's hope that no one in such a high position within the high-end American press ever authors such an embarrassing, cringeworthy statement ever again.

Fellow citizens, please!  It's relatively easy to see the madness—the insult to the democratic order—which is propagated on the Fox News Channel each morning and every night. 

Any sane person can spot the madness—for example, the madness which occurred at 10:03 last night, when the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld decided to go there again.

The fellow can't seem to help himself! At any rate, sure enough, the cable star did it again: 

GUTFELD (8/29/24):  Finally, sources say Barron Trump will not follow in his father's footsteps and will instead go to school somewhere in New York.

Hunter Biden, however, still plans on following his father's footsteps by banging Jill.

[AUDIENCE GROANS] 

All right! Let's do a monologue...

In a modest concession to the moral order, the cable star didn't say "f*cking" this time! But as with one of our presidential candidates, so too here:

He just can't seem to stop doing this! This disordered fellow can't stop, and his owners hope that he won't.

Once again, Hunter Biden is planning to start banging Jill Biden! From there, it was on to the birdbrained pseudo-discussions, conducted with a flyweight panel, which constitute the propaganda delivery system of this transparently disordered "cable news" TV gong-show.

In theory, any serious journalist could spot the journalistic disorder which takes wing on this "cable news" channel each morning at 5 a.m., then starts again at 5 p.m. and runs on through the night.

Any journalist could spot this obvious cultural problem! That said, our major, high-end mainstream news orgs have made the decision to avert their gaze from this daily and nightly intellectual / moral squalor. 

We're speaking of the New York Times, but of MSNBC as well.

It was within the context of that refusal to serve that CBS News set out to interview Candidate Trump on Monday afternoon, August 19, up in York, Pennsylvania. According to that New York Times news report, the candidate was hoping to drive a message that day:

I do interviews with the press. My unintelligent opponent can't and won't.

This particular "one-on-one session" was with CBS News. Tomorow, we'll show you what happened.

Way back when, CBS News was synonymous with the work of Walter Cronkite. Presumably he wasn't a perfect journalist—no one is—but he was a serious person.

He became the anchor of that network's nightly news report in April 1962. Before that, he had plainly established himself as a serious person. 

Cronkite was a serious person! We'll simplify the detailed account offered by the leading authority on his early career:

Walter Cronkite

[...]

Cronkite left college in his junior year, in the fall term of 1935, after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and sports. He entered broadcasting as a radio announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City...In Kansas City, he joined the United Press International in 1937.

With his name now established, he received a job offer from Edward R. Murrow at CBS News to join the Murrow Boys team of war correspondents, relieving Bill Downs as the head of the Moscow bureau...

Cronkite became one of the top American reporters in World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe. He was on board USS Texas starting in Norfolk, Virginia, through her service off the coast of North Africa as part of Operation Torch, and then back to the US...

Cronkite's experiences aboard the USS Texas launched his career as a war correspondent. Subsequently, he was one of eight journalists selected by the United States Army Air Forces to fly bombing raids over Germany in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress as part of group called The Writing 69th, and during a mission fired a machine gun at a German fighter. 

He also landed in a glider with the 101st Airborne Division in Operation Market Garden and covered the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg trials and served as the United Press main reporter in Moscow from 1946 to 1948.

In 1950, Cronkite joined CBS News in its young and growing television division, again recruited by Murrow...

And so on from there! Twelve years later, Cronkite was placed in the CBS News anchor chair. Today, our struggling nation's TV "news programs" are anchored by such people as the disordered 59-year-old men who can't stop saying such things as this:

GUTFELD (8/29/24):  Finally, sources say Baron Trump will not follow in his father's footsteps and will instead go to school somewhere in New York.

Hunter Biden, however, still plans on following his father's footsteps by banging Jill.

[AUDIENCE GROANS] 

To his credit, he didn't say that Hunter Biden was planning to "f*ck" Jill Biden this time. That said, the New York Times averts its gaze from this baldly disordered nightly behavior. So does the collection of "beloved colleagues" who anchor the various programs on Blue America's "cable news" channel.

(Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic has never discussed this daily and nightly garbage can. Does anyone know why not?)

We've wandered far afield this week from where we expected to be by this time. At this deeply disordered time, American "news" changes with lightning speed.

Tomorrow, we'll try to complete the week's anticipated work. That said:

CBS News was once anchored by a fully serious person. Our question might be this:

Did that session with Candidate Trump show us what our upper-end press corps has come to be like today?

Tomorrow: Also, Ponnuru speaks

Sykes performs bafflement on Morning Joe!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2024

Also, who is Karoline Leavitt? Years ago, we advanced the following dictum:

It's all anthropology now.

What did we mean by that? We meant there's no reason to expect a serious improvement in the national discourse.  All that's left is the attempt to discern why we behave as we do.

We human beings don't seem to be wired for sterling performances of that type. We're stuck with our deeply imperfect human nature, pretty much all the way down. That fact has become quite clear at this point in time.

Below, we'll ask you to think about the behavior of a major Trump campaign spokesperson. First, though, consider what Charlie Sykes said on today's Morning Joe.

Charlie Sykes is a good, decent person. Here's a thumbnail, as prepared by the leading authority:

Charlie Sykes

Charles Jay Sykes (born November 11, 1954) is an American political commentator who was editor-in-chief of the website The Bulwark. From 1993 to 2016, Sykes hosted a conservative talk show on WTMJ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was also the editor of Right Wisconsin which was co-owned with WTMJ's then-parent company E. W. Scripps. Sykes is a frequent commentator on MSNBC.

For twenty-three years, he hosted a conservative talk radio show—but then, along came Donald J. Trump. Today, Sykes is a persistent anti-Trump voice on MSNBC programs. 

He'll be voting the same way we will this fall. Tens of millions of fellow citizens won't.

Sykes is smart, and he's anti-Trump. This morning, in the wake of the recent incident at Arlington National Cemetry, he offered a lengthy assessment of Candidate Trump.

We'd be inclined to describe this as a performance of bafflement, as an unconvincing assertion of paradox:

SYKES (8/29/24): Well, this is the great paradox of Donald Trump. His own record of non-service is, of course, well documented. But so is this long record of denigrating the service of others and his contempt. And yet he continues to wrap himself as the champion of the military. And many veterans seem to think that he is an ally of the military. But you walk through, you look at this picture that you’re showing, right now. I mean, there’s something deeply unnatural about this:

Who poses, posing with a thumbs-up in front of a grave of a fallen soldier? Who does that? Somebody who, frankly, just does not understand what this sacrifice means.

And you go back through, whether it’s the attack on John McCain for being a POW, or his suggestion at one point that he did not want the disabled veterans to be in an Independence Day military parade because it would make him look bad. Or his comments to his former chief of staff, retired General John Kelly, when they went to Arlington in 2017, and they’re standing next to John Kelly’s son Robert, who was a lieutenant, who was killed in Afghanistan. And Donald Trump said to General Kelly, “I don’t understand why they do this. What’s in it for them?” Or when he refused to go to the military cemetery in France, calling them “losers” and “suckers.”

And, you know, for people who have been around Donald Trump, this continues to be shocking that someone who is the commander-in-chief just does not seem, at some core of his being, does not seem to understand why people give their lives for their country. And again, you want to talk about cognitive dissonance, this is a man who wants to be thought of as “America First, USA,” the defender of American strength. And yet, when it comes down to it, time and again, whether it’s Gold Star families, whether it’s Medal of Honor winners, there’s something broken in Donald Trump that makes it impossible for him to understand that kind of sacrifice and heroism.

Who behaves the way Donald Trump does? Who says and does the kinds of thing Trump persistently does?

"Who does that?" Sykes asked at one point. We'll assume he knows that one fairly obvious type of answer lies in the realm of medical science—in the realm of mental health / mental illness / severe clinical "personality disorder."

He also knows the rules of the game—he isn't supposed to say that. He ends up with this euphemistic performance of bafflement:

Who does [things like] that?...Something is broken in Trump.

Do you believe that Sykes was saying what he really believes about Trump? We'll guess that the answer is no, but he's willing to go on at length, declaring the matter a "paradox."

Years ago, none of the adults in a mythical empire were willing to say that their emperor was lacking a new suit of clothes. Today, with one exception, Blue America's pundit corps all stage a similar performance. 

Simply put, this is the best we American humans seems to be able to do at this point in time. 

"Something we were withholding made us weak," Robert Frost once wrote. In the current circumstance, there's no way to know how this widespread act of withholding is going to turn out.

Then too, there's 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign. This morning, on CNN, she refused to answer John Berman's simple repeated question.

The exchange was transcribed by Mediaite's Tommy Christopher. How do we explain such soul-draining evasion as this, especially from someone so young?

BERMAN (8/29/24): You say that Donald Trump was the candidate of stability. Why was Donald Trump, over the last 36 hours on his social media, reposting slogans from QAnon and reposting misogynistic, sexist content about Vice President Harris?

LEAVITT: Well, look, I don’t think your viewers at home are concerned about social media posts.

I think they are concerned with the news of the day, and the news of the day is that a Venezuelan illegal immigrant crime gang has taken over a hotel in rural Colorado because of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s open border policies. The news of the day is that, again, gasoline prices are 50% higher today than they were under Donald Trump.

BERMAN: Can you answer—

(CROSSTALK).

BERMAN: Do you know why?

LEAVITT: The news of the day—

BERMAN: Do you know why he reposted that content?

LEAVITT: I haven’t been able to talk to President Trump yet this morning because he is calling in to media interviews, unlike Kamala Harris, who has been avoiding the press for more than 40 days.

And we’re excited that CNN finally has the opportunity to question Kamala Harris tonight about her disastrous record. And we hope that Dana Bash and we’re confident that she will we’ll ask tough questions of Kamala Harris’s record.

Because, again, Americans aren't concerned with social media posts and silly memes. They are concerned with the problems that are plaguing them in their families right now. And they need and deserve answers to the questions of Kamala Harris. Does she still support a ban on fracking? Does Kamala Harris still support eliminating cash bail for violent criminals? Does Kamala Harris still support decriminalizing illegal immigration? 

And again, I ask, and I hope CNN will ask Kamala Harris this tonight. Does she why does she believe she deserves a promotion when she has been responsible for the failures of the past four years?

BERMAN: Did you ask Doctor Phil, or did you tell Doctor Phil what questions you hoped he would ask before interviewing Donald Trump?

LEAVITT: No, we don’t have to do that. Unlike the Democrats who have—

BERMAN: Okay, okay—

LEAVITT: —questions to Democrat candidate in debates.

BERMAN: And so I want, I will talk about—I will talk about the interview in a second here. But I do want to ask you, again—the social media content reposted by the Republican nominee in the last 36 hours. How do you explain it? How do you explain why he is reposting content from QAnon and this misogynistic content?

LEAVITT: Again, I will say I have not spoken to President Trump about that content this morning, and I don’t think Americans are concerned with social media posts.

But you said misogynistic. I assume you’re also going to say that the posts were demeaning to women. I think what’s demeaning to women is what has been allowed to happen over the last four years.

I think what’s demeaning to women is the fact that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are allowing an invasion of illegal criminals into our country, many of whom have proven to be rapists and murderers. I think what’s demeaning to women like Laken Riley and Jocelyn Gray and Rachel Morin is the fact that they are no longer with us because of the policies of this administration, and that is what voters and your viewers care about, John.

BERMAN: Well, look, I think the voters can care about a number of things. And when there’s content being reposted that uses QAnon slogans and when there are these sexist, misogynistic posts, it’s interesting to me that you can’t, you’re not—you don’t think they’re bad. You have no problem with them.

LEAVITT: I didn’t say that. I said that I—

BERMAN: Do you care? Do you care?

LEAVITT: I care about what’s happening to our country right now. I care about the fact that, as a new mother, baby formula is 30% higher and costs more than it did under President Trump. I care about the fact that we have a vice president, or vice president today who wants to be the president of the United States, that hasn’t sat down for an interview in more than 40 days to explain her position.

Berman tried and tried and tried and tried. Leavitt just kept evading, in a wide assortment of ways.

It got worse than that among the Trump staffers who slimed the woman who tried to maintain established rules at the national cemetery:

First the woman in question was shoved, then she was aggressively slimed. As we've noted many times, established studies seem to suggest that severe, clinical "personality disorders" are more widely found within the society than a layperson might understand.

Charlie Sykes is a good, decent person. We're often stunned by Leavitt's behavior. After that, it gets much worse. It gets pretty ugly back there.

This is the world of real human behavior. For better or worse, our journalists refuse to discuss clinical mental health disorders within the political context.

In this way, they shut off us off from a major part of possible discernment—from our ability to start to understand the real events of the actual human world.

Fuller disclosure: Frost went on to say this:

Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender...

It was ourselves we'd been withholding! Or at least, so the poet said.

FATUOUS: Trump issued "a vulgar sexual slur!"

THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2024

Was his statement under-reported? Major experts tend to agree:

The distinguishing characteristic of our national discourse may be its "dullard" quality. So it was when guest host Pete Hegseth spoke up on The Ingraham Angle last night.

Hegseth is a Fox News Channel mouthpiece. On its face, did his remarks make actual sense? 

This is what he said:

HEGSETH (8/29/24): Kamala Harris and Tim Walz just arrived in Savannah, Georgia for the next stop on their "bus tour." She's been talking about her economic vision for America lately, as if she hasn't been in office for the last, you know, three and a half years.

On its face, did that remark make sense? Inevitably, Hegseth didn't stop there. Moments later, he threw to Brian Benberg of the Fox Business Channel:

HEGSETH: Brian, how can Kamala continue to say that she's going to change things for the middle class when they've been living the implications—or [rather] the complications—of her policy the last three and a half years?

Did those remarks make sense? In fairness, they might have made substantial sense if President Biden was running for re-election while offering to "change things for the middle class."

Also, Hegseth's remarks might well have made substantial sense if Candidate Harris was running for re-election as the sitting president. That said:

As everyone but Pete Hegseth knows, that isn't Candidate Harris' current position. That said, the mouthpiece was applying two of the silly premises every mouthpiece at his channel must be prepared to mouth:

Fox News Channel verities:

[...]

3) Since Kamala Harris has served as vice president in the Biden administration, that means that she is the person who secretly made that administration's policy decisions.

4) Because Harris is currently vice president, she could go ahead and implement her policy views right now!

What has Harris privately thought about President Biden's various policies? We have no way of knowing. Neither does Hegseth, of course.

That said:

Under prevailing rules of the road, a vice president doesn't have the power to institute her own policies. Everyone understands this blindingly obvious fact, except when a race for the White House is on and people like Hegseth show up.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we humans, as a species, just aren't enormously sharp. On balance, we plainly aren't "the rational animal," as Aristotle is widely said to have claimed, and we plainly never have been.

Last night, Hegseth was churning the pre-approved pap, as is the norm on his channel. Three hours later, the channel opened its nightly garbage can and the TV star Greg Gutfeld popped out with his endless array of misogynist insults and his panel of clownishly flyweight guests.

This is the part of the way our national discourse works! Then too, we have the work of the upper-end press. That includes its widespread refusal to report or discuss the transparently disordered behavior of one of our flailing nation's major-party nominees for the White House.

To his credit, Anderson Cooper was actively "on it" last night—though only up to a point. To his credit, he started with the latest things the nominee had done and had said. 

To Cooper's credit, here's a substantial chunk of the way he started:

COOPER (8/28/24): Tonight, two campaigns. Kamala Harris in Georgia on the trail—and Donald Trump, trolling online, spreading QAnon catchphrases and amplifying a vulgar sexual slur against Vice President Harris.

Also tonight, new details about what happened when the former president visited Arlington National Cemetery. What we're learning about the alleged incident between the cemetery official and the campaign.

[...]

Good evening. Thanks for joining us. Vice President Harris and running mate, Tim Walz are closing out day one of a two-day campaign through Georgia. The state did a new polling just put out tonight suggests may be winnable for her in November.

Her opponent was not on the trail today, though. It was just two days ago that the former president's campaign was saying we'd be seeing Trump on steroids, meaning more appearances in battleground states in the days and weeks ahead.

Instead, with the exception of visits to Arlington National Cemetery and Detroit on Monday and a taped interview with Dr. Phil last night, the main place to find the former president has been on social media.

Yesterday, he was raging against the new indictment, Jack Smith securing it in the election interference case. Today, he took it to a whole other level.

The former president the United States, who wants to be the next president, is now directly spreading the slogans of the conspiracy cult, QAnon, as well as posting a crude sexist and misogynistic slur online. Re-posting to be precise, which means he didn't come up with it himself, but liked it so much that he wanted the rest of the world to see it, which is both a gentle introduction and a warning.

One posting of several that uses two QAnon catchphrases: "Nothing can stop what is coming," which refers to this so-called mass arrests of so-called Deep State members, which in the warped world of QAnon is basically anyone who has irked to Donald Trump.

Another posting shows President [Biden] and Hunter Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, and Vice President Harris in prison in orange jumpsuits. Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates, presumably there for their advocacy of vaccination.

Again, this is what the former president of the United States chose to rebroadcast to and amplify for his many followers. He did not look at this stuff, chuckle silently to himself, if that's what he would do, and move on.

Instead, he wanted to give it the stamp of approval of the 45th and perhaps the 47th president of the United States.

And then, there is this, a photo of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton. The caption, which I'm not going to read out, is demeaning of both women and contains a vulgar reference to oral sex acts.

Now remember, again, this is the Republican candidate for president and the 45th president the United States, talking about two women who no matter what you think of their politics, are two of the most accomplished women in American political history.

This is what he chose to amplify, which as extreme as it is, is not exactly out of character when it comes to him and women.

To his credit, Cooper was reporting what one major-party nominee had chosen to say that day. Even there, he balked at one part of this task:

Understandably but unfortunately, Cooper said he wasn't willing to read the "vulgar sexist slur"—the "vulgar reference to oral sex acts"—the former president had chosen to direct at Candidate Harris and at former candidate Hillary Clinton.

He wasn't willing to go that far. Cooper wasn't willing to read what Donald J. Trump had reposted—what he'd implicitly said. 

Cooper was willing to read one of the candidate's shout-outs to the madness of QAnon. He was willing to describe the candidate's renewed suggestion that he would try to imprison a long list of major figures of whom he disapproves.

Cooper was willing to report those actions. But for reasons which are understandable, he wasn't willing to read the text of Donald J. Trump's repost.

In its news report about this matter, Reuters was willing to quote the "lewd remark" Donald J. Trump had reposted. Its news report starts like this:

Trump Reposts Lewd Remark About Harris on His Social Media Site

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday reposted a lewd social media remark about Vice-President Kamala Harris, the latest in a volley of demeaning attacks by Republicans against Trump's Democratic rival.

The comment was made by another Truth Social media user, who wrote, below a picture of Harris and Trump's 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton: "Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently..."

That's what the candidate had reposted. Even there, Reuters offered a mandated misstatement as it explained the post's apparent meaning.

(Monica Lewinsky was a federal employee, not a "White House intern," during the vast bulk of her relationship with President Bill Clinton. Even 27 years later, there's no known way to get major journalists to come to terms with this fact.)

That's what the candidate chose to repost—but only after reaching out to the lunacies of QAnon, and only after suggesting that he wants to lock a wide range of people up. Speaking of lunacy, the same candidate offered this deranged social media post just a few weeks ago:

Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive “crowd” of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake “crowds” at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING—And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!

What does it mean when a major party nominee seems to exhibit this type of derangement? Citizens, please don't ask!

Major news orgs largely ignored that transparently lunatic post. This seems to be a modernized version of the old adage, "Don't ask, don't tell."

Is "something wrong with" Donald J. Trump? All across the upper-end world. journalists have agreed that they must never ask! During the first one hour plus of today's Morning Joe, this most recent behavior by the candidate—his reposting of the vulgar sexual insult—wasn't mentioned at all.  

Joe and Mika are on vacation this week—but Jonathan Lemire and his various guests never brought it up. 

We can't explain that decision, but the journalistic avoidance goes back a very long way. To put this conduct in some perspective, let's note something else which was said on Cooper's program last night.

Understandably, Cooper was marveling at the candidate's conduct. We've come to admire CNN's Abby Phillip, but we were struck by something she said:

COOPER: It is incredible, Abby, again, just that this person—whether it's their backs on the wall, or they feel whatever—that the line of attack is to sexually demean one of the most accomplished women in political life in the country on the national—

I mean, I know women face this all the time, and I don't think I can understand it. I don't think, you know, maybe men can't understand it. But it is extraordinary to me, like at this level—

PHILLIP: There is no explaining it. I don't think—I can't get into Donald Trump's head. 

In fact, there is an obvious way of "explaining it!" That said, the mainstream press corps, for better or worse, has agreed, every step of the way, that this obvious (possible) explanation must never be reported, discussed or assessed.

This refusal dates to 2017, when the major organs of our mainstream press agreed to disappear Dr. Bandy X. Lee's best-selling book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. 

In Dr. Lee's book, a wide array of medical specialists said and suggested that Donald J. Trump, then the sitting American president, was in the grip of a serious clinical mental health disorder.

That has always been a fairly obvious (possible) way of "explaining it!" Right up through last night's broadcast, Phillip was holding fast to an established mainstream press line, with Cooper saying that he doesn't think that he can "understand it."

At this site, we suspect we do "understand it" on the most basic level. That said, the major organs of our upper-end press corps have aggressively refused to perform.

This morning, at 8 a.m., the New York Times finally filed a report on Trump's latest behavior. Dual headline included, the report starts like this:

Trump Reposts Crude Sexual Remark About Harris on Truth Social
Though the former president has a history of making crass insults about opponents, the reposts signal his willingness to continue to shatter longstanding political norms.

Former President Donald J. Trump used his social-media website on Wednesday to amplify a crude remark about Vice President Kamala Harris that suggested Ms. Harris traded sexual favors to help her political career.

The post, by another user on Truth Social, was an image of Ms. Harris and Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s opponent in 2016. The text read: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”

The remark was a reference to Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and a right-wing contention that Ms. Harris’s romantic relationship with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco whom she dated in the mid-1990s while he was speaker of the California State Assembly, fueled her political rise.

Mr. Trump’s repost was the second time in 10 days that the former president shared content from his personal account making sexually oriented attacks on Ms. Harris. Though he has a history of making crass insults about his opponents, the reposts signal Mr. Trump’s willingness to continue to shatter longstanding norms of political speech.

To its credit, and for better or worse, the Times was prepared to report the text of what Trump had reposted. Earlier, the Washington Post had published two reports which referred to this matter, including a lengthy report which starts like this:

24 hours of Trump: QAnon tributes, crude attacks and hawking pieces of his suit

Donald Trump amplified a vulgar joke about Vice President Kamala Harris performing a sex act. He falsely accused her of a staging a coup to secure the Democratic nomination and faulted her without evidence for a security lapse that enabled a rogue gunman to try to assassinate him. He shared a manipulated online image of Bill Gates in an orange jumpsuit and a call for Barack Obama to face a “military tribunal.” He promoted explicit tributes to the QAnon conspiracy theory. He hawked digital trading cards in an online infomercial along with pieces of his debate night suit. (“People are calling it the knockout suit.”) His campaign feuded publicly with Arlington National Cemetery over their visit.

And that was just in the span of 24 hours. 

The lengthy report began that way—but how odd! Despite the length of the lengthy report, the "vulgar joke" cited in its very first sentence was never referred to again!

In fairness to the mainstream press, there has never been a major-party nominee of this type before. The bizarre behavior of Donald J. Trump has presented our major news orgs with new, understandable challenges.

That said, in any one of a million ways, the candidate's disordered conduct has been normalized. On Fox, they bring the silliness in—and they open the can at 10 p.m. Is it possible that the performances by our mainstream orgs are perhaps a bit limited too?

Candidate Donald J. Trump seems to be severely disordered. Last week, CBS News was granted the opportunity to interview the God-chosen man.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what the hopeful was asked in the course of that pseudo-interview. In our view, there's an obvious word for the work of CBS News that day.

In a wide array of ways, the manifest disorder of Candidate Trump has been disappeared and normalized. As for CBS News, we'd say that its performance tended toward fatuous, quite possibly all the way down.

When NBC's Holt interviewed Harris...

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2024

...was he fatuous all the way down? Today, we'll reluctantly disagree with several things Jonathan Chait has said.

Rather, we'll semi-disagree, on a provisional basis. The first two statements come in the passage shown below from Chait's new post for New York magazine.

Should Candidate Harris give lots of interviews? Chait believes that the answer is yes, and he could always be right. 

On the other hand, he could always be wrong! Headline included, the first passage in question says this:

Why Kamala Harris Is Safer Giving More Interviews

[...]

The campaign’s evident fear of exposing the candidate to interviews stems from a handful of bad experiences during Harris’s first couple years as vice-president. Harris’s role was poorly defined, and President Biden had saddled her with an impossible job (sometimes described, inaccurately, as “border czar” when she was attempting to work on root causes of the migration surge).

Harris had a poor interview with Lester Holt, in which she failed to provide a convincing answer for why she hadn’t visited the border (it was not her job). That interview had an inordinate impact on her public persona because there was little else to shape it.

Suggestion! As far as we know, no one in the Biden administration ever called Harris the "border czar," with all that term might suggest. The inaccurate descriptions came from Republicans, and they also came from our mental giants in the mainstream and conservative press.

We think that point should be explicitly stated. As far as we know, no one in the Biden Admin dubbed her "the border czar," with all that the term might suggest.

We move to a possible point of flat disagreement. Did Harris "have a poor interview with Lester Holt" back in June 2021—in Guatemala City, no less—a poor interview which largely turned on the fact that she hadn't yet visited the southern border?

It all depends on what the meaning of "poor interview with Lester Holt" is! From that day to this, it has been relentlessly said that Harris "had a poor interview" that day. But before we're done this week, we're going to pose an important question:

Was Harris responsible for the "poor interview," through some failure to give "a convincing answer?" Or is it possible that it was the lordly Holt, reciting talking points again and again, who behaved in a fatuous manner?

Before the week is done, we'll show you the receipts. For now, we move ahead to one other statement Chait makes in his new post:

The correct takeaway from this experience [with Holt] shouldn’t be that Harris needs to avoid interviews. It’s that a dearth of interviews creates a situation in which a single interview has an outsize effect on her public image. That creates the vicious cycle in which she still seems to be mentally trapped: Fear of interviews makes every interview far more important, thus raising the cost of giving a bad answer, thus making her more hesitant to do interviews.

The opposite approach would be to flood the zone with interviews. Not all of them have to be brand-name national reporters. Local news stations have real journalists who ask questions their audiences care about. But, yes, getting Harris out into the news several times a week is actually a much safer strategy. If she gives a bad answer, there will be a news cycle about it, but she will be back in the news a day or two later talking about something else.

The most famous example of a politician exploiting media attention is John McCain, who let reporters talk to him on the record for hours on end. McCain committed gaffes all the time, but the gaffes didn’t matter. Now, McCain may have enjoyed a unique, non-replicable relationship with the news media. But you can see other, more recent figures using aspects of this model. Pete Buttigieg built a whole candidacy around putting himself out there constantly. And Mayor Pete may be an unusually skilled communicator, but he did slip up from time to time—it just didn’t matter much.

Should Harris do a lot of interviews? Maybe yes, maybe no. 

We assume that would depend, in part, on how fully she has prepared her policy platform in the few weeks she's had to do so. Also, on how well she has mastered her newly formed, rushed platform. 

Most major candidates have years to get ready for such events. Candidate Harris has had four weeks.

Finally, regarding McCain:

Chait is right! During Campaign 2000, McCain did commit gaffes all the time, and the gaffes didn’t matter. But that was because, as Chait suggests, McCain was a ginormous press corps darling. Journalists actively disappeared his endless misstatements. Some even said so, in print!

It isn't like that for Candidate Harris, and it's not likely to get that way. Candidate Harris isn't McCain. She won't receive that treatment.

During the 2000 campaign, McCain benefitted from the kind of relationship which had been enjoyed by Candidate Kennedy in 1960. In this morning's report, we quoted from Theodore White about the way the Kennedy press corps behaved on the Kennedy plane.

Candidate Harris won't be treated that way—and a giant Murdoch empire looms, awaiting any type of real or alleged mistake. 

(The Fox News Channel barely existed during Campaign 2000. Today, they start propagandizing at 5 p.m.—and the channel's garbage can opens promptly at 10.)

At any rate, who created that "bad interview," the lady or the tiger? Is it possible that it was actually the interviewer—the fellow named Holt—who drove that fateful interview session out onto Fatuous Lane?

We'll give you the links by the end of the week. Is it possible that Holt's behavior that fateful day was perhaps substantially fatuous, even fatuous all the way down?

FATUOUS: Was American journalism ever great?

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2024

Cronkite then, a nightly garbage can now: Labor Day is drawing on fast. With it comes the apocryphal start of the general election campaign.

Given the withdrawal of President Biden from the race, a special burden has been placed on American political journalism this time around.  To wit:

The Democratic Party's nominee only entered the race in late July. Given the foreshortened time frame for this year's campaign, can our journalistic establishment rise to the task of covering this year's contest?

More broadly, what is the state of American journalism as Labor Day approaches? Also, what there ever a time when our political journalism was more capable than it is today? Can we imagine the following challenge:

Can we imagine trying to make American journalism great again?

Let's journey back to 1960. As we noted yesterday, Candidate Kennedy didn't announce until January of that year. Was this nation's political journalism actually great at that time? 

It's hard to make an objective assessment. But let's take a look at the record.

There's no such thing as perfect journalism, and our journalism wasn't perfect back then. In his iconic book, The Making of the President 1960, Theodore White describes appalling conduct on the part of major reporters as they flew around the country, with the candidate, on the Kennedy plane.

Late in his book, White describes a fairly obvious type of glad-handing aimed by Candidate Kennedy at his traveling press. To our ear, White was perhaps a bit oblivious to the degree of inappropriate conduct he went on to describe:

WHITE (page 338): There is no doubt that this kindliness, respect and cultivation of the press colored all the reporting that came from the Kennedy campaign...By the last weeks of the campaign, those forty or fifty national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps—they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers.

Good God! White continues:

WHITE (continuing directly): When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr. Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier.

Good God! But so wrote White, in one of the most famous books ever written about American electoral politics.

In fuller context, White never quite seemed to recognize the depth of misconduct he was describing—and he insisted that the Nixon reporters, who enjoyed no such camaraderie with the (justifiably?) suspicious candidate, were experienced professionals who struggled to be fair in their reporting.

So it may have been. But even then, when America was still great, White was describing gross journalistic misconduct as the summer gave way to the fall. 

Experienced journalists flew about, singing satirical songs about Nixon with the Kennedy staff. That said, it's hard to believe that the actual state of our political journalism had achieved the depths it now achieves every day—every day and every night, for example on the Fox News Channel.

There were no "cable news " channels in 1960. These was no such thing as cable, and therefore no "cable news."

There was no Internet; there was no "social media." Talk radio barely existed—and it didn't start to emerge as a national phenomenon until something like ten years later.

By way of contrast:

As Labor Day approaches this year, we have the Fox News Channel opening the garbage can it opens each night at 10 p.m. Eastern. (That's 7 p.m. on the coast.)

On a nightly basis, the garbage can opens with Greg Gutfeld directing his array of baldly misogynist insults at the liberal and Democrat [sic] Party women with whom he disagrees.

Last night, his second joke involved an insult about the way the 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi currently looks in a bathing suit (recent photo provided). By 10:03, his jokes about sex with children were done, and he had started his issue-based "monologue."

When he did, he quickly directed an insult at the women of The View, who were said, on this occasion, to resemble a bunch of horses. By 10:05, it was back to Pelosi, this tome with an insult built around the theme that she has had too many face-lifts or has used too much Botox. 

Nothing resembling this garbage can existed in 1960—and this garbage can airs every weekday night, with a rerun on one weekend night. As we've noted in the past, our finer, higher-class news orgs almost wholly ignore the existence of this garbage can—although a very unusual bit of reporting occurs in today's Washington Post.

The report appears beneath this dual headline. 

The report concerns a remark by the slippery Jesse Watters on Monday evening's edition of The Five. In our view, it was a rather typical comment which had the rare effect of occasioning instant pushback from two of the Fox News Channel's many obliging female propagandists, who are generally prepared to ignore almost anything.

On this occasion, two women objected. Dural headline included, Jeremy Barr reports:

Jesse Watters addresses backlash over provocative Kamala Harris punditry
“People are misconstruing my comments to mean something inappropriate,” the Fox News host said Tuesday.

Fox News host Jesse Watters attempted to explain himself on Tuesday after he received backlash for a comment he made one night earlier about Vice President Kamala Harris.

During a discussion on the talk show “The Five” about Harris’s role in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, Watters appeared to use crude language to speculate on how a President Harris would handle foreign policy.

“We don’t know who she is. We don’t know what she believes,” he said on Monday. “She’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.”

Watters said on Tuesday’s edition of the panel show that he didn’t mean anything untoward by the comment, which drew significant blowback on social media.

Along with external backlash, Watters’s comment drew a sharp rebuke in the moments after he uttered it from his two female co-hosts, Dana Perino and Jeanine Pirro.

“Jesse Watters!” Perino exclaimed, while Pirro said, “I don’t like that,” and told him to “take it back,” even as Watters protested that he was speaking “figuratively.”

We happened to see the remark in real time. To our ear, it seemed like extremely typical fare from the slippery "silly boy" Watters—possibly even somewhat milder than his normal "silly boy" fare.

What made this event stand out was the instant pushback from Perino and Pirro, a pair of Fox News Channel stars who are typically prepared to ignore any amount of misogynist insult, no matter how blatant.

This morning, the Post reports on the Monday evening's instant pushback—on the pushback from Perino and Pirro, but also from social media. That said, this general kind of garbage-can conduct is broadcast to millions of viewers on a nightly basis. 

This generates almost no reporting or commentary from our finer, higher-end news orgs. 

Nothing resembling this garbage can existed in 1960. Reporters may have been singing partisan songs with one candidate's staffers, but we the people weren't being exposed to denizens of the garbage can like the extremely direct Gutfeld and the much more slippery Watters.

In our view, what has happened on MSNBC in recent years has been bad enough. What has happened on the Fox News Channel involves garbage-can conduct as part of braindead, birdbrain pseudo-discussions—pseudo-discussions conducted by panels like the one assembled for Gutfeld last night.

Last night's four-member Gutfeld! panel included two (2) D-list comedians, plus a former professional wrestler and a former VH-1 veejay. With the help of this ridiculous panel, he program's garbage-can host conducted the evening's pseudo-discussions. 

Nothing dimly resembling this gong-show existed back in the day, when America was still great—when we were able to conduct our White House campaigns in what would now be record time.

In our view, what has happened on MSNBC has been bad enough. What happens each night on the Fox News Channel is a journalistic, intellectual, moral and societal disaster—a product of cultural squalor.

That said, our finer news orgs largely ignore this nightly cesspool / gong-show. Judging from appearances, no one is eager to tangle with Fox.

This brings us back to the larger question we're attempting to raise this week. What's the nature of the campaign reporting which emerges from our higher-end orgs? Is it possible that such reporting tilts toward the fatuous, as we're suggesting this week?

Sad! We're going to wait until tomorrow to review the recent "interview" with Candidate Trump conducted by CBS News. For today, we will direct your attention to a letter which appears in today's New York Times.

Three letters concern last Sunday's column by the paper's Maureen Dowd. The second letter describes the state of affairs we've been citing this week:

To the Editor:

While I usually enjoy Ms. Dowd’s views, in Sunday’s column I saw something that has been reoccurring in all newspaper, television and social media coverage: a demand that Kamala Harris explain her policy positions. (“She has to show she has what it takes once she steps away from the teleprompter,” Ms. Dowd wrote. “Can she manage to get through a minimum of policy stuff with no viral blunders?”)

But no similar demands are made of her deranged opponent. He insults, name-calls and carries on in myriad ways, and it’s usually waved off as “That’s Trump!” He isn’t asked serious policy questions by the press, and he responds to the questions he is asked with lies, a change of subject or various other non-responses. In subsequent reporting, it’s meekly acknowledged that he lied, changed the subject, etc.

When is the national press going to expect the same level of competence from Republican candidates that is demanded of Democratic candidates?

J— I— / Phoenix

Even in blistering Phoenix, this Times reader has managed to notice an oddity in current attempts at campaign press coverage:

Sensibly enough, our journalists say—and say and say and say and say—that Candidate Harris should submit to "serious journalistic interviews," during which she'll be forced to answer "difficult questions."

Judged by traditional norms, that expectation is perfectly fair. But along the way, our brightest journalistic lights fail to notice an obvious fact:

The other candidate, Candidate Trump, hasn't answered anyone's difficult question either—and he's been in the race for several years! This fact has been noticed in Phoenix, but apparently nowhere else!

Tomorrow, we'll show you, in painful detail, what happened when that candidate pretended to answer some rather peculiar questions in a brief interview session with CBS News. 

We'll show you the questions asked, and we'll show you the "answers." We'll show you the embarrassing way the interview was reported within the chambers of CBS News. 

It's easy to see that "cable news" has opened a type of garbage can which didn't exist when America was great. Greg Gutfeld emerges from the garbage can first, with Watters performing a similar role in a much more elusive manner.

It's easy to see that this garbage can now exists. It's also easy to see that our finer, higher-class orgs don't want to discuss this fact.

That said, is it possible that the performance of those high-end orgs might possibly tilt toward the fatuous? This afternoon, we'll touch on a guest essay and a front-page news report in this morning's New York Times. 

Tomorrow, though, we'll visit CBS News.

Walter Cronkite took over as anchor there in 1962. 

"And that's the way it is," he would say each night. In 1963, his voice broke—he had to stop and gather himself—when it fell to him to report the murder of President Kennedy.

That was CBS News back then. Last week, CBS News got to interview Candidate Trump. 

CBS News got to interview Trump! Tomorrow, we'll show you what happened.

Tomorrow: All the way down

David Leonhardt has 21 questions!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2024

None are for Candidate Trump: Today, it's the New York Times' David Leonhardt who's rolling down Storyline Road.

Perhaps for perfectly good reasons, Leonhardt has long been branded as one of the brainiest scribes at the Times. For the record, he prepped at Horace Mann, then went on to Yale.

Today, he's 51 years of age, and he's fallen in line with the narrative. This morning, he published a list of 21 questions. Dual headline included, his presentation starts like this:

21 Questions for Harris
We’re asking unanswered questions for her potential administration.

Kamala Harris has largely avoided answering questions since her campaign began: She hasn’t participated in a town hall or given an extended media interview.

She and her aides say she will do one soon. In the meantime, I’ve worked with my Times colleagues to put together a list of 21 questions that could help the country understand how she would govern. Here they are, separated into four categories.

The journalist lists 21 questions. That said, each question is for Candidate Harris, and for her alone.

He lists no questions for Candidate Trump. Scrolling all the way back to the start of the year, we see no sign that he has ever proposed any such grilling for Trump.

Briefly, let's be fair. It's true that Candidate Harris has "largely avoided answering questions since her [brief] campaign began." It's also true that she "hasn’t participated in a town hall or given an extended media interview."

That said:

When's the last time Candidate Trump ever "gave an extended media interview" to a serious journalist? To those who live along Storyline Lane, do those phone-ins to Fox & Friends count? 

When's the last time Trump did a "serious journalistic interview" with a high-end reporter? Does this take us back to the widely lauded interview with Jonathan Swan, way back in August 2020. with the praise all going to Swan?

We don't want to belabor a remarkably basic point. It's been a long time since we've seen Candidate Trump placed in a situation where he's actually forced to answer serious questions. 

When he does submit to taking questions, he more commonly takes that as an opportunity to launch one of his favorite filibusters. No connection to the actual question need apply!

We don't want to belabor a fairly obvious point. For the record, Leonhardt starts his list of questions for Harris with eight questions on economic policy. Below, you see the first five:

Economic policy

1. Madam Vice President, your agenda revolves around helping the middle class—such as offering a credit of up to $25,000 for first-time home buyers and increasing the child tax credit. You haven’t said much about some big related issues, though, including paid leave and universal preschool. Will you try to revive President Biden’s plans?

2. You support raising taxes on households that make more than $400,000. But these tax increases may not be large enough both to pay for your agenda and to reduce the federal debt, as you’ve promised. How would you reduce the debt?

3. Biden has been more populist than other recent Democratic presidents. He’s skeptical of free trade and has subsidized manufacturing. Are you as populist as he is? Or are there any policy areas in which you would return to a more market-friendly, neoliberal approach?

4. Biden has cracked down on monopoly power, and a central player in this fight is Lina Khan of the Federal Trade Commission, who has focused on Big Tech. Some of your campaign donors in Silicon Valley want you to fire her. Would you?

5. The Biden administration made an important change on climate policy, emphasizing subsidies for clean energy rather than taxes on dirty energy. This approach is more politically popular. Is it delivering fast enough climate progress?

The third question strikes us as perhaps a bit fuzzy. The fourth seems to possibly take us off into the weeds.

That said, when has Candidate Trump ever taken or answered any actual questions about his own economic policies? For example, about the crazy way he keeps describing his proposal for expanding tariffs? For another example, about the size and shape of his proposed tax cuts, and about the effect they would have on federal deficits and debt?

Answer:

To the best of our knowledge, Candidate Trump has never answered any such questions! Nor has he ever been forced to answer any real questions about his repeated, ongoing, furious claim that the 2020 election was stolen, or about his bizarre palette of behaviors leading up to the events of January 6.

(Leonhardt's fifth question concerns climate change. Dear readers, don't even ask!)

When has Trump ever agreed to answer any such questions? We'd be inclined to say that the answer is "never"—but along the way, his extremely strange behaviors seem to have been thoroughly normalized in the minds of some.

Journalists like Leonhardt are able to see that Candidate Harris hasn't answered their questions to date. By now, such journalists seem to be blind to a second fact:

Candidate Trump has never answered their questions either! So where are the questions for him?

David Leonhardt is a good, decent person. That said, it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that he's asking Candidate Harris to engage in behaviors that Candidate Trump has relentlessly shunned over a much longer stretch of time.

Way back when, certain people couldn't see their emperor's new suit of clothes. Today, our major journalists can't seem to see Candidate Trump's assortment of strangely disordered behaviors.

They're ready to take on Candidate Harris. They're prepared to defer to him!

FATUOUS: When CBS News got to interview Trump...

TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2024

...it was fatuous all the way down: Let the word go forth to the nations:

There was a time when that bromide about the "Labor Day kickoff" actually made basic sense.

Long ago and far away, our presidential campaigns worked on a tighter time scale. Consider the now-iconic 1960 White House campaign:

Dear God! As of 1960, the surprisingly youngish Senator John F. Kennedy wasn't extremely well known. Despite that fact, he didn't announce that we would seek his party's nomination for president until January 2—until January 2 of that very year!

Somehow, the Democratic Party managed to complete its nomination process by the time of its national convention, which concluded on July 15. From there, it was a short hop to Labor Day—to the apocryphal start of the general election campaign. 

(Starting on September 26 of that year, Kennedy and Nixon held their very famous four (4) debates. In the present day, journalists traditionally repeat a famous inaccurate claim about the first of those four debates. By now, the repetition of the famous misstatement is an upper-end press corps tradition!)

Somehow, it seems that we were able to move things along just a bit faster back then. In a boon for New Hampshire motel owners, modern-day candidates routinely announce their candidacy several years in advance.

The campaigns go on and on and on, and then they go on some more. And what's the result of this long TV show?

By the time we finally vote in November, very few voters have any idea what the two nominees have proposed!

This year's campaign is quite different. Due to the incumbent president's withdrawal from the race, the Democratic nominee didn't launch her campaign until late July—until July 21 of this very year!

From that day forward, a cry has gone up from the Fox News Channel, with mainstream voices eventually joining in. Many voices reciting as one have brought the anguished cry forward at Fox:

When will she hold her first sit-down interview? Also, where is her policy platform?

There's nothing "wrong" with asking those questions. Indeed, it's as we noted yesterday:

Judged by traditional norms, Candidate Harris surely does have a whole lot of splainin' to do.

Judged by traditional norms, she needs to explain some of her own past statements—especially those she advanced when she sought her party's nomination for president back in 2019.

(She announced her candidacy in January of that year—in January 2019, almost two years out. So it goes with the expanded time frame for these quadrennial battles.)

Judge by traditional norms, Candidate Harris also needs to define her policy platform. And as part of the traditional game which constantly baffles our mainstream journalists, she will almost surely have to explain her role in various actions which were taken by President Biden.

This last requirement is based on a fact which is universally known at the Fox News Channel:

If you're vice president of the U.S., that means that you established all the policies of the administration. 

No, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But any time a sitting vice president seeks to succeed an outgoing president. our mainstream journalists insist on leading us through that that deeply puzzling swamp.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but our nation's mainstream political journalism is often baldly fatuous. Consider what happened last week when CBS News was afforded the opportunity to interview Candidate Trump.

In yesterday afternoon's report, we offered a bit of background. At the New York Times, Bret Stephens listed the various questions he would pose to Candidate Harris if only she was willing to submit to an interview.

For the record, there's nothing wrong with Bret Stephens' smarts. As we showed you yesterday, his weekly exchange with Gail Collins went in part like this:

Kamala Harris Has Left the Building

[...] 

Bret: Voters will want to figure out whether [Candidate Harris is] a pragmatist (good), an opportunist (not good) or a phony (doubleplusungood). One way to find out is to insist that she sit down for some serious journalistic interviews and answer a few difficult questions. I can think of some.

Gail: Can’t argue with you about the interviews. Harris isn’t even doing press conferences and that’s just wrong. Hope she’ll make a turn now that she’s the official nominee.

[...]

Gail: If you were her questioner, what would you ask?

Bret: In no particular order: If grocery stores, whose profit margins hover between 1 and 3 percent, are price gouging, what do you say about Apple, whose margins are above 25 percent? Do you believe, as you signaled in 2019, that illegal immigrants should be entitled to free health care? Is the phrase “from the river to the sea” antisemitic? Will you use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? If the record of the Biden-Harris administration is so strong, why do a plurality of Americans describe the current state of the economy as bad or very bad?

Gail: The economy is not bad! But go on.

Bret: What causes inflation? Have you witnessed any instances when President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished and were you worried about his ability to serve out a second term? Would you send American military forces to fight for Taiwan if it were attacked by China? Name one liberal position with which you disagree and why. How will a Harris-Walz administration differ in policies from a Biden-Harris one?

There's nothing "wrong" with the questions Stephens proposed. Some of those questions make perfect sense—and as we noted yesterday, Journalists Collins and Stephens agreed:

Candidate Harris should do some serious interviews, during which she'll be forced to answer difficult questions. 

There's nothing "wrong" with that prescription—but we offered an obvious question:

When will Candidate Trump be asked to sit down for some serious interviews—for "serious journalistic interviews" during which he'll be forced to answer "difficult questions?"

When will that demand be voiced? Due to the normalization of Candidate Trump, it didn't occur to Stephens to state that demand, and it didn't occur to Collins.

We offer the following question:

When was the last time Candidate Trump sat down for a serious interview? When was the last time Candidate Trump engaged in something that can be described as a real news conference—a real news conference where's he was required to answer difficult questions?

We'd say that it's been a long, long time since any such sessions occurred. But due to the normalization of Trump's extremely strange behaviors, such questions keep going unasked.

When will Trump be forced to answer real questions as part of a serious interview? We'll guess the answer is never. As an example of what we mean, consider what happened last Monday, when CBS News was granted the opportunity of speaking with this contender.

It fell to Caitlin Huey-Burns to conduct the interview with Trump. Concerning the interview itself—and concerning the way it was reported—we would have to say this:

The journalism was fatuous all the way down.

Huey-Burns seems like the world's nicest person. That said, her performance this day journeyed into the realm of the fatuous, and then it just kept going.

As a general matter, her questions were an embarrassment. In response to those fatuous questions, the candidate routinely offered his usual rambling non-answer answers. 

His rambling filibusters were often built on claims which were baldly inaccurate—but Huey-Burns never piped up. She offered no challenge, no protest.

The interview itself was a joke, but so was the way the interview was reported by CBS News:

Muckety-mucks at this upper-end org praised Huey-Burns for her brilliant performance. In fact, her performance was D-minus all the way down. So was the way the interview was packaged by her superiors.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but in the present day, our high-end journalism is routinely amazingly poor.

Tomorrow, we'll walk you through this latest stone-cold example. As boo-birds scream for Harris to speak, this pseudo-interview with Candidate Trump was fatuous all the way down.

Harris has had one month to prepare. Candidate Trump has had years.

The boo-birds are calling for Harris to speak. By way of contrast, Trump's endless refusals to make basic sense have been normalized all the way down. 

Tomorrow: "Caitlin's excellent interview," the network's Costa said

Here are the questions one scribe would ask Harris!

MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 2024

But where are the questions for Trump? It's as we noted this very morning. For better or worse, Candidate Harris almost surely has a fair amount of splainin' to do. 

Due to the way her candidacy came into being, she has only had a month to get her campaign up and running. We're amazed by how few journalists ever cite that obvious point when they complain about her failure to conduct press events up to this point in time.

Still, if we're playing by normal rules, she probably needs to present a platform—and she probably needs to sit for some interviews. At least, that's what Bret Stephens says in this week's episode of The Conversation—and Gail Collins says she agrees. 

New York Times headline included:

Kamala Harris Has Left the Building

[...] 

Bret: The problem with Harris is that she’s a political chameleon—a tough-on-crime prosecutor in one phase of her career, a self-described “radical” in another. Voters will want to figure out whether she’s a pragmatist (good), an opportunist (not good) or a phony (doubleplusungood). One way to find out is to insist that she sit down for some serious journalistic interviews and answer a few difficult questions. I can think of some.

Gail: Can’t argue with you about the interviews. Harris isn’t even doing press conferences and that’s just wrong. Hope she’ll make a turn now that she’s the official nominee.

They agree—Candidate Harris should sit for some serious interviews. Stephens says he can think of some questions. Some of those questions are these:

Gail: If you were her questioner, what would you ask?

Bret: In no particular order: If grocery stores, whose profit margins hover between 1 and 3 percent, are price gouging, what do you say about Apple, whose margins are above 25 percent? Do you believe, as you signaled in 2019, that illegal immigrants should be entitled to free health care? Is the phrase “from the river to the sea” antisemitic? Will you use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? If the record of the Biden-Harris administration is so strong, why do a plurality of Americans describe the current state of the economy as bad or very bad?

Gail: The economy is not bad! But go on.

Bret: What causes inflation? Have you witnessed any instances when President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished and were you worried about his ability to serve out a second term? Would you send American military forces to fight for Taiwan if it were attacked by China? Name one liberal position with which you disagree and why. How will a Harris-Walz administration differ in policies from a Biden-Harris one?

Those are very detailed questions. It would take a day-long series of interviews for Candidate Harris to answer them.

Still, some of those questions are very basic. We now mention the unnoticed dog which just keeps forgetting to bark:

When in the world has Candidate Trump ever submitted to serious interviews? When has he ever offered actual answers to any such actual questions? 

When has he offered actual answers, not rambling, off-topic filibusters which seem to wander the earth?

When will our high-end journalists insist that Candidate Trump engage in such serious interviews? Is that silly session with Elon Musk somehow supposed to count? How about the candidate's sessions with Hannity—the sessions in which the Fox News star tries to get the candidate to repeat the right answers?

When will Candidate Trump engage in serious interviews? By now, Trump's extremely peculiar conduct has been normalized to such an extent that this obvious question pretty much never gets asked.

Journalist Stephens is center right. Journalist Collins is center left.

When will Trump submit to serious interviews? It should have fallen to Collins to ask. But what a surprise—she didn't!

When will Candidate Trump face actual questions—with the requirement that he provide actual answers?

It may be the world's most obvious question. Thanks to the normalization of madness, it's the question which never gets asked!