DISORDER(S): Is "something wrong" with Candidate Trump?

MONDAY, AUGUST 19, 2024

Also, is something wrong with the press corps?  Some will say that the Washington Post's Catherine Rampell has a whole lot of splainin' to do.

We're going to spell that out tomorrow. For now, consider what happened, on Saturday evening, to the Fox News Channel's Jon Scott. 

Ever since June 2018, Scott has been hosting The Fox Report, an hourlong show which airs at 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday nights. 

In theory, The Fox Report is a news broadcast, not an opinion program—and, as a general matter, Scott conducts himself accordingly. The program is designed to offer an island of sanity before the inanity of The Big Weekend Show touches off the barrage of propaganda which occupies the rest of the channel's weekend nights.

As the clock struck 6 on Saturday evening, Candidate Donald J. Trump was still orating at his campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He had started speaking at 4:40 p.m., but he was still going strong at 6. 

As you can see on the C-Span videotape, he spoke for an hour and 42 minutes on this occasion, departing the stage at 6:22 p.m.

Scott had been airing his normal program—and then, he was mugged by reality. At 6:27 p.m., he introduced a highly experienced journalist—someone who should have been a reliable Fox News guest.

As you can see, the intro went like:

SCOTT (8/17/24): Former president Trump just wrapped up rallying voters in battleground Pennsylvania this evening. He hammered Vice President Harris's new economic plan, saying she's already had a chance to tackle inflation as vice president. 

Joining us now—John Bussey, the associate editor at the Wall Street Journal.

A quick aside:

How exactly does a vice president "tackle inflation," or tackle anything else? On the Fox News Channel, no one seems to recognize this as a fairly obvious question.

At any rate, as for Bussey, he has had a long career at the Wall Street Journal. During his 36 years with the paper, he has served in such posts as Washington Bureau Chief; as Deputy Managing Editor; and as Foreign Editor. 

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth in 1979. On that basis, we're guessing that he's something like 65 years old.

Meanwhile, the Journal is part of the Murdoch empire, as is the Fox News Channel. With such an experienced hand on deck, what could possibly go wrong?

Citizen, don't even ask! Bussey took only two questions from Scott before the segment ended. But by normal standards of the Channel, things went sideways fast. 

In response to Scott's first question, Bussey noted that Candidate Harris failed to provide a lot of details in the course of delivering last Friday's economic address. 

The guest was still on message at this point. But then, he added this:

BUSSEY: On the former president's side as well, on Trump's side as well, we're seeing just the outlines of economic policy without [lightly chuckling] any indication of where the money is going to come from. 

He wants to cut taxes, he wants to cut regulations.  I think his argument would be, "Well, that would stimulate growth." 

But at the same time, he's talking about raising tariffs on goods that are imported into the United States. And we know what happens when that happens, which is those prices which tariffs cause, the price increases, get passed right along to the consumer and that contributes to inflation. 

So we're seeing the outlines. We're not seeing the details of how these policies will be put into effect. And particularly, we're not seeing hos they would be paid for.

Say what? Is Bussey allowed to say such things about this second hopeful?

Full disclosure, from someone who watches: It's stunningly rare to hear such things said about Candidate Trump on any Fox News Channel program. 

Not only that—Bussey even mentioned Trump's proposals concerning tariffs! Most likely, he did so without knowing about the transparently crazy statements Trump had made, during his endless Wilkes-Barre address, about that very topic.

To his credit, Scott moved on without flinching. Scrambling to recover, his producers now played videotape from Wilkes-Barre—videotape in which the candidate could be seen saying this:

TRUMP (videotape): In her speech yesterday, Kamala went full Communist. You heard that? She went full Communist! She wants to destroy our country.  

After causing catastrophic inflation, Comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls. You saw that. It never worked before, never ever worked. This is the Maduro plan, Venezuela. Maduro plan of, like, the old Soviet Union. This is—they tried it! How did the Soviet Union work out?

She "wants to destroy our country," the candidate said, speaking of "Comrade Kamala."  This is much more typical fare on the Fox News Channel.

Example:

On Saturday morning's Fox & Friends Weekend, the friends were saying Communist Communist Communist Communist before the program was ten minutes old. In an unintentionally comical comment, Rachel Campos-Duffy was offering this to Fox News viewers at 6:07 a.m.:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (8/17/24): I actually really love it, Pete!...People have been alluding to it, saying "Communist"—you know, "Commie Kamala." 

And now, she puts out a plan that says she's a Communist! So at least we can have an honest debate!

Finally, we'll be able to have an honest debate! Our analysts mordantly chuckled, even as they tore at their hair.

(Inevitably, the Commie-calling continued. "We're sleepwalking our way to Communism," Pete Hegseth told Fox viewers at 6:14 a.m., as you can see right here.)

Back to The Fox Report! Commie Kamala "wants to destroy our country," the candidate had said. But after Scott briefly bashed those "price controls" himself, here's what Bussey said:

BUSSEY: I don't know where the former president is getting this from. She's not talking about price controls. 

She's not talking about price controls? Bussey's fuller statement went like that:

BUSSEY: Yeah. I don't know where the former president is getting this from. She's not talking about price controls. 

You know, these are the attacks on Kamala Harris that former President Trump has launched that kind of take him off of message. I mean, "Catastrophic this, disaster that." This kind of bleak "Carnage in America"—where things are actually pretty good in America you know, at the moment economically, and the data show it. 

You know, "Communist Kamala"—describing her as the old Soviet Union sort of brought on the shores of the United States, I don't know where that's coming from. And I think it probably appeals to some of his base, those who like a big show and World Wrestling Federation type language, but it's, it's—it takes him off message. 

Bussey said he doesn't know where Trump gets any of this! (Almost surely, it was his jab about the professional wrestling language which offended against mandated messaging most.)

At any rate, good God! Bussey went on to detail the various ways the data suggest the economy is actually quite strong. "You know, the times are sort of moving away from President Trump," he even said as he rattled off the various areas of economic strength.

The breakaway Bolshevik said all these things in answering only two questions! That said, and just for the record: 

He doesn't know where Trump is getting the "Communist Kamala" talk? 

Plainly, that means that Bussey doesn't watch the Fox News Channel! That's pretty much what the tools—the various message messengers—are now saying all day long!

Scott closed by citing "one bright spot" for Candidate Trump from some recent polling data. But you'll watch a boatload of Fox News Channel "cable news" programs before you see someone making statements like those about Candidate Trump—let alone someone from the Murdoch team. 

As noted above, we'll guess that Bussey didn't know what Trump had said in that day's lengthy address. 

Bussey specifically noted Trump's stated desire to institute a new regime of tariffs. We'll guess he didn't know that Trump had made crazy statements in Wilkes-Barre about the way tariffs work—crazy statements which suggest that the disordered candidate doesn't understand the first freaking thing about this part of his fuzzy budget proposals.

We were especially struck by one other part of Bussey's critique. As noted above, when Scott offered a jibe about price controls, Bussey reacted as shown:

I don't know where the former president is getting this from. She's not talking about price controls.

She's not talking about price controls? Given the way the mainstream press corps had been yammering about this topic, where in the world did the Journal's Bussey ever come up with that?

We were especially struck by that statement because Catherine Rampell had already walked back her premature, snarky assessment of Harris's economic plan. According to Rampell herself, it had turned out to be a premature assessment—a premature assessment which supplies us with a framework for this week's reports.

Basic question: Is Candidate Harris actually proposing something called "price controls?"

Yesterday, in this helpful post, Kevin Drum walks you through that general topic. On Saturday, Bussey said the answer is no. That's what Rampell had already said, backtracking from her original, widely cited, especially snarky assessment.

In the course of the week's reports, we'll be exploring two questions. The first question goes like this:

At long last, is "something wrong" with Candidate Trump? Is it possible that something's severely wrong with Candidate Trump—and will the mainstream press corps ever be willing to set their euphemisms aside and just flatly ask?

As we noted last week, the candidate recently posted a crazy tweet in which he claimed that Candidate Harris had used AI to invent a crowd of 15,000 people—to invent a very large crowd when no one was actually present.

(In fact, everyone noted that crazy statement. Everyone except the hirelings on Fox News, where the crazy comment was disappeared.)

Psychiatric assessments to the side, that's the sort of claim which would strike the average person as being transparently crazy. In Wilkes-Barre, the candidate's statements about the way tariffs work came from a different province in Crazy Land—but those rantings suggest that, at long last, another basic question needs to be asked:

At long last, is something wrong—is something seriously wrong—with the mainstream American press corps? Is it possible that something is severely wrong with the way they've normalized the conduct of Candidate Trump?

In our view, the time has come to question the basic functioning of the disordered Candidate Trump. But the time has come to question the conduct of our upper-end news orgs too. 

Some will say that Catherine Rampell, a good, decent person, has a whole of splainin' to do. We're inclined to agree with that view—but a whole lot of other journalists are huddled in that same boat.

We've long referred to Candidate Trump as being "disordered." At long last, will a second question be asked:

Are the finer people in our upper-end press corps somewhat disordered too?

Tomorrow: In a little-noticed tweet, the journalist walks it back