TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024
Scribe doesn't get it right: Can anyone here play this game?
Over at the Washington Post, Dana Milbank was doing the highly unusual. He was describing the eternal spotlessness of the Fox News viewer's mind.
Hic column appeared last Friday, three days post-debate. Its dual headline said this:
Fox News cleans up another Trump mess
After the debate, the network worked to keep the MAGA faithful in a state of blissful ignorance.
Unheard of! Milbank was describing an important component of the Fox News Channel playbook. Its viewers are routinely kept from hearing the truth when the truth doesn't go the preferred way.
For whatever reason, journalists rarely talk about Fox. The column started like this:
Fox News cleans up another Trump mess
The reviews were almost universally savage after Donald Trump’s debate debacle, in which the former president ranted about migrants eating pets while getting his clock cleaned by an opponent he had insisted was “stupid.” Even the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing editorialists thought that Vice President Kamala Harris “won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity,” while Karl Rove added in a column that the night “was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.”
And then, in a universe all its own, there was Fox News.
“All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump,” host Jesse Watters proclaimed after the debate ended. (He specifically cited Trump’s “eating the pets” line.) “He just had some great knockouts,” Watters added. “And so this race just got tighter.”
“That’s probably true,” anchor Bret Baier agreed.
Briefly, let's be fair! Some commentators on Fox voiced a different point of view about the debate.
The channel's post-debate program was hosted by Baier and Martha MacCallum. They quickly threw to Brit Hume.
Hume briefly criticized the ABC moderators. Then, however he offered this as the bulk of his analysis:
HUME (9/10/24): Now, look, make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night. He rose to the bait repeatedly when she baited him, something I’m sure his advisers had begged him not to do.
You know, in the first debate, when Biden attacked him, he just kept his cool and kept going. In this debate he rose to the baiting—and we heard so many of the old grievances that we’d long thought Trump had learned were not winners politically. And there they all were, you know, talking about how he didn’t lose the election and all that.
So my sense is that she came out of this in pretty good shape. Now, how long this will last is anybody’s guess. But for tonight, at least, this was pretty much her night.
BAIER: You’re saying she had a good night?
HUME: I’m saying she certainly did.
Hume was the first analyst brought on the air that night. As you can see by clicking this link, that critique was offered to Fox News viewers roughly two minutes after the end of the debate.
Shortly thereafter, former Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) was brought on the air. "I agree with Brit," he said. "This has to be seen by supporters of Donald Trump and people in that campaign as a disappointment."
The gentleman continued from there. Sean Hannity had been allowed to take a turn between the two nay-sayers.
Eventually, the anchors got to Watters. The channel's resident "Silly Boy" made the remarks Milbank quoted. It's surprising to us to see that Baier did seem to voice agreement.
Milbank may have picked and chosen his examples just a tad. More awkwardly, he eventually said this in Friday's column:
Fox News cleans up another Trump mess
[...]
It was a case study in how the dominant “news” organ of the right cleans up Trump’s messes. When President Joe Biden had his disastrous debate, liberal outlets and commentators panned the performance and ultimately helped to force him out of the race. But when Trump had what was, objectively, a bad night, Fox News led a movement to claim it didn’t happen.
Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Oof! In our view, Candidate Trump did make a lot of "odd statements" that night. But even three days post-debate, Milbank apparently still didn't know the source of the quoted statement about transgender operations.
For ABC's fact check from September 11, you can just click here.
Trump was referring to a pledge Harris made to the ACLU in 2019 during her presidential campaign. Unfortunately in our view, several positions she adopted back then represent potential problems for her current effort.
That said, our focus today is on Milbank's column. Our advice to the consumer is this:
Be careful when reading the types of things you've been longing to hear!
One difference between Trump and Harris is that Trump was chosen by voters to run for president.
ReplyDeleteHere's another. Trump is a certain threat to democracy while Harris is in favor of democracy.
DeleteThe DNC is a private organization that can produce nominees however they please. It’s only been since 1972 that the DNC has fully employed popular voting in primaries, with 2024 being a special case where a presumptive nominee dropped out, which was his prerogative.
Delete8:12 does not offer a meaningful difference, just a whimper to indicate they are struggling to cope with Harris’ popularity. I feel your pain, bless you.
Be patient, 8:12. You'll see soon enough how many vote for her to be the president.
DeleteSuppose Biden had announced from the beginning that he was not running for re-election. Who would the Democrats have nominated?
DeleteSuppose Trump announced at some point he is dropping out. Who would be nominated?
DeleteSuppose you rub your two brain cells together and see what sparks.
Another difference between Trump and Harris is that Harris has consensual sexual relations.
DeleteIt's ironic that the party claiming to support democracy is run by a private cabal of elders who block debates and primary elections to prevent meaningful challengers from running against their preferred candidate and have attempted to impeach, jail, and disqualify their opponent to prevent them from participating in the democratic process and are now running a candidate that voters did not choose who tells us democracy is on the ballot.
DeleteSeems weird.
Maybe we should all vote on who gets to run in the primaries, then hold the primaries, and then hold the general election. That would give people a bigger chance to exercise their political choice.
DeleteChecking notes Biden/Harris were the Democratic primary winners. Democratic voters voted knowing if very old Joe faltered, Kamala would replace him. What is the problem again?
Delete2:54: It's ok that you don't want Trump to be prosecuted for his role in trying to overturn an election, so long as you are all in for the concept of democracy. Good luck November 5th. Haley would have been a much stronger candidate. We can wait until after the election for Trump to be prosecuted, like any other private citizen, for his crimes against America. He has a lot of explaining to do about those empty document folders in his Mar a Lago bathroom, let alone instigating an insurrection.
Delete5:27 I don't care if Trump is prosecuted for instigating an insurrection and trying to overturn the election. But I do think the charges are flimsy. Thanks for the wishes of good luck. I think we'll be ok but it will be close.
DeleteIronic that a Trump voter would question whether the Democratic Party is being democratic enough, while the Republican Party works 24/7/365 to suppress the votes of minorities.
Delete6:07: How 'bout we let the prosecution make the case in a court of law like we do for other people and have the jury adjudicate just how "flimsy" the multiple felonies are.
Delete8:38 How about it? It's a great idea.
Delete10:18: So you agree it's asinine to say the charges are "flimsy" without hearing the evidence? Or maybe maggots don't care about the evidence?
DeleteThere’s a wide chasm between Trump’s claim and Harris’ position. Harris’ position in response to the questionnaire is perfectly reasonable. Somerby is just up to his old tricks, trying to bring down Harris, the same old playbook.
ReplyDeleteTrump today:
ReplyDelete“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”
Enough irony to build a battleship.
More irony: Vance complaining about the rhetoric of Trump being called a fascist, when Vance not so long ago called Trump “America’s Hitler”, and Trump routinely calls Harris a “Marxist communist fascist” (which makes no sense, Trump obviously not knowing what any of those mean).
DeleteAnd who is “they”? Ah yes the would be assassin White male Republican gun enthusiasts.
In the old days, before the democratization of media, Trump would have gotten away with his misinformation, now it’s called out in real time, to the consternation of corporate media and stooges like Somerby.
I don't know why but Trump's rhetoric like that connects with people. It taps into a kind of Nixonian resentment. And it may be easy for some people to believe that when Trump is portrayed as a Hitler-like threat to democracy whose goal is to become a dictator and engineer bloodbaths, that naturally some people would hear that and think it would be a good thing to kill him. There's enough logic there for that message to connect with people. They are shown evidence that the bloodbath and dictator quotes were taken wildly out of context. And they can see moves to jail Trump and disqualify him were not exactly democratic, which helps the Trump rhetoric you describe connect with people and motivate them. Mostly Trump is tapping into people's feeling of powerlessness and fear of the the future. He's good at that. And the DNC has its share of self-owns that help him. It's kind of close now but Harris should be able to squeak through. But the elders who control the DNC need to be replaced. They have done such a shitty job for so long. We should never have been in this position in the first place.
DeleteUnlike the mainstream media, I like that the Democratic Party is using the words of Trump and Vance to show they are undemocratic bigots, who want a dictatorship on day one.
Delete"I don't know why but Trump's rhetoric like that connects with people."
DeleteBecause some people are bigots. In fact, many people are saying bigotry and white supremacy are the only things Republican voters actually care about, and the rest can be negotiated away.
8:47 AM
DeleteThat's raw ignorance.
Trump is holding a rally in Michigan today (co hosted by Arkansas governor Sanders for some reason - possible VP replacement?) where he repeatedly misidentified ANWR as Bagram, an airbase in Afghanistan, then seemed to sort of catch his mistake but then he just gave up and glitched out.
ReplyDeleteThen he responded to a question asking what is the biggest threat to manufacturing jobs in Michigan by saying: nuclear war. Full stop. That was it, that was his answer.
Biden has done more drilling and energy production than Trump, and Biden has gained 180k manufacturing jobs whereas Trump lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs with many factories closing.
According to polls, most Americans want Trump to drop out of the race, likely because all they see is Trump spewing lies and hate in between cognitive glitches and bizarre ramblings.
Trump is so weird.
Polls indicate Harris will defeat Trump in Michigan, also her lead in the national polls is increasing.
Harris is doing well.
Delete“she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,”
ReplyDeleteDoes Harris want to do operations on illegal aliens who are incarcerated? I am pretty sure that doesn't consider herself a surgeon. So, you have to take this incoherency and run it through the sane-washing machine, at which point it becomes: Harris checked a box that certain medical treatments should be available to incarcerated illegal aliens. Perhaps, a journalist could then investigate whether there have been any cases of transgender surgeries on illegal aliens. The answer will come back either as zero or maybe one? Instead, the answer that we get from the "fact-checkers" is that the statement was accurate.