This whole discourse is out of order!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

Peter Baker, front page of the Times: Full disclosure:

We hadn't watched last evening's Last Word when we scanned today's New York Times.

We still hadn't seen the opening segment of Lawrence O'Donnell's program. That said, and for obvious reasons, we read a certain front-page "News Analysis" first.

The piece was written by Peter Baker, who's the farthest thing from dumb. It sat above the fold on the front page of today's print editions—and it helps establish a basic fact about this broken press corps.

Baker's the farthest thing from dumb!  Despite that fact, his essay started like this:

NEWS ANALYSIS
Too Old? The Focus Is Now on Trump

The last time the nation held a debate with the presidency on the line, a candidate with about eight decades of life behind him faced the challenge of proving that he was still up to the job of running the country. He failed.

Two and a half months later, the cast of characters has shifted and another candidate heading toward the octogenarian club confronts his own test to demonstrate that he has not diminished with age. Whether he passes that test may influence who will be the next occupant of the Oval Office.

At 78, former President Donald J. Trump exhibits more energy and speaks with more volume than President Biden does at 81, but he, too, has mixed up names, confused facts and stumbled over his points. Mr. Trump’s rambling speeches, sometimes incoherent statements and extreme outbursts have raised questions about his own cognitive health and, according to polls, stimulated doubts among a majority of voters.

With Mr. Biden now out of the race, the politics of age have been turned on their head. Mr. Trump is now the oldest person ever to run for president on a major party ticket and, if he wins, would become the oldest president in history by the end of his term, when he would be 82. While he managed to sidestep questions about his own capacity while Mr. Biden was his opponent, the rival he will square off against at Tuesday’s prime-time debate in Philadelphia will be Vice President Kamala Harris, who at 59 is nearly two decades younger.

Donald J. Trump "has mixed up names?" The problem, of course, goes well beyond that, and it may have nothing to do with age. But as of today, it's finally clear:

It isn't possible to get the Times to come to terms with that fact.

The presidential candidate in question says crazy thigs every day. For the record, he began saying crazy things about Barack Obama's place of birth back in 2011, when he was 65—just six years older than Candidate Harris is today.

Today, he says crazy things pretty much every day. 

Some of the crazy things he says fly in the face of the basic functioning of the American system. Some of the crazy things he says seem to suggest that he has no idea how certain basic policy questions work.

We've been urging the Times (and other such orgs) to come to terms with a basic fact of life:

When a nominee says crazy things, the fact that he did so is front-page news. If the nominee says crazy things every day, it's front-page news every time.

Peter Baker isn't dumb; his analysis piece plainly is. Last evening, O'Donnell thundered about the way Baker focuses on the candidate's recent statement, at The Economic Club of New York, about the possibility of addressing the current high costs of child care.

For the record, Trump's long address was full of crazy remarks. In its usual simple-minded way, the high-end press corps widely decided to focus on what he said in response to a question from an audience member about those child care costs.

In fairness, Trump's jumbled response was easy to mock, and our journalists tend to love anything that's simple-minded and easy. Along the way, news orgs avoided the larger problem with what the candidate said in response to that question, just as Baker does today.

At this point, let's be fair! We agree with this part of what Baker says in his piece:

BAKER (9/10/24): What he seemed to be saying was that he would raise so much money by imposing tariffs on imported goods that the country could use the proceeds to pay for child care. 

We agree! That did seem to be what the hopeful was saying as he meandered along. As he wandered the countryside, vaguely conveying that impression, an underlying fact also seemed to be clear:

The candidate doesn't have a proposal for reducing the cost of child care, and he didn't want to say so.

Fair enough! Candidate Trump has no proposal concerning the costs of child care. He seemed to say that his brilliant plan for using "smart tariffs" will bring in so much money that it will be easy to finance some future plan, if he ever has one.

That seemed to be what he was saying! But as we read the Baker piece, we were struck by the groaning fact O'Donnell cited last night. Possibly at the insistence of editors, Baker had chosen not to say something he surely knows to be true.

For perhaps the ten millionth time, Trump had offered a crazy account of the way tariffs work.

Needless to say, Lawrence immediately began to say Trump had been "lying" again. This implies that Donald J. Trump actually understands the way tariffs actually work.

We're sorry, but we know of no reason to assume that that is true.

Does Candidate Trump actually understand the way tariffs actually work? We don't have the slightest idea—but among the various crazy things he said at The Economic Club of New York, he scattered this manifest nonsense of this type through major parts of his endless address:

TRUMP (9/5/24): Under my leadership, America will encourage domestic production instead of punishing it. As you know, our country’s vast manufacturing wealth was created at a time with very little domestic taxation, few regulations, and most revenue came from tariffs from other countries. That was when we were at the wealthiest ever, proportionately. We were the wealthiest country ever during those days. That was before income tax came along.

Now we foolishly do the opposite. We impose lower tariffs, and no tariffs, on foreign producers. We have the lowest tariffs of any nation in the world, and we relentlessly punish our own companies for doing business in America. You do business in America, you’re punished tremendously.

I had many, many companies come to me, "Sir, I can’t compete. They’re sending kitchen cabinets, washers and dryers, everything. I can tell you, every--motorcycles. They’re sending them here, sir. We can’t compete."

And I made it so they could compete and thrive. Every one of those people, we should get them up and talk to you one day, because every one of those people comes up to me, and every time I see them, they hug me, they kiss me, they love me, because I saved their businesses.

Yes, he actually said that! Every time those business leaders see him, they call him "Sir." After that, they hug and kiss him, they love the hopeful so much.

As you can see in that brief excerpt, these business leaders hug him and kiss him because of what he accomplished when he was president, through his use of tariffs. But does he know how tariffs work? 

Does he know what a tariff is? Again and again and again and again, it pretty much seems that he doesn't:

TRUMP (continuing directly): I intend to reverse this model and once again turn America into the manufacturing superpower of the world. We can do that, just with being intelligent. The key to this effort will be a pro-American trade policy that uses tariffs to encourage production here and bring trillions and trillions of dollars back home. And you know what? We deserve it.

Candidate Trump says he'll use tariffs to "bring trillions and trillions of dollars back home." 

But how exactly do tariffs work? How is that going to happen? For perhaps the ten millionth time, Candidate Trump seemed to say that tariffs work like this:

TRUMP: In the words of a great but highly underrated president, William McKinley, highly underrated, the protective tariff policy of the Republicans has been made, and made the lives of our countrymen sweeter and brighter. It’s the best for our citizenship and our civilization, and it opens up a higher and better destiny for our people. We have to take care of our own nation and our industries first.

In other words, take care of our country first. This is when we had our greatest wealth. He was assassinated, and he left his group of people that followed him. Teddy Roosevelt became a great president, spending the money that was made by McKinley.

So McKinley got a bad deal on that one. He built tremendous wealth. They had the Tariff Act of 1887, and they had a committee that studied, what are we going to do? They had a big problem, a problem like I hope to have with this country someday. So much money was coming in from foreign countries that they didn’t know how to spend it. They had no idea, so they set up a committee—we’ll set one up with the people in this room—"How do we distribute the wealth that we have?"

And Roosevelt built dams and built railroads and did national parks, but he did it with the money that was made with tariffs from McKinley. So you have to remember that. Very highly underrated, a very underrated president.

Let’s give them both credit. Smart tariffs will not create inflation. They will combat inflation. I had almost no inflation, and I had the highest tariffs that anyone’s seen, and they were going a lot higher. Foreign nations will pay us hundreds of billions of dollars, reducing the deficit and driving inflation down. It will largely reduce our deficit.

In my first term, we imposed historic tariffs with no effect on consumer prices or inflation. The anti-tariff people, many of them, I believe, honestly work for these other countries in some form, get tremendous amounts of lobbying money and other money because it doesn’t make sense what they’re saying. But we had no inflation, and we had protection, and I saved so many industries. I saved the steel industry.

But Biden and Harris are letting it go. They’re letting it go. It’s so easy to keep. A combination of fair trade tax cuts, regulatory cuts, and energy abundance will allow us to produce more goods, better and cheaper, right here in the USA than we’ve ever done before. And foreign nations will respect us again. I got along great with foreign nations, and I taxed the hell out of them. And they liked me. Maybe they respected me.

Again and again, for perhaps the ten millionth time, the candidate seemed to say that a tariff is like a tax imposed on a foreign country. 

He "taxed the hell out of" foreign nations, the former president said. Under his new plans for more far-reaching tariffs, "foreign nations will pay us hundreds of billions of dollars, reducing the deficit and driving inflation down," the former president added.

"I got along great with foreign nations, and I taxed the hell out of them," the former president puzzlingly said. "Maybe they respected me," he modestly mused—and from there, he immediately turned to quoting Viktor Orban's praise for his brilliant global leadership.

As Lawrence explained last night, the president of the United States can't tax a foreign nation. That isn't the way a tariff works. That isn't where the money comes from—and there's absolutely zero chance that Baker doesn't know that.

Peter Baker knows that these representations don't seem to make actual sense. He also knows that Candidate Trump says these things day after day after day as he whips up rally crowds by telling them that the last election was stolen, another repetitive claim the Times agrees to ignore.

If a candidate says these things every day, it's front-page news each time! In this case, Baker made fun of the verbal jumble Trump created in failing to answer the child care question, but he just let it go after that.

He didn't mention the apparent lunacy of Trump's proposal for vastly expanded tariffs. We'll take a guess as to why Baker's editors made him do that:

Talk about tariffs is very hard—and they like their front page to be easy.

Please don't make us try to explain this lunacy any further. But on the morning of the debate, this whole Potemkin "national discourse" is vastly out of order.

In the past few days, we've been trying to draw a contrast between the present and the past. Were we the people more serious once? How about our high-end journalists?

Are we now a confederacy of clowns, Fox News and the Times together?

For extra credit only: For Lawrence's opening segment last night, you can just click here. For the record, we don't know why he seems to feel so sure that Candidate Trump is lying.

Regarding the Times, we also note this:

In the paper's September 7 print editions, Jonathan Weisman offered this "Political Memo" about Trump's speech to The Economic Club. 

Weisman focused on the candidate's remarks about tariffs too. Seeming to chuckle a bit, he restricted himself to the politics of the tariff proposals. 

Policy can be hard! As you can see, Weisman didn't bother explaining the policy problems with what Candidate Trump says and says, and says and says and says and says, about this miracle cure. Presumably, that would simply be too hard for readers of the Times.

Our public discourse is highly Potemkin. It's given the look of a public discourse, but it's Marshmallow Fluff inside, then pretty much all the way down.

For the C-Span tape of the candidate's speech, you can just click here. No one at The Economic Club piped up about the tariffs!