FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2024
Editing can be fun: Three cheers for Alex Griffing, breakout star of Mediaite. We see that he's done the transcribing we'd planned to do yesterday.
We refer to something said by Candidate Trump when he spoke with Maria Bartiromo last weekend on her Sunday Morning Futures program for Fox.
With an assist from Griffing's transcription, here's the rather slender exchange which has generated a great deal of interest. You'll note that Trump was asked about a very specific possibility concerning Election Day:
BARTIROMO (10/13/24): It was an Afghan refugee charged with plotting an Election Day massacre.
TRUMP: Nothing surprises me.
BARTIROMO: What about that, though? Are you expecting chaos on Election Day?
TRUMP: No. Not from the side which votes for Trump.
BARTIROMO: But I'm just wondering if these outside agitators will start up on Election Day. Let's say you win. Let's remember, you've got 50,000 Chinese nationals in this country in the last couple of years. There are people on the terrorist watch list—350 in the last couple of years. Like you said—13,000 murderers and 15,000 rapists.
What are you expecting? Joe Biden said he doesn’t think it’s going to be a peaceful Election Day.
TRUMP: Well, he doesn’t have any idea what’s happening, in all fairness. He spends most of his day sleeping.
I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country—by the way, totally destroying our country. The towns and villages, they’re being inundated.
But I don’t think they're the problem in terms of Election Day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're—and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.
Warning! We can't vouch for Bartiromo's numbers. A lot of bogus claims have been floating around the Fox News Channel with respect to the number of criminals who have recently entered the country. We can't vouch for the numbers Bartiromo offered there.
That said, that was the full exchange at that point in time. Bartiromo asked Trump about possible violence—about possible "chaos"—on Election Day. Quite explicitly, he then discussed the possibility that "the enemy within"—a bunch of radical left lunatics—could imaginably try to create some such chaos on that specific day.
Who was the candidate talking about? As is routine at this point, the candidate didn't make his meaning especially clear. At that point, Bartiromo moved on to a different topic, as you can see at Griffing's post
Clearly, Trump had said that some "radical left lunatics"—some "very bad people"—might need to be subdued by the National Guard, conceivably even by the military, on Election Day. But what sorts of "very bad people" did he have in mind?
Bartiromo didn't ask, and the candidate didn't say. Did this disordered candidate really mean anything at all? We can't necessarily say.
Forced to guess, we would have guessed that he might have had "antifa" types in mind. In his own post, Griffing mentions the campus groups who have demonstrated against Israel's conduct in Gaza.
One thing is clear. Nothing in this actual exchange suggests that Trump was talking about calling out the National Guard, or even the military, to subdue Nancy Pelosi or some such major political types. He was speaking about Election Day only, and nothing he said seemed to suggest that he was talking about subduing his political rivals.
All across Blue America's cable landscape, this exchange has been edited down to eliminate Bartiromo's question. With her question edited away, it becomes much less obvious that Trump was specifically discussing Election Day, full stop.
It's amazing to us that serious journalists would edit this exchange that way. But with increasing frequency, this is the journalism we have chosen as our heavily tribalized nation just keeps coming apart.
Much later in the interview, Bartiromo asked a totally different question—a question about Trump's possible second term. As he answered this question, Trump returned to his "enemy of the people" rhetoric, but also to the childish nicknames with which he has burdened the discourse.
Griffing has transcribed that later exchange. Much later in the interview, here's the question Trump was asked:
BARTIROMO: What will you do to guard against the bureaucrats undermining you in a second term?
That's the question he was now asked. To see the ridiculous things the candidate said—childish nicknames included!—click here for Griffing's post.
In that later statement, this childish, badly disordered man refers to Rep. Schiff as "the enemy from within." He goes on and on, then on and on, but he doesn't say anything about trying to lock Schiff up.
Creative paraphrase can be great fun. So can creative editing.
Increasingly, this is the journalism we have chosen. Such choices can be enjoyable, but they also can cause great harm.
Few things this candidate says make sense. We Blues should perhaps try harder.
The people Bob describes lie about things Trump said. But the accusers are themselves lying. The conclusion is that they're not really committed to integrity; they just oppose Trump.
ReplyDeleteAgree. You can't hold it against Trump that his cognitive decline has him spouting gibberish, that no sane person could understand.
DeleteThat's why I save my vitriol for piece of shit Trump voters.
8:17,
DeleteWe've gone over this a million times. Republican voters aren't trying to elect Trump because they believe his gibberish is worth voting for. They just crave his bigotry.
8:48 exactly.
DeleteYup
DeleteSleepy Dave has nothing to comment on so he pulls this out of his collection of dusty conservative tropes.
Delete"Who was the candidate talking about? As is routine at this point, the candidate didn't make his meaning especially clear."
ReplyDeleteThe candidate helpfully clarified who he was talking about during his Fox News townhall. Notably, this is the part of the video clip that was missing from Bret Baier's presentation during his interview with candidate Harris.
TRUMP: "It is the enemy from within and they're very dangerous. They're Marxists and communists and fascists and thet're sick. I use a guy like Adam Schiff 'cuz they made up the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It took two years to solve the problem. Absolutely nothing was done wrong, et cetera, et cetera. They're dangerous to our country. We have China, we have Russia, wehave all these countries. If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult are the, you know the Pelosis, these people, they're so sick and they're so evil. If they would spend their time trying to make America great again we would have, it would be so easy to make this country great."
It's quite clear who the "enemy from within" is in Trump's mind.
QiB - When you contest something that Somerby says, you bring the quotes. That's the way it should be done.
DeleteThe over-officious Comment Monitor approves.
Delete"In that later statement, this childish, badly disordered man refers to Rep. Schiff as "the enemy from within." He goes on and on, then on and on, but he doesn't say anything about trying to lock Schiff up."
ReplyDeleteWhy no! He would never!
Schiff's lying is a shanda for the goyim.
DeleteI got yer shanda:
Delete"If I don't win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens, because at 40%, that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy."
Trump isn’t just xenophobic, he’s xenomorphphobic - he fears the enemy within bursting through his chest.
DeleteYet this highly unrealistic.
Trump has a body like the Pillsbury Doughboy, no enemy from within can escape that hideous body of layers upon layers of blubbery.
OTOH Trump is said to possibly be suffering from tertiary syphilis, so maybe that’s what he really means by enemy from within.
Schiff is the archetype of a closet sadist.
DeleteJD Vance has less charisma than the heating directions on a can of soup.
DeleteWhat does Schiff have against closets?
DeleteAs president, Trump reportedly displayed keen interest in using the Insurrection Act to suppress Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020. Even more ominously, several Trump allies urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act in an effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.
ReplyDelete"Trump's willingness to use the military against legitimate protests in America [last] year stands out as particularly significant and damaging," says Carter Malkasian, a former senior Defense Department official. "The backlash was thankfully great, so hopefully our institutions have emerged undamaged."
ReplyDelete"Few things this candidate says make sense. We Blues should perhaps try harder."
ReplyDeleteJust try harder to keep up the sanewashing! If you can't count on the Blues to "try harder" there's always Bob to help make sense out of Trump's gibberish. But... we can't necessarily say.
Clearly, Trump had said that some "radical left lunatics"—some "very bad people"—might need to be subdued by the National Guard, conceivably even by the military, on Election Day. But what sorts of "very bad people" did he have in mind?
ReplyDeleteOne might look to Trump's past statements to see who he thinks is a "radical left lunatic." It's a charge he makes rather frequently.
He has identified Kamala Harris with this term many times. He called Tim Walz a radical left lunatic as well as Montana Senator Jon Tester. RFK, Jr. is one. Anyone at all who was under consideration to replace Biden on the ticket meets Trump's criteria. Jeffrey Goldberg, an editor at The Atlantic is another. Former Ohio Sentor Tim Ryan qualifies as does Special Counsel Jack Smith. Democrats, generally, sometimes are tagged by Trump this way.
Similarly, he is forthright in identifying by name the "very bad people" he believes are a threat to the country.
So no, he did not say exactly who he thinks should be subject to military enforcement beyond "radical left lunatics." But he has told us endlessly who he thinks the radical left is.
And what he plans to do to them.
DeleteNot to mention Nancy Pelosi, who his followers went after in the Capitol, and a similarly motivated Trump loyalist went after at her home, which not occupied by her, allowed him the opportunity to nearly kill her husband.
ReplyDeleteThis is a baldly dishonest post from Somerby. Balderdash! Ballyhoo! (hat tip to Adrian Belew)
ReplyDeleteTrump indeed has said the very things he is accused of. Somerby wants you to think that that particular Bartiromo (a total loon) interview was the only time Trump has engaged in that kind of fascistic rhetoric.
That Somerby could be this dishonest is yet another strong and clear indication that his supposed “liberal” leanings are a ruse for the rubes.
I agree. Trump is clearly grooming the country for some kind of post-election intervention. Bob is dishonest to suggest otherwise.
DeleteYes. It is relatively unlikely Trump will win the electoral college, and he certainly won’t win the popular vote, but if he can get the issue into the Supreme Court, or the House, then he will likely become president, illegitimately so. Trump is clearly working towards such a scenario, it’s his only hope of avoiding personal responsibility for his corruption and criminality.
Delete"Somerby wants you to think that that particular Bartiromo (a total loon) interview was the only time Trump has engaged in that kind of fascistic rhetoric."
DeleteThis is false.
Describing his political opponents as sick and evil is so par for the course for Trump that it is treated as acceptable by Somerby, who instead decides to cherry pick the contents of a single interview to make a point. The real point to be made, as a compendium of Trump's comments, in this interview and elsewhere, is that he is a vindictive, nasty and deranged piece of work. The discourse has been so polluted by Trump, starting with his middle school name calling of political opponents on both sides of the aisle, then progressing to targeting by name individuals as evil, sick and threats from within, that it has become his norm, accepted as something distasteful that he does, when it is far worse than that and outside of acceptable boundaries. Except to his fan base who seem to relish it.
ReplyDelete"Describing his political opponents as sick and evil is so par for the course for Trump that it is treated as acceptable by Somerby"
ReplyDeleteThis is false.
Name what is false.
Delete