The elements of style
Here is part of what he posted early Saturday evening over at his personal rantatorium, Truth Social:
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.
How do you watch the Sanctity of something? How do you watch the Sanctity of an election? Especially one that is in the future?
(I will just note that I refuse to believe that Trump really coughed up a word like skulduggery on his own. Spelling it incorrectly does point to him, but the likelihood that someone else is writing these posts is a reminder that Trump is surrounded by people who have no objections to his plans and will willingly carry them out.)
I think Trump writes them but maybe he asks one of the surrounding people what’s a good word for dirty tricks.
But the very first question at the debate should reflect a basic paradox in this election: How can any meeting between Trump and Harris be a “debate” if Trump has already made clear that he rejects the foundations of the American system of government?
Debates are based on good faith and shared assumptions about democracy. Trump bellows at us, over and over, that he couldn’t give a damn about any of that. He’s running because he wants to stay out of prison, get revenge on his enemies, exercise untrammeled power, and gain access to even more money. Are we really expecting a give-and-take about, say, child care (a subject on which Trump was spectacularly incoherent a few days ago) between a candidate who will govern as a traditional president and a would-be junta leader who intends to jail his opponents—including, possibly, the woman standing next to him and the reporters grilling him?
No, of course we’re not. The man is both evil and profoundly stupid.
How’s the reporting on all this? Not great.
I can’t give you a lot of headlines about all of these mad comments because, for the most part, they don’t exist. (Reuters summed up the raving on Saturday as “Trump Revs Up Small-Town Base in Wisconsin,” which is true, in the way that a 1967 headline saying Mao Encourages Chinese Intellectuals to Aid With Agricultural Efforts would be true but perhaps incomplete.) The New York Times had nothing about Trump’s weekend comments on its front page today. This morning’s Washington Post homepage simply said: “Harris Hunkers Down for ‘Debate Camp,’ Trump Opts for ‘Policy Sessions’ as Showdown Looms.” This headline is no doubt an accurate account of what’s happening in the campaigns, but “Trump says he will inevitably win and prosecute his opponents for fraud anyway” is probably more important than whether he is being briefed yet again on policies he doesn’t care about or understand.
This is the system being a system. If the Times and the Post did report on all his ravings they would be accused of libbrul bias, so they primly ignore most of them.
Several writers at The Atlantic, including our editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, have raised the issue of the “bias toward coherence” that prevents many journalists—and millions of Americans—from saying out loud that the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States is emotionally unstable and a menace to the Constitution.
Ah, right, that’s what I was getting at. It’s almost funny, in a horrible way. Trump is so off the charts stupid and evil that reporting on him truthfully looks abnormal. Head he wins tails we lose.
This is not going to change in the next two months. But if Trump’s comments this weekend are not the first questions at the debate—if his threat to democracy is not the only question—then there is no point in debates at all.
I don’t think there is much point in The Debates anyway, really. They’re just a Thing, the way football is a Thing.
The world has gone so insane that facts sound like crazy talk.
“It’s just Trump being Trump” is right up there with “be kind” as a thought terminating (or rather thought shaming) cliché.
You’d think that this would be considered “un-American” wouldn’t you? Trump’s supporters show a combination of ignorance of and contempt for the way their country’s government is supposed to work. They’d be aghast at the very idea of burning the flag, but they’re ready and willing to destroy everything it’s supposed to stand for at the behest of this ignorant, dangerous imbecile.
https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/tuesday-morning-open-thread-hugely-debatable-3.png
@YNNB #3
That’s almost a cargo cult example. The flag is the actual America, and causes America. The actual workings of a constitutional democratic republic are inconsequential in their minds. Symbol over substance.
Cargo cult. Perfect. That needs to be said a lot more.
Y’know, hearing that incoherent economic summit-y “childcare” answer, well, he sounds old and tired (in addition to everything else).
The ‘coherence bias’ is, honestly, something that has arisen from a norm in journalism that’s been established for decades. It’s considered standard practice to trim the fat–the ‘ums, ahs and ers’ that would normally punctuate speech, the occasional verbal backtrack. And it’s quite common to call someone after an interview and ask them a follow-up question that essentially makes something they said during an interview more intelligible and then ask, “So is that your position/point?” This is considered simply a matter of everyday respect, and of fulfilling the actual obligation of the press, which is to report what the interviewee was actually getting at, and not nitpicking minor verbal flubs.
And, just like most of our society’s norms, it was never created with someone like Trump in mind.