Why Is the New York Times Sanitizing Trump’s Madness?

It’s a constant mantra these days that the mainstream media has completely dropped the ball with respect to what is really going on with Donald Trump, the collapse of the Republican party, and the 2024 election. Nowhere are you going to find a better exhibit to that proposition than in this New York Times article that *reports* on Trump’s incendiary rally in Ohio. This report is a dumbed down whitewash of what actually took place. Thank heavens we live in a day and age of electronic media and clips were made of Trump’s usual bombastic rhetoric. Take a look at how the New York Times, the paper of record in this country, the Grey Lady, who has published continuously since 1851, translated and paraphrased Trump’s inciting violence and demeaning people. They did not *report* it, as that term is understood.

The headline is “Trump says some migrants are ‘not people’ and predicts a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses.” That’s not bad. I don’t take umbrage to that. But the detached voice of this piece, which technically paints a picture of what happened yesterday, but does not get down to the real meat of the matter, is not journalism.

Example: “Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden a “stupid president” several times and at one point referred to him as a “dumb son of a — ” before trailing off. He also compared Ms. Willis’s first name to a vulgarity, called Mr. Newsom “Gavin New-scum” and took jabs at Mr. Pritzker’s physical appearance.” Let’s address the Fani Willis crack. Saying that he “compared Ms. Willis’s first name to a vulgarity,” is not the story. The story is what we had here yesterday, “It’s Called Fani, Like Your A$$.” THAT is the story. That is what readers want to hear. Not, “he compared Ms. Willis’s name to a vulgarity.” This isn’t reporting, it is alluding and what the hell good is that? People pick up a newspaper they want to know what happened not some vague gloss-over with no details. People want to know what was said and this was one of Trump’s most inflammatory comments of the day.

I don’t know why this is happening. And that wasn’t the only thing. They put Trump’s “bloodbath” comment in a dumbed down context as well. “While discussing the U.S. economy and its auto industry, Mr. Trump promised to place tariffs on cars manufactured abroad if he won in November. He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”’

The right-wing media is whitewashing this comment — with the assistance of the New York Times — to mean that Trump meant that the auto industry was going to experience a blood bath. That’s bullshit. Trump was talking about the auto industry and then he talked about himself, his only and favorite subject, and he said there was going to be a bloodbath. His exact words, take a look, were, If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath.” But Marjorie Taylor Greene and the rest are scurrying to insist that he was only talking about cars being made in China. Sheer madness. But if the Times is printing a clarification of this, I have yet to see it.

My comment is: Fuck the New York Times. pic.twitter.com/4oowQGHfVE

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 17, 2024

I think that anybody’s decades in any field, or in no field at all, prepares us for the 2024 campaign better than this bastardization of journalism does. This article by the New York Times did not report what happened at that rally. It gave a few quotes and a bland synopsis of what happened. That is not journalism. Great journalism is defined by the context that a piece gives us, a view into a larger whole, that a mere recitation of facts can never give. Jimmy Breslin won the Pulitzer Prize for putting JFK’s burial in profound context by talking to the Black man who dug his grave at Arlington Cemetery. He shared with us the common man’s insights into the falling of a great man, a great president. That’s journalism. The two stenographers who penned this milquetoast diatribe have totally missed the boat.

Why is that, becomes the bigger question? Is there some corporate overlord who is pulling for a Trump reelection and a continuation of welfare for the rich, namely Trump’s tax cuts to the uber wealthy, to come back? I honestly have no idea. It’s no secret that access to powerful people is what motivates a lot of journalists. Kristen Welker was raked over the coals for the softball interview she did of Donald Trump and then her sycophantic coverage of him since then, crowing about how he “trounced” and “decimated” Nikki Haley in South Carolina — when in fact exit polls in that primary and others clearly indicate that at least 40% of the Republicans who showed up for the primaries are virulently anti-Trump.

There is an insistence of perpetuating the myth of both siderism and a race horse election. No matter what happens, the media seems hell bent on minimizing, if not outright dismissing, anything that doesn’t fit into that neat little paradigm that they have created.

Therefore, we are getting a half-baked version at best of what is really going on out there. This is alarming, needless to say. You recall the poem, “First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.” I think we should rewrite it to add, “Then they came for the Journalists….and we don’t know what happened after that.” Because that is pretty much what has happened in this country with respect to the mainstream media.

Let’s see if the New York Times does anything to address this firestorm. I’m a subscriber. I’m going to tell them that if this is the best journalism they’ve got I’ll keep my twenty-eight bucks a month and get my news elsewhere. If you are also a subscriber, join with me in solidarity. If they hear from enough of us maybe it will make a dent.