Following his Sept. 5 Q&A session at the New York Economic Club, The New York Times headline claimed that Republican presidential candidate “[Donald] Trump Praises Tariffs, and William McKinley, to Power Brokers.” The subhead continued: “In an address about the kind of economy he hopes to build for the 21st century, the former president harked back to the end of another century: the 19th.”
The Associated Press reported that Trump “suggests tariffs can help solve rising child care costs in a major economic speech.”
Politico said the former president “laid out a sweeping economic vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs, and light-touch regulation in a speech to top Wall Street execs.”
The research on those assessments comes via psychologist Mary L. Trump. She cites them as prime examples of how the mainstream media – which Trumpistas decry as anti-Trump – normalize the more-often-than-not incoherent ramblings of her uncle.
She makes a solid point.
The reply of our self-proclaimed “stable genius” to that softball question was:
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue.
“But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about – that, because look, child care is child care, couldn’t – you know, there’s something – you have to have it in this country. You have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to. But they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have – I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country.
“Because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care. But those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just — that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers will be taking in.
“We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. And then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about make America great again. We have to do it because right now, we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”
Comparing Trump’s actual words with the way it was reported, Mary Trump, in her email newsletter, The Good in Us concluded:
“I defy anybody who was actually trying to follow the thread of that gibberish to tell me what it means. Nobody can. The only phrase that has any logical consistency, ‘childcare is childcare,’ also happens to be the only thing Donald said that’s true – childcare is, after all, childcare. The rest of it is just disjointed riffing coupled with his greatest hits and catch phrases.
“The corporate media, however, have decided that it is no longer the job of its journalists and pundits to report and analyze information; rather they believe they must translate Donald’s nonsensical ramblings into a version of the English language we can all understand. That’s a huge problem because, on the one hand, they’re not really translating his words – they’re imbuing them with a meaning that is not there; on the other hand, they’re doing this without telling us they’re doing it.”
Other observers have branded this normalizing of Trump’s mental vacuity as “sanewashing,” making the convicted felon sound as if he is sound of mind against the evidence they are witnessing. [In a similar way, most media have normalized Trump’s vicious rhetoric without commenting on the stochastic violence it threatens.]
These are not the protective skewed views of Faux News. This enabling is courtesy of sometimes respected news sources. And, Mary Trump says, this cover-up of Trump’s mental state includes actually covering over his stream-of-unconsciousness confusion:
“Perhaps worst of all, when Donald’s nonsense is impossible to place in a context within which a generous person might render them somewhat coherent, certain news outlets simply ignore him, as they did when he recently ranted about the elusive relationship between bacon and wind:
“‘Some people don’t eat bacon anymore,’ Donald said. ‘We are going to get the energy prices down. This was caused by their horrible energy. Wind. They want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem.’”
A bigger problem is Trump’s brainwork, such as Sept. 18 when he complained on Fox News that his lies were fact-checked during the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris:
“They didn’t correct her once. And they corrected me, everything I said, practically. I think nine times or 11 times. And the audience was absolutely – they went crazy.”
Crazy? There was no audience at the debate.
And the problem gets even worse when the newsfolks we rely on fail their calling to keep us informed. Donald Trump proves himself incapable of rational discourse every time he speaks. He can remember whom he hates, but that’s about it. Right, “Leon” Musk?
