"SANEWASHING" IS INSANITY

The Corporate Media continues to pursue the appearance of fairness in their coverage of the 2024 election by treating True and False, Normal and Outrageous, as equally valid. Rebecca Solnit observed that the hate and scorn with which the Corporate media is finally being treated is what they have worked hard to earn. Their repeated, determined, spectacular failures to do their job - maintain independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power - has now resulted in political moderates becoming furious, while a growing number of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have gone after them hard as they have spent this summer increasingly putting their thumb on the scale in normalizing the increasingly outlandish campaign of Donald Trump and his ever-increasing obvious mental decline.

When Trump appeared at the Economic Club of New York last week, he was asked the following question: “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable? And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”

This is what he said:

“Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, I was somebody, we had Senator 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, childcare is childcare [emphasis mine]. 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 childcare, that it's going to take care.

“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 childcare. I want to stay with childcare. 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 told you about. We're going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it's relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll 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.”

Can anyone who just read that tell me what it means?

In addition tyo the above material, Trump attacked Kamala Harris for “an economy in crisis.” He proceeded to give a master class in bullshittery when he rattled off his version of truths about the economy. This included his statement that 1.3 million workers have become unemployed in the last year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that number is closer to 800,000. There was no mention by Trump or the corporate media reports of what he said about the fact that the Biden administration created something like 16 million new jobs after the Trump administration lost 2.7 million jobs, according to FactCheck.org. He instead lied that he created 7 million new jobs, “260 percent more than projected when I took office.” He then claimed that the “invasion at our border” has taken jobs away from Black and Hispanic Americans “and nobody talks about it.” (In fact, the unemployment rate for both groups is near historic, multi-decade lows.)

He then went into his now-familiar lies about Harris: she’s a Marxist, is promising “price controls, wealth confiscation, energy annihilation, reparations, the largest tax increase ever imposed, and mass amnesty and citizenship for tens of millions of migrants who will consume trillions of dollars in federal benefits and destroy Social Security and Medicare.”

He said he had saved the auto industry “from obliteration” by imposing a 27.5 percent tariff on the import of Chinese cars into the country. This despite the fact that he never placed tariffs specifically on cars.

The funniest lines were that he “fought for American workers like I would fight for my own family. I took care of our economy like I would take care of my own company.” (We all know what he did to his own company.)

And this was just the bullshit he spouted in the first 15 minutes.

It’s beyond “word salad.” It is Trump riffing on his greatest hits and catch phrases. It’s a Fat Elvis impersonator on a Tuesday night at the local casino/unlicensed brothel in Elko Nevada, unable to completely remember the words to any hits, greatest or otherwise. It’s squid ink.

He went on to say he would cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, from 21 percent, and that America would be the leader in A.I. as well as “every other form of technology.” He also said that we would be the “world capital” in Bitcoin and crypto, which he obviously has no understanding of as demonstrated by the statement itself in which he appears to believe that “Bitcoin” and “crypto” are actual things, like dollar bills. In addition to these tax cuts, including eliminating the tax on tips and Social Security payments, and extending the so-called Trump tax cuts, he will reduce the federal deficits and the federal debt as a result of these cuts.

“Every business on Earth will flock to America, from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and all over the world. By contrast, Comrade Kamala Harris wants to sacrifice our wealth, kill the economy, and drive jobs overseas to punish businesses.”

FACT CHECK: Between 2017-18, Trump increased the national debt from $24 trillion to $31 trillion, with his tax cuts then, the only significant piece of legislation he and the Republican majorities in House and Senate accomplished

He then demonsrated his complete financial illiteracy when he explained ho he would cut taxes while eliminating the annual budget deficit and paying down the national debt. “We’re going to work on the national debt very strongly. By the way, we’re going to have so much money coming in. We’re going to work on national debt. We’re close to $36 trillion right now. We’re going to work on getting it down.”

Calling all of this obvious nonsense, obvious nonsense is to twist the language. This bullshittery doesn’t even qualify as obvious nonsense.

As James Fallows posted recently on his Substack, three institutions – the Republican party, the Supreme Court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”.

Norm Ornstein posted that the major news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Here’s how the corporate media covered the trainwreck described above:

Politico - aka “Volkischer Beobachter on the Potomac” after its acquisition by far right pro-Trump German media mogul Axel Springer - reported that Trump “laid out a sweeping economic vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs, and light-touch regulation in a speech to top Wall Street execs.”

The Associated Press reported the same speech saying Trump “suggests tariffs can help solve rising child care costs in a major economic speech.”

The New York Times, now the leading Trump Apologist media organization in the corporate media ran the following headline and sub-head: “Trump Praises Tariffs, and William McKinley, to Power Brokers - 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 article that followed claimed Trump “tried to define how his stewardship of the economy would differ from that of his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. He has tried to put the economy at the center of the election, hoping to seize on voters' dissatisfaction with inflation and the cost of living.”

There was no fact checking of what was said (as is done regularly to anything Harris says), which would have forced them to mention how Trump “tried to put the economy at the center of the election” by lying, being completely incomprehensible and spouting pure bullshit.

This is called “sanewashing,” i.e., turning demonstrable insanity into “normal discourse.”

When they can’t do that, the corporate media just ignore him. Did you see any coverage about his recent “speech” about the relationship between bacon and wind:

“Some people don’t eat bacon anymore. 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.”

Daniel Dale, who is perhaps the most dogged chronicler of Trump’s mendacity, recently pointed out, “By virtue of shameless perseverance, he often manages to outlast most of the media’s willingness to correct any particular falsehood.”

In other words, Trump never tires of bullshitting - the liar knows the truth and chooses not to say it; the bullshitter doesn’t care if what he says is true or false - but the corporate media gets tired of doing its job and retreats to “That’s Trump being Trump. He doesn’t mean any of it.”

Paul Krugman wrote recently in his email newsletter that a normal candidate like Kamala Harris is pressed by reporters and commentators to “... provide more detail about her policy proposals, but the truth is that we have a pretty good idea what she will do on most issues if she wins - which can’t be said about her opponent.” He also mentioned that when he turned in an article that was favorable to Harris, his editor queried him about whether he should end with some of the complaints by her opponents.

Krugman went on to note that Trump doesn’t have coherent policy views - he has prejudices. Most of them based on sheer petulance that is impervious to facts, such as his belief that China and all the other countries will pay the “tax” of his proposed tariffs and that money will be used to pay for childcare and paying off the national debt.

Trump’s ever-present childishness and lack of connection to reality has grown worse as he approaches 80. But you will never see any mention of that in the corporate media.

As Fallows pointed out, most voters, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

In pursuit of clickbait centered on conflicts and personalities, the failed corporate media follow each other into (usually inaccurate) information stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

On any given day, Trump is demonstrably detached from reality; the reason the warning lights aren’t constantly flashing red is because nobody covering him expects otherwise. While it is deeply disturbing that anyone as unhinged and incoherent as Trump is allowed to run for the presidency, this is compounded by the obvious fact that corporate media can’t muster any urgency in the face of his increasingly-bizarre behavior.

But a Press Corpse that spent months arguing how President Biden’s age rendered him mentally unfit looks the other way when the Republican candidate, the oldest person to run for president in American history, is not only old but decompensating in real time in public.

The difference is that Biden is aging while Donald is dementing. You’ll never learn that reading the Sulzberger Sniper or the Bezos Bugle, from watching the Cretin News Network or the rest of the failing “legacy media.”

It's not news that the corporate media applies a completely different standard to the Democratic candidate, but it should be.

While the Press Corpse clamors for Harris to outline how much her childcare plan will cost, for example, no one asks Trump how a$4,000/per family tax on working Americans - which is what his tariff fantasy is - will provide childcare.

No one asks what the economic impact of Trump’s plan to round up, imprison, and deport 15 million undocumented workers would be. The New York Times merely says that Trump claims removing these immigrants would solve the housing crisis.

We have a former President, now a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who attempted a coup, who is desperately flailing while his campaign fails to gain traction; a frightened, desperate man who knows his continued freedom depends on getting back into the White House so he can make the still-pending federal cases against him disappear, who daily spouts increasingly fantastical lies that clearly demonstrate his worsening psychiatric disorders.

And the DC Press Corpse sees their job as covering all that up.

Our democratic constitutional republic depends on a press that takes its job serious in order to function. That’s not what we have. The “traditional media” that I now call the Corporate Media has failed us, as they promote “both-sides” laziness at the expense of objective facts and, ultimately, our democracy. The democracy that is their protection.

This is not “sanewashing.” It is insanity.

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