Since even before his election, the idea that the media might normalize Donald Trump’s language and ideas has vexed many an observer. On the one hand, the extensive and unfiltered coverage of his candidacy by CNN and other outlets mainlined literally hundreds of hours of illiberal, racist, and misogynistic discourse into the body politic; this raised the possibility that a sort of politics previously considered outside the mainstream might either numb the nation into submission, or grant fringe ideas a legitimacy through repetition by this major presidential candidate. Both of those threats have to some extent come to pass. Three years into his presidency, I suspect that very few opponents of Trump haven’t built up internal filters to prevent being constantly outraged by the president’s vileness; and he was elected in great part by stoking the resentment and racism of millions of Americans who responded to his nativist, white nationalist message.
But the other great normalization threat has also come to pass: the media, whether overwhelmed or looking to avoid criticism that accurate descriptions of the president are the same as anti-Trump sentiments, has repeatedly attempted to depict Trump as less offensive than he is, whether by outright omission of damning details, or by analyses and opinion pieces that impute sophisticated reasoning where there are only brute, self-serving instinct and authoritarian stratagems.
Vox’s Aaron Rupar re-visited this latter issue last week — first covering in its gory detail a Trump rally in Milwaukee, and then re-visiting the issue of de facto press suppression of the president’s extremism in light of a National Public Radio report of the same rally that essentially re-wrote its offensiveness and weirdness out of the story. Rupar witnessed a rally in which Trump not only obsessed about lightbulbs and improperly-flushing toilets, but also praised war crimes, talked about locking up Hilary Clinton, and spoke of a former president possibly being in hell. The NPR report of the same event, though, communicated the speech of a merely plucky president, one who “snapped back at Democrats for bringing impeachment proceedings” and was “taking on Democrats on their own territory.” Absent from the NPR report were the details by which an ordinary American might conclude that the president was engaging in authoritarian rhetoric unfit for a democracy, or that he might even be a few cards short of a full deck.
In terms of simply ensuring that the American people are receiving accurate information about their leader, this NPR story is quite unnerving. And though NPR in other instances has done a far better job of accurately reporting on the president’s remarks — a point NPR’s defenders were quick to make following Rupar’s critique — it is obvious that many other outlets have engaged in similar whitewashing, all feeding an inaccurate view of this president that works out in his favor.
Over at The Plum Line blog, though, Greg Sargent brings up a possibly even more disturbing point about the media impulse to soften reporting on the president for fear that accurate reporting will invite accusations of anti-Trump bias. He observes that Trump has settled on a re-election strategy in which he will seek to “electrify” his base voters via the illiberal playbook on display in Milwaukee:
These rally performances are all about achieving that electrification. The need to do this is why he paints the opposition as illegitimate, works to deceive those parts of the country into believing his impeachment is an effort to overturn their electoral will, rages at Rep. Adam B. Schiff and his “pencil neck,” slimes urban districts as being infested with rodents.”
But Sargent sees a downside to Trump’s approach: the possibility that it might lose him more votes than it gains him:
One key question is whether Trump can supercharge those parts of the country with such tactics without activating a backlash — among young and nonwhite voters, and among the sort of suburban and educated whites who remain alienated by Trump — that overwhelms the numbers in even hyper-energized Trump country. This plainly worries Trump’s advisers, who know the base might not be enough.
And this is where the issue brought up by Rupar becomes extremely relevant, because it raises the possibility that Trump may be able to rally his base via fascistic language and spectacle while the larger public doesn’t realize this is even going on, as Sargent writes:
Press coverage that sanitizes away the wretched, hateful sides of Trump’s performances could help his appearances carry forward Trump’s mission of electrifying the base, under the radar, without clearly conveying to all those other voters — those who may not be tuning in as attentively to the 24/7 manure show that is this presidency — the truly depraved nature of what he’s dumping in their backyards.
He ends by noting that it’s not clear how widespread this disparity between coverage and full Trumpian horror show might be, but I think Sargent actually sells his excellent point a bit short. I agree that Trump’s effort to rally his base will be paramount in the upcoming election, and that this will create a huge backlash from Americans repelled by the increasingly extreme language and positions he will deploy to get them angry and motivated to vote. This backlash is already in great evidence all around us, from the Democratic wave that took back the House in 2018 to the huge energy apparent in the Democratic presidential primaries.
Sargent speaks from the perspective of a journalist and media critic, but it’s important to note that the Democrats can play a major role in remedying deficiencies in coverage that might otherwise allow Trump’s authoritarian rallies to go unremarked. We can assume that his rallies will only become more extreme and unhinged as election season gets fully under way, and that they will veer increasingly in the direction of the darkest examples we’ve seen so far, such as his imprecations of hate against Muslim members of Congress and the incitement of “Send them back” chants among the faithful. This is a president who can no longer credibly pretend in any way to represent moderate or middle-of-the-road strands of American politics; there is no erasing the trail of racism, white nationalism, and cruelty that he has left in his wake.
For Trump, there is only forward: forward ever deeper into the cult of personality, into the lure of authoritarianism, into the realm of unbridled white power. Of course the Democrats need to show a constructive, positive vision for the future, but they also need to render crystal-clear the vileness at the center of Trump’s approach to politics. Turn his hate rallies into 30-second TV spots, show voters the repulsive hatred that twists the faces of his admirers, that poisons the hearts of the children brought along to these sordid gatherings, that shows attendees as members of a political death cult and not a movement fit for a democracy.