Tag: Donald J. Trump

I WAS WRONG, REALLY WRONG

By Terence Smith

I thought, naively, that Donald J. Trump’s craziness of the last three months on everything from Doge to tariffs to Gaza to Ukraine, would subside as we approached the 100-day mark of his second term. I thought even The Donald’s all-surpassing ego would have been sated by the headlines, the non-stop attention, the All-Trump-All-the-Time focus of our national conversation. I assumed he would settle down. Right?
Wrong!
Instead, his full-frontal assault on everything and anything, large and unbelievably petty, is continuing and even accelerating, as he attacks Harvard, law firms, DEI programs, migrants, China and — wait for it — congestion pricing in Manhattan! His record-setting pace of executive orders continues unabated. His list of pet peeves apparently has no end.
All these actions have one common purpose and goal: to keep The Donald atop Page One. As columnist Tom Edsall has noted, Trump’s hunger for attention is insatiable. Administratively, he is going to keep ploughing through the 900 pages of Project 2025’s blueprint as long as the spotlight is on him. Count on it.
And where is the Congress? Where is the Democratic opposition? Bernie and AOC are out there drawing big crowds, ordinary citizens are packing Town Halls, but to what effect? Who is the leader of the Democratic Party? Can we agree on one name, one voice? Not so far.
The stock market is up 1,000 points this morning. Yesterday, it was down 900. Chaos is the only word for it.
All this tumult poses a thorny dilemma for the Media from print to social. Trump’s actions have to be covered. But doing so guarantees more chaos, more silliness, more disruption. What to do? Context is the answer, Explain the action, the significance or lack thereof, put it in proportion, document the history behind it and find coherent, independent experts to comment on it. One other thing: report the consequences on people’s lives and futures. There are innocent victims in all of this tumult, and they should not be forgotten.

THE VIEW FROM OVER THE HORIZON

By Terence Smith

   The first chaotic weeks of the second Trump Administration were strange enough up close, but viewed from afar — in this case Argentina and Brazil over the last three weeks — they seemed beyond bizarre. 

   It was borderline impossible to explain to Argentines, for example, what was behind the mass firings,  the on-again, off-again U.S. tariffs and the talk of reclaiming the Panama Canal Zone and acquiring Greenland were all about. And Argentines know a thing or two about erratic leadership: their President, the curly-haired, chainsaw-brandishing Javier Melei, is a mini-Trump who is dismantling his own government, shaking up the Argentine economy and relishing the attention that comes with it. No surprise that Melei had a choice seat at the Trump inauguration and appeared, chainsaw in hand, with Elon Musk at the CPAC convention.  It made great TV in Argentina, as well.

   Trump’s embrace of Putin and dismissal of Ukraine were equally hard to explain to Brazilians. His proposal to push Palestinians out of Gaza and create “the riviera of the Middle East” brought dismissive laughs. Is he serious, they asked?

   They puzzled as well over Trump’s long-winded, error-filled address to the joint session of Congress, wondering aloud whey it sounded so much like a campaign speech. Isn’t the campaign over, they asked? Yes, I said, but…

   In the age of the internet and widespread wifi, all of this was instantly available in Rio. But, hey, Trump’s speech coincided with Shrove Tuesday, the height of Carnival! Brazilians had to party and party they did. The fantastical samba completion took precedence over everything. Trump’s eccentricities would have to wait.

   Back home after three weeks, the Trump madness was front and center again, more immediate and much more personal, but no less strange.

MEDIA NOTES

By Terence Smith

   Day after day, year after year, Donald J. Trump dominates the news cycles of American newspapers, networks and websites. Everything from his investigations and indictments to his latest preposterous statements makes page one.

   Will he go on trial before the 2024 election, or not? Will he be indicted for inciting the rebellion of January 6? Or for his blatant, recorded efforts to steal the votes he lacked to win Georgia in 2020? Why did he stubbornly cling to the boxes of documents tucked away in Mar-a-Lago? All questions, no answers, at least not yet. And no real news.

   And still, Trump often leads the evening news broadcasts and frequently is above-the-fold on page one.  When Trump showed up for his arraignment in Miami recently, the broadcast networks all had their anchors on duty on site, vamping away as the proceedings took place beyond the cameras. As the estimable Maureen Dowd wrote last Sunday, Trump “has burrowed, tick-like, into the national bloodstream, causing all kinds of septic responses.”

    It is hard to remember another former president who has had similar coverage. Even Richard M. Nixon largely disappeared after he resigned and was pardoned for his role in Watergate. We knew he was out in San Clemente strolling the beach in his black leather shoes, but we didn’t have to read about it.

   All of which raises a question: is it time for editors and producers to reduce the coverage of Donald J. Trump?  Should they deliberately downplay his antics and provocations? Or, at least apply the same standards and judgement to Trump “news” that they rightly apply to other news? Yes, Trump non-news sells papers and attracts viewers, but at what price? CNN certainly suffered when it staged a Trump town hall before an audience of unabashed Trump-lovers who laughed at his jokes and applauded his most outrageous comments. In the end, the joke was on CNN.

   It is past time for editors and producers to be tough-minded when reporting about Trump. It is past time that they look hard at his antics and decide what truly constitutes news and what is inadvertent promotion. If he is indicted again, that’s news. But another rally in which he fantasizes about the “deep state” and rants about Hunter Biden? That’s not news.

MONDAY MORNING MEDIA XX

  By Terence Smith

   I channel-surfed last week to see how the cable channels dealt with former President Trump’s much-advertised remarks at Mar-a-Lago the evening after his arraignment in New York. Predictably, Fox provided full, live coverage. CNN broadcast most of it live and then cut away for commentary. MSNBC recorded it and covered it like a news story with subsequent commentary.

   Listening to Trump’s hour-long litany of grievances dating back to 2015, including his familiar attacks on Hillary Clinton, the FBI, the Justice Department and the prosecutors who are investigating him, I found myself wondering if he is really running for a second term in 2024.

   I know he has formally declared his candidacy and has held rallies in Waco and elsewhere and raised money for his campaign, but the man speaking at Mar-a-Lago last week was a man obsessed with his past and not even mentioning his future. 

   Then the thought occurred to me: maybe Trump is not really running for re-election. Maybe he declared his candidacy last November on the assumption that it would give him at least some political cover against the indictments he knew were coming. Maybe he speculated that prosecutors and grand juries would be hesitant to charge a former president who is an active candidate for re-election. Maybe he believed that the Justice Department would hold off rather than indict a presidential candidate in the midst of a race for re-election?

   Sloppy thinking, you say? Maybe, maybe not.

An Unsolicited Book Review…

   “Disloyal, a Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” by Michael Cohen is a trashy book, written in prison in a trashy, Brooklynese style, by  a convicted felon.  And yet, especially in its early chapters, it tells the reader a great deal about former President Trump.

   Cohen’s central thesis, reinforced again and again over its 300-plus pages, is that the craven, narcissistic, grifter that he worked for on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower is the exact same person that occupied the Oval Office until Jan. 20, 2021. Trump, he argues, is Trump, then and now. 

   He is the same Trump that maneuvered endlessly in his Trump Tower days to promote himself in the tabloids and on talk radio and TV. Cohen illustrates his theory with all sorts of inside accounts of the shady “deals” Trump promoted over the years. “Disloyal,” is certainly not literature, but it has the ring of truth. Cohen’s book probably will not change your view of Donald J. Trump; more likely it will reinforce it.