Where are the headlines screaming: ‘Deranged old man peddles nonsense while threatening violent deportation of immigrants’?
Trump, Harris on the campaign trail before debate
Days before their debate, Kamala Harris spent time at a spice shop while Donald Trump held rallies.
To the pundits and the Republicans who relentlessly decried President Joe Biden’s age, “cognitive decline” and “mental acuity” right up to the day he stepped aside in the presidential race, allow me to unspool a recent quote from 78-year-old GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
He was responding to a question about “what specific piece of legislation” he would advance to make child care more affordable:
“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. It’s – couldn’t – you know, it’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 – 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.”
That’s as much as I can quote here, but it went on and continued to make zero sense. Child care is child care? Tariffs are going to make child care costs go away?
There’s nothing about legislation in that word eruption. There are barely any complete sentences.
Trump’s bizarre rants get sanitized. Biden got no such special treatment.
If Biden, as the Democratic nominee, had gone on a rambling verbal tear like that, GOP lawmakers would be calling for him to be institutionalized and cable news panels would be discussing how the 25th Amendment works.
But The New York Times’ initial report on Trump’s babble said this: “In a jumbled answer, he said he would prioritize legislation on the issue but offered no specifics and insisted that his other economic policies, including tariffs, would ‘take care’ of child care.”
Oh, c’mon. A 78-year-old convicted felon running for president rants nonsensically, demonstrating an inability to hold a thought or understand an important issue, and it’s deemed “a jumbled answer”?
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Trump spouts bizarre fantasies, so why isn’t his mental fitness an issue?
Trump has lately taken to telling a despicable and absurd tale alleging American children are going to school and then, apparently during the day and without parental permission, being subjected to some form of gender-affirming surgery.
At a weekend rally, Trump said: “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with out country?”
Nobody can imagine it, because it’s not a thing that’s happening in any way, shape or form. It’s several steps beyond ludicrous, and so clearly fabricated you have to wonder what other imaginary things the teller believes.
If a relative was convinced such a thing was happening, you’d rush them to a doctor.
A violent, lie-filled rant about immigrants? Trump seems unwell.
At his weekend rally in Wisconsin, Trump brought up his sadistic plan to deport millions of immigrants, and he spun a dizzyingly dishonest tale about immigrants: “In Colorado they’re so brazen they’re taking over sections of the state. And you know, getting them out will be a bloody story. They should’ve never been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them, nobody checked were they criminals, were they from jails? We have them pouring out from jails. We have the worst criminals in all of these countries, 168 so far are registered, 168 countries. They’re in our country and they said if you come back you will be executed, you will be killed immediately.”
Hoo boy. That’s a load of hot nonsense. It likely stems from a debunked viral right-wing claim about one apartment complex in Aurora being overrun by Venezuelan gangs ‒ again, debunked. But Trump concocts a violent fiction that includes the threat that his deportation effort will be “a bloody story.”
Trump’s hate speech: Trump knew Moms for Liberty was the perfect crowd for his hate speech. So he let it fly.
Where are the headlines screaming: “Deranged old man peddles nonsense while threatening violent deportation of immigrants”? Where are the feverish concerns about whether Trump, who if he wins will be the oldest president elected, will have the mental capacity to finish out his term? Where are the calls for him to step aside?
They don’t exist. Even though Trump’s incoherence has grown markedly worse in recent months, he’s never scrutinized the way Biden was.
News outlets are ‘sanewashing’ Trump’s unhinged speeches
Many news organizations are sanitizing Trump’s crazier and crazier comments. Parker Molloy at The New Republic recently wrote: “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former ‒ and potentially future ‒ president.”
That’s absolutely correct. Concerns about Biden’s age were legitimate, albeit wildly overreported. Concerns about Trump’s age and the ease with which he concocts paranoid fantasies are somewhere between muted and nonexistent.
I implore you to watch Trump’s rallies and listen to him. He doesn’t make sense. He seems incapable of following any logical train of thought.
With only a couple months left before voters decide if this 78-year-old should be president, the American public deserves an unvarnished picture of Trump. Full quotes, no matter how unhinged.
Anything less ‒ from journalists, pundits or lawmakers ‒ is a calamitous lie.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk