On April 9, 2024, Jamelle Bouie at The NY Times addressed the mistake of taking Trump’s word on anything, and how to approach whatever he says. (Gift article)
Donald Trump does not speak from conviction. He does not speak from belief or at least any belief other than self-obsession. He certainly does not speak from anything we might recognize as reason; when he’s holding forth at a microphone, even the most careful students of Trump the rhetorician will struggle to find the light of complex thought.
You should think of Trump instead as a purely instrumental speaker. It does not matter to him whether a statement is true or false. It does not matter if one statement contradicts another in the same speech or in the same paragraph or in the same sentence. What matters to Trump is whether the words serve the purpose at hand. He will say anything if it’s what he feels an audience wants to hear or if it moves him one step closer to a personal or political goal.
Anything Trump says as reported by the press should be accompanied by that disclaimer. Trump does not use words for communication; he uses them as tools for manipulation.
Bouie is referencing Trump’s ‘position’ of the moment on abortion, and what we should remember regardless of anything Trump says:
...The truth of the matter is that given a second term in office, Trump and his allies will do everything in their power to ban abortion nationwide, with or without a Republican majority in Congress. Recall that in his 2016 campaign, Trump said that there had to be “some form” of punishment for women who had abortions. Later, as president, he backed a House bill that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks. Anti-abortion strategists have not been shy about their plan to use the 1873 Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law, as legal authority for executive actions to limit abortions throughout the country, in blue states as well as red ones…
...If you’re not inclined to put Trump’s abortion comments in the context of his habitual disregard for the truth, then you should at least put them in the context of his political coalition, which is dominated by forces and constituencies that want nothing less than the criminalization of abortion, the constitutional protection of fetal life and state regulation of bodily autonomy for the sake of patriarchal gender norms...
Conventional press coverage of politics in the age of Trump and Trumpism is simply not capable of dealing with what it’s up against, as Bouie notes, or how deep it goes. Charlie Pierce at Esquire has a long screed laying out how Axios is emblematic of the way the press keeps trying to gloss over what is going on:
Even those of us in the media, who are paid to marinate in news and trends and reporting, find it hard to determine if something that seems big on X or partisan media is moving the needle with more than a few loudmouths. A big reason: X, Facebook and other platforms are powered by the people with the biggest followings—which almost always flows from being the most provocative, partisan, or pugilistic. The algorithms amplify it. This can make small things or small divisions seem huge.
Here’s a thought experiment to end on (Jim does this during speeches after testing it on his kids and friends): In a given year, you meet scores or more people you spend enough time with to appraise their character. Think about them: How many do you think are decent, normal people who do volunteer work, help shovel after a storm, look out for family and neighbors? The answer will help pop your reality distortion bubble.
That’s really sweet. And then that person who helped you shovel snow will help elect a state senator who votes to force your teenage daughter to bear her rapist’s baby. I grew up in a particularly narcotic period of the country’s history. That wasn’t any more realistic than the America that the Presiding Geniuses are pretending to deplore…
And how many more expeditions by the press to diners to talk to ‘real’ Americans will tread carefully around abyss they dare not gaze into?
The second read at The NY Times should scare the bejesus out of anyone paying attention. Thomas B. Edsall is on a roll lately — see what he had to say here about who is behind Trump, and their agenda.
His latest on April 10 is just as alarming. Edsall documents how wealthy people are falling in line behind Trump because they are terrified of what he will do to them if he gets back in the White House. (Gift article)
...Trump has made retribution a central theme of his campaign, seeking to intertwine his legal defense with a call for payback against perceived slights and offenses to “forgotten” Americans.
Faced with the prospect of a chief executive prepared to abandon the rule of law for the rule of revenge, many affluent donors — for whom the machinations of government can determine bankruptcy or wealth — seem to think they have little choice but to pony up to the self-proclaimed “dictator for one day.”
Trump’s campaign to reclaim the White House — armed with the bristling Heritage Foundation playbook, which conservatives are using as a tool to pressure Trump to remain true to the hard-right agenda, as well as long, revealing lists compiled by Axios and The Times of prospective MAGA appointees — is the embodiment of the politics of intimidation.
Have you kept track of all the ways Trump says Biden is using the government to ‘persecute’ him? Pay attention, because he is describing what he intends to do if he gets the chance.
Edsall quotes multiple sources who lay out how Big Money is coming back to Trump out of the very real fear he will use government to come after them for anything that looks like disloyalty. Trump is effectively going to run the country like a protection racket. Any organization or group or person that Trump is unhappy with can expect to get hammered if he returns to power. Edsall brings the receipts, naming people desperate to return to the fold. Read the whole thing — Edsall’s conclusion is blunt.
...The rush to Trump does not, in my view, represent policy agreements with the Trump tax cuts or anything of the like. Many of those rushing to Trump actually had their taxes go up because of his retaliation against blue states through the elimination of the local tax property deduction. They are eager to contribute, and to be seen as contributing, because power and privilege flow from proximity. Trump may view himself as a latter-day Louis XIV, including in his love of gilt. But in more recent times, this is the governance style of the banana republic dictators of the 20th century and the populist antidemocrats of the 21st.
Or, to tie it to Trump’s own background, like dealing with a mob boss.
Digby has an example of how this intimidation is taking a toll.
The GOP establishment is pathetic:
A Pulitzer Prize-winning political photographer resigned Tuesday from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, blasting the group for cowardice in rejecting Trump critic Liz Cheney as the recipient of its top yearly award.
David Hume Kennerly claimed in a letter to fellow trustees that Cheney’s nomination for the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service was nixed largely out of fear that Trump would retaliate against the organization if he’s reelected. Cheney, herself a trustee, was rejected three separate times, Kennerly wrote, as other potential honorees declined the award...
...Kennerly, who served as Ford’s White House photographer and is longtime foundation trustee, attacked that argument in his letter: “The historical irony was completely lost on you. Gerald Ford became president, in part, because Richard Nixon had ordered the development of an enemies list and demanded his underlings use the IRS against those listed.”
“If the foundation that bears the name of Gerald R. Ford won’t stand up to this real threat to our democracy,” he added, “who will?”