Source: Wikimedia Commons
Some of the most smug and la-la-foolish people doing great harm in the world these days are the so-called centrists. They think that they are ever so superior to and smarter than the lowly “partisans” to their left and right. But once the right has descended into fascism, depravity, and false reality, a defensible center can no longer exist.
And yet that is where the mainstream media are today. Particularly guilty are the New York Times and the Washington Post, because, as the only newspapers of record left standing, they have a particular responsibility to the truth. The New York Times, having led the crusade to get President Biden to end his campaign for a second term, is now flagrantly applying its double standard to its coverage of Donald Trump. The Washington Post has shown some signs of rethinking its double standard, but the New York Times has not. The Times continues to translate Trump’s babblings into English, covering up what is increasingly obvious — that Trump’s mind is not all there.
Responsible people on the left are now calling out the centrist media for this, for what good it will do. The centrist media haughtily ignore criticism from the left, even as they are terrified by criticism from the right. Heather Cox Richardson directly quotes Trump’s incomprehensible ramblings about child care, as does Sara Libby in the San Francisco Chronicle and Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian.
There is something sentimental about the New York Times’ delusions. It is as though the Times has convinced itself that America today is still a place like Walter Cronkite’s America, a place where a single trusted voice could reach pretty much the entire country. Cronkite was host of the CBS Evening news for 19 years, from 1962 to 1981. He was often called the most trusted man in America. The New York Times craves that kind of trust but supposes that lying to cover for a depraved right is the way to get it.
I have only one comforting thought about this. It’s that historians understand quite well what is happening in the United States today. History will get it right. The malignant failings of the media will be a part of that history.
Here, verbatim, are Trump’s babblings about child care:
“Well I would do that. And we’re sitting down. You know 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, 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 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 child care. I want to stay with child care, 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 child care 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 it.”