Sanewashing and the damage done

The press is helping Trump hide in plain sight.

Trump speaks last Saturday in Mosinee, Wisconsin. (Scott Olson/Getty)

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The presidential election remains alarmingly tight: A new Times/Siena poll shows Donald Trump taking a narrow lead over Kamala Harris for the first time in three weeks. Trump is an adjudicated rapist and a convicted felon whose first term was a disaster no rational person should want to repeat. Yet, he’s seemingly more popular now than he was in 2016 and 2020.

If it feels like half the electorate has gone mad, that’s in part because the press continues to fail to present Trump as he truly is. The average voter probably doesn’t spend much time watching clips of Trump’s rants or reading his unhinged screeds on social media. But they might consume reporting that consistently “sanewashes” his derangement.

The sketch comedy series Key and Peele had a bit where the calm, no-drama Barack Obama (Jordan Peele) would have his true thoughts conveyed through a boisterous, profane Anger Translator (Keegan-Michael Key). The press has functioned as Trump’s Sanity Translator, to far less amusing effect: They filter through his nonsensical, offensive gibberish and offer readers a sanitized version that’s more PR spin than actual journalism.

What's wrong with the fact-checkers?

Normalization

MAGA cultists might consider Trump the second coming, but many swing voters hold a more reasonable, if still inaccurate view: Yes, Trump’s a jerk, but he knows how to fix the economy. The reality is that Trump’s both a bigoted creep and a total buffoon who can barely string a coherent sentence together on policy.

For example, last Thursday, Trump addressed a gathering of major players at the Economic Club of New York and took a few questions. The event quickly devolved into a train wreck as Trump struggled to put together a coherent thought. He was asked to explain how his policies would impact the fiscal deficit, and he instead rambled for a while about the trade deficit, which is something else entirely.

Perhaps the most shocking moment came when Moms First CEO and founder Reshma Saujani asked Trump, “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”

If you watch the video of Trump’s response, you’ll notice he seems addled, almost confused, like someone’s elderly grandfather telling a story that goes nowhere. (Watch below.)

Here a full transcript of Trump’s blather:

Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down — you know, I was, uh, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, was so, uh, 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 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 gonna take care. We’re gonna have — I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with, uh, 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 say with child care, I want to stay with childcare, 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, uh, that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare 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 gonna 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. Thank you. Very good question.

As expected, Fox News responded to this sorry showing by playing its role as Trump’s personal state media. Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed Trump “just did something that Vice President Kamala Harris cannot: He delivered an extensive, lengthy policy speech at the Economic Club of New York.” (She’s at least correct that it was lengthy.) New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, a former Trump critic, ludicrously claimed during his Fox hit that Trump can “speak to details” about policy. (Sununu has previously called Trump “fucking crazy.”)

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Those responses aren’t surprising. But the mainstream press also got in on the act by pretending Trump delivered a serious economic speech. The New York Times’s headline read, “Trump Praises Tariffs, and William McKinley, to Power Brokers.” The AP declared, “Trump suggests tariffs can help solve rising child care costs in a major economic speech.” The Washington Post’s video of Trump’s breakdown simply states, “Trump discusses plan to pay for child care.”

Here’s how the New York Times cleaned up Trump’s mess.

Reporter Michael Gold wrote that Trump’s answer was “jumbled,” but he didn’t demonstrate how. Instead, he directly quoted just one line from Trump’s wilted word salad: “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.”

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell aired an edited version of Trump’s answer, but it’s not the media’s job to make Trump sound coherent. Trump’s tariff proposals are an economic shell game, and factual reporting would state clearly that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s the story.

Trump’s child care fumble wasn’t an outlier, either. At another point during the Economic Club of New York event, hedge fund manager and major donor John Paulson asked him, “What do you estimate will be the impact of the fiscal deficit from your policies?” What follows is a transcript of Trump’s nonsensical response. (Video is embedded below the transcript.)

Well, we just hit record highs at numbers that nobody ever thought possible. You’re right, over $2 trillion. Nobody thought that was a number that was – I mean, you could go back four years. Nobody thought a number like that would be possible. It’s crazy. It’s like – it’s just horrible, actually.

But yeah, we’re – $2 trillion – and I view it as profit and loss to a certain extent. A lot of people say, oh, it’s trade. You know, you have many people say trade deficits don’t matter. I think they matter a lot.

We’re going to have tremendous growth. This – what I’m talking about is all about growth. The tax is relatively minor compared to the growth. We’re going to make our money back on growth. We’re going to also – I mean, we’re going to grow like nobody has ever grown before. I think if this all works out, you’re going to have the auto industry come back to America. Right now, China is building two auto factories in Mexico – massive auto factories.

And they think they’re going to make their cars in Mexico and send them back into the United States with no tax. It’s not going to happen. Under this administration, it’s going to happen. And they wanted to do that during my administration.

This lie-stuffed gibberish is almost impossible to follow. The clear takeaway is that Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and if he ever did, he’s obviously slipping.

Compare the media’s muted reaction to Trump’s undeniable incoherence with the collective freakout after President Biden’s faltering debate performance: The Wall Street Journal: “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping.” The Guardian: “Warning signs: a history of Joe Biden’s verbal slips.” The Associated Press: “Biden at 81: Often sharp and focused but sometimes confused and forgetful.” New York Magazine: “Frail, Stressed, Stiff, and Blinking: An Aging Expert on Biden’s ‘Shocking’ Debate.”

The media had no interest in “agewashing” Biden, and there’s no reason Trump’s Economic Club appearance shouldn’t have generated similar headlines. Trump, at 78, is the oldest presidential nominee in history. His unpopular running mate JD Vance has held elected office for less than two years. The media, however, seems far less interested in exploring questions about Trump’s fitness for service.

Trump's carny act isn't working anymore

Biden’s remarks about abortion at the fateful June debate might’ve been rambling but when “grandpa washed” his meaning was clear: He’d defend reproductive rights against far-right anti-abortion radicalism. But even when sanewashed, Trump’s debate comments were blatant lies about Democrats supporting literal infanticide: “He can take the life of the baby in the ninth month, and even after birth, because some states — Democrat-run — take it after birth … Again, the governor, former governor of Virginia, ‘put the baby down, then we decide what to do with it,’ so he’s, he’s willing to, as we say, rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby.” Notice that Trump blanked on former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s name.

A PBS News article after Trump’s Economic Club embarrassment had this astonishing headline: “Harris and Trump offer very different visions for the economy ahead of Tuesday’s debate.” Imagine for a moment if headlines about Mitt Romney’s devastating 2012 "47 percent” remarks just read, “When speaking with donors, Obama and Romney both offer dueling views on tax policy.”

Sanewashing doesn’t just sanitize Trump’s public statements. It actively protects him and promotes the illusion he’s a sensible candidate and reasonable choice for voters.

The coherency bias

Journalist Parker Molloy recently detailed the media’s extensive efforts to “rationalize Trump’s incoherent statements,” tracing back to his catastrophic covid response. The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote back in June about the media’s “bias toward coherence” when covering Trump. But the question still remains why the press insists on covering Trump like a normal politician.

Legacy media bristles at the accusation that they treat Trump more generously than past presidential candidates, both Democrat and Republican. New York Times publisher AG Sulzberger claimed in a recent, self-serving Post op-ed that Democrats want his paper to “cast aside neutrality and directly oppose [Trump’s] reelection.“ But that’s a strawman argument. The problem isn’t that the Times is “neutral.” The problem is that the Times in particular artificially balances the scales with coverage that makes it seem as if Kamala Harris is running against a normal Republican candidate, a wacky, off-color Mitt Romney.

Mainstream news outlets struggle to cover Trump appropriately because if they do, his manifest unfitness would result in them coming across as biased for Harris. It’s why the press rarely mentions Trump’s felony conviction, indictments, and the more than two dozen sexual assault allegations against him.

Amazingly, Trump himself reminded voters about those sexual assault allegations just last week. He attended a New York hearing where he appealed the judgement in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, then held a press event where he attacked Carroll and claimed that a photo of him with her "could've been AI generated.” (It was not.) During his grossly misogynistic rant, Trump said that another woman who’d accused him of sexual assault “would not have been the chosen one."

Few networks covered the shameless spectacle live, but CNN’s on-air summary immediately after it ended gave viewers the false impression that Trump actually spoke coherently and made reasonable points. (Watch below.)

This past weekend was a relentless flood of disqualifying events from Trump. In a deranged Truth Social post, he threatened to prosecute those he claim stole the 2020 election from him “to the fullest extent of the Law which will include long term prison sentences so this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.” At a Wisconsin rally, he boasted that his proposed mass deportation scheme “will be a bloody story.” (Watch below.)

During a speech on Friday to a police group in North Carolina, Trump vowed that “as soon as I'm back in the White House the conquest will end and the great liberation of America will begin ... we will take back every single square inch of territory that has been invaded by these migrant gangs.” This is horrifying, yet the Times previously sanewashed Trump’s anti-immigrant bloodlust as part of a reasonable proposal that might “cut back temporarily on housing demand.”

In Wisconsin, Trump baselessly accused Harris of covering up Biden’s mental decline and proposed “modifying” the 25th Amendment so a vice president involved in such a scandal could be instantly “impeached and removed” on those grounds. And yet as soon as the rally ended, a CNN correspondent got busy sanewashing Trump’s diatribe, saying Trump “did make some sort of news today. He mentioned for the first time that he actually supports modifying the 25th Amendment.” CNN then cut to a clip from Trump’s speech that made him sound relatively coherent. (Watch below.)

A common defense of the media’s Trump coverage is that it’s almost impossible to detail every awful thing he says and does. But there’s a consistent narrative through line with Trump: He’s a criminal who’d use the power of the presidency to seek revenge on his enemies. That’s not complicated, and his every action supports this thesis. The mainstream media simply chooses to ignore the obvious.

There was no mention on the Times’s homepage over the weekend of Trump’s public meltdowns and authoritarian declarations. Instead, on Saturday, the publication humored Trump’s childish obsession with Harris’s rally size in a piece headlined, “Trump Claims Harris’s Rallies Are Smaller. We Counted.”

The elite press has framed tonight’s presidential debate as a do or die situation for Harris. But why? She must nail the dismount as if she were debating a serious politician, but there’s no expectation that Trump will even behave like a rational adult. It’s as if the media has pitted Harris against an idealized phantom Republican opponent. This is especially maddening because the actual Republican nominee poses such an existential threat to democracy that Dick and Liz Cheney have both publicly endorsed Harris.

Trump is clearly unraveling. It’s five-alarm news that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Trump’s competitive position in the presidential race is perhaps proof that something is deeply wrong with American society, but the media refuses to even acknowledge the ailment. They’re anesthetizing voters to the true threat while the nation sleepwalks into fascism.

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That’s it for today

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