Friday Talking Points -- The Media's Double Standards Continue

[ChrisWeigant]

This week, the mainstream media proved yet again how good they are at missing the forest for the trees, at least in the political world. The entire week, the chattering classes pushed their new Donald Trump scandal for all it was worth. Now look, we're no fans of Trump (far from it!), but it all just seemed like the attention and outrage were a wee bit misplaced.

The story -- as we're sure you've heard by now -- centered on Donald Trump once again pretending he is still president, this time at Arlington National Cemetery. Trump wanted to highlight the ill-planned and badly-executed American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Three years ago, 13 soldiers were tragically killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of a crush of people trying to flee the Taliban's takeover of the entire country. It was a grim moment for President Joe Biden, which is why Trump wanted to make some political hay out of it all.

Trump showed up at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for one of those wreath-laying ceremonies, acting like he was still president. The purpose of the visit was twofold: to shame Biden for not showing up to do the same thing, as well as to provide fodder for Trump campaign ads. Unfortunately for him, the second of these goals is actually illegal to do, at a military cemetery. But of course that wasn't going to stop Trump.

Although his campaign was informed both in advance and in person at the cemetery that doing so would not be allowed, they still wanted to film Trump in the section of Arlington dedicated to soldiers from recent wars. As far as Trump was concerned, he had been invited to visit by parents of one of the dead soldiers, so that automatically meant he could make as much political hay out of it as possible. When a member of the staff at the cemetery tried to block the campaign team from heading towards the graves with cameras at the ready, someone on Team Trump physically shoved the woman aside and they went right ahead and did what they weren't supposed to do. Which, again, was illegal for them to do. Later, they posted a video that contained footage shot at one of the graves, showing Trump with the families. Photos were released of Trump grinning and giving a "thumbs up" gesture, which is not exactly the normal sort of thing most people do at a soldier's grave (in fact, one might call it downright weird).

The fallout from all of this has continued to snowball all week long. Another family objected, since their son's gravestone was also used in Trump's political ad and photos. The woman who reported the incident (the employee of the cemetery) refused to press charges because she was (quite rightly) afraid that if her name were made public she'd be the target of Trump's supporters -- a textbook example of how political terrorism works, really. The U.S. Army put out a statement backing up the woman's claims, which is a rare thing for them to do. And throughout it all, there was plenty of (well-deserved) outrage.

Here is but one example of this, from Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, whose mother-in-law and father-in-law are interred at Arlington National Cemetery:

Donald Trump has shown the nation, once again, that he has no shame.

You knew that, of course. But hauling a camera crew to Arlington National Cemetery and exploiting the fresh graves of heroes -- using them as props in his presidential campaign -- was more than a violation of the cemetery's rules; it was more, even, than a violation of federal law. It was a deeply dishonorable act by a shockingly dishonorable man.

Just because we are accustomed to this kind of behavior from Trump does not mean we should accept it. Just because he has no sense of honor or appreciation of sacrifice does not mean we have to pretend honor and sacrifice no longer exist. Just because "Trump is an awful person" is an old story does not mean we should yawn at this latest demonstration and quickly move on.

Which, of course, is all undeniably true. It was shameful and dishonorable and entirely in keeping with Trump's character. But after hearing the media whine incessantly about the lack of details in Kamala Harris's policy agenda -- stating over and over again how much the public wants to hear about policy -- all of this seems to be missing a very large point.

We all know (or should, by now) the disdain Trump holds for members of the military in general. But not one story about the Arlington incident that we saw drilled down into any of the policy ideas that Trump has had for what he'd do with the military in his second term -- and they are even more shameful and dishonorable than him making political hay over a dead soldier's grave. So where was all the media attention on the policy they've been insisting the public is entitled to know?

Donald Trump has said that, should he be re-elected, he will direct not just the National Guard but the rest of the armed forces to violently put down any protests inside the United States that he doesn't personally approve of. He longed to do so when he was president the first time, but was always held back by saner heads prevailing. He is not going to let that happen again. He will declare a national emergency exists, or he will use the Insurrection Act to order Army soldiers into American cities to impose martial law if there are any widespread protests he doesn't like -- even if they are peaceful ones.

That is scandalous. That is a disgraceful thing to even contemplate in America. So why wasn't it even mentioned, all week long? And it's not even the only such shameful and dishonorable (and unconstitutional) thing Trump has in mind for the U.S. active-duty military. He also wants to use them to round up undocumented immigrants from American cities in order to send them to concentration camps in the desert, before deporting millions of them to countries many of them haven't seen for decades. But this disgraceful plan wasn't mentioned in any of the Arlington/Trump stories either.

So forgive us if we tend to roll our eyes when the media complains about the Democratic candidate in the race not being all about policy all the time. Because they either have an enormous double standard when it comes to Donald Trump or else they're just lying about the relative importance of policy. Because otherwise at least a few of the headlines or the text of these articles would have mentioned Trump's disgraceful policy suggestions for the United States military.

Speaking of uneven media coverage, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz sat down for an interview yesterday with CNN. The interview didn't have any real breaking news in it, which led some in the media to complain. Their complaints, however, just showed how monstrous the media's double standard is in reporting on Harris and Trump. The New York Times had this to say, about one of Harris's answers:

Ms. Harris's speeches are filled with simple, declarative sentences.

But Thursday's interview was a reminder that unscripted, she can sometimes deliver discursive answers that ramble and zigzag.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump spouted his usual word salad while introducing a new policy idea (that virtually nobody thinks he will ever make good on). Here is how the Washington Post reported this:

Donald Trump said Thursday that if he wins a second term, he would require the government or private insurance companies to cover all costs associated with in vitro fertilization treatments -- an announcement delivered with few details that underscored his deficit among female voters and political headwinds on reproductive issues in his race against Vice President Kamala Harris.... Trump offered only a general description of how his proposals would work and did not specify how much it would cost.

Reading those, you would think that Harris had a hard time putting her thoughts into words, and that Trump did just fine but might have left out a few details. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of what both of them actually said. Here -- you be the judge. First, Harris's answer ("Discussing her feelings when Mr. Biden told her he was ending his campaign and endorsing her" ):

My first thought was about him, to be honest. I think history is going to show a number of things about Joe Biden's presidency. I think history is going to show that in so many ways it was transformative, be it on what we have accomplished around finally investing in America's infrastructure, investing in new economies, in new industries, what we have done to bring our allies back together, and have confidence in who we are as America, and grow that alliance, what we have done to stand true to our principles, including the -- one of the most important international rules and norms, which is the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Now let's have a look at what Trump had to say -- which was reported in the Times and the Post with only the briefest of quotes used, making Trump sound far more coherent than he actually was -- in a townhall where Tulsi Gabbard "told Trump about her own personal history as she and her husband tried unsuccessfully to have a child through in vitro fertilization (I.V.F.)." [Note: this is just one quote about one subject -- read that entire Raw Story article to see precisely how bonkers Trump's speaking style truly is, since they took the trouble to quote him at length on a number of other issues.]

I didn't know about your situation, and it's tough stuff, right? Life is pretty tough. It can be beautiful, but it can be difficult. We are doing something with I.V.F., because I.V.F., as you know, for friends, people you know, it's really worked out very well. For a lot of people, it gave them a child when they would not have had a child. And I told my people I wanted to look at this a couple of weeks ago. And as you know, we have no taxes on a thing called tips. You know that? And I said, tell me, we did three things. We did that, and we did no tax for seniors on Social Security benefits. We want to have that. And I've been seeing a lot of I.V.F., and I kept hearing that I'm against it, and I'm actually very much for it. In fact, in Alabama, where the judge ruled against it, and I countered the judge and came out with a very strong statement for it. And the Alabama they were amazing. The legislature approved virtually my statement. I mean, full I.V.F., and it's really gone -- it's terrific. And I said, so, with the tips and with the Social Security, no taxes on Social Security, I said, maybe for I.V.F., and I've been looking at it, and what we're going to do is for people that are using I.V.F., which is fertilization, we are, government is going to pay for it, or we're going to get or mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We're going to do that. Well, it's big. And you know what? We want to produce babies in this country, right? We want to produce babies. So I think it's going to be something we told we sort of announced it a little bit.

Which one of those deserves to be called a "discursive answer that rambles and zigzags"? And which one deserves more respect than it got? If Joe Biden had said anything even remotely as zigzaggy as what Trump did, there would have been headlines on the front page examining his mental capacities. But with Trump, they don't even mention his lack of clear thought at all. Like we said, a massive double standard.

To be fair, occasionally someone in the mainstream media does do a pretty good job of pointing out the double standard on policy details. Here's one good example:

The Republican presidential nominee often promises fantastical outcomes, without any plausible mechanism for how, as president, he would deliver them. Most recently, Trump promised to cut prices, with energy prices specifically falling by 50 percent. How? No explanation necessary. He simply declares it will happen, and the media and his allies amplify his claims.

Sometimes, he dresses up his promises with bureaucratic pageantry. "On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign an executive order directing every Cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and bring consumer prices rapidly down." he said at a recent North Carolina rally. "I will instruct my Cabinet that I expect results within the first 100 days, or much sooner."

But a preposterous promise on a 100-day timeline is still preposterous. (Arguably more so.) Yet seemingly, the entire Republican Party -- and much of the media -- have chosen to treat such nonsense as though it were a Very Serious, Big-Brained policy treatise.

It's not as if there isn't plenty of such material to write about, with Trump. Here's one article that actually did highlight how out of control he's been lately:

Donald Trump amplified a vulgar joke about Vice President Kamala Harris performing a sex act. He falsely accused her of staging a coup to secure the Democratic nomination and faulted her without evidence for a security lapse that enabled a rogue gunman to try to assassinate him. He shared a manipulated online image of Bill Gates in an orange jumpsuit and a call for Barack Obama to face a "military tribunal." He promoted explicit tributes to the QAnon conspiracy theory. He hawked digital trading cards in an online infomercial along with pieces of his debate night suit. ("People are calling it the knockout suit." ) His campaign feuded publicly with Arlington National Cemetery over their visit.

And that was just in the span of 24 hours.

Perhaps this is why more and more Republicans are throwing up their hands and endorsing Kamala Harris. In fact, 238 of them just publicly did so:

Over 200 Republicans who worked for former president George W. Bush, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) or the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race.

The more Republicans bolt from their party's candidate, the more they provide an easier path for others to do so as well. Because when you look at the two without any double standards, it's pretty plain to see which candidate would be highly dangerous to our American form of government and which wouldn't.





Kamala Harris had a pretty good week, all around. She is now beginning to see her "convention bounce" in the polls (FiveThirtyEight has her up in their national polling aggregate by 3.4 percent, Nate Silver's got her up by 4.3 percent) -- even in the battleground states. And enthusiasm for voting for Harris is now officially at Barack Obama levels.

Harris did a quick bus tour through rural Georgia, held a bigger rally in Savannah, and then sat down for her first interview since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate. She continues to barnstorm around the battleground states while deftly avoiding taking any of the bait Trump keeps tossing out. She has yet to make a major error in her campaign, and she is building on the support she initially got when Joe Biden stepped back. All of which is why she is our obvious choice for Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

Harris is even so sure of herself that she's pressuring both Team Trump and ABC to change the format of the upcoming presidential debate, to allow the microphones to be live throughout the entire evening (instead of being muted when the other candidate speaks). This taunts Trump on two levels: (1) she knows that the more Trump opens his mouth and blusters, the less voters like him, and (2) she seems confident that if the debate devolved into a shouting match that she would actually win it. That's pretty impressive confidence, you've got to admit (as of this writing, ABC hasn't budged and still says the microphones will be muted).

Harris sat down for an interview yesterday with CNN's Dana Bash, which went pretty well all around. She didn't have any real stumbles or gaffes (which mightily disappointed the media) and she wasn't caught in any "Gotcha!" moments (which also seriously annoyed the pundits, who were waiting to pounce). Walz sat in for the interview, but he was largely in the background -- which disappointed Trump and the Republicans who had already started spreading the "Harris needs a crutch" smear.

The problem for Trump is that nothing he has so far tried to throw at her has stuck. This is mostly because all his put-downs are just flat-out ridiculous. For a political smear to work, it's got to be believable, and so far none of it is. "She can't speak a sentence without a TelePrompTer" is a recycled line Trump used against Biden, but it's obviously not true when you hear Harris in that interview. All of his personal/racial/sexist smears have been brilliantly just brushed off by Harris, who dismissively responded when asked about one of them last night: "Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please." Bash was incredulous: "That's it?" Harris responded back: "That's it."

Harris did a good job of not throwing Joe Biden under the bus, proclaiming how proud she was to have been part of his "transformative" presidency, with all its "extraordinary successes." At the same time, she oriented the whole discussion forward:

One, I am so proud to have served as vice president to Joe Biden. And two, I'm so proud to be running with Tim Walz for president of the United States, and to bring America what I believe the American people deserve, which is a new way forward and to turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.

Harris, not unlike Barack Obama before her, knows that leaning in to her racial or gender identity is not the wisest thing for her to do politically. Those sorts of observations are best made by others, which Obama continually proved during his campaign and presidency. Harris, so far, has been doing a good job of this, stating last night: "I am running because I believe I am the best person to do the job, for all Americans, regardless of race and gender."

To mix a few sports metaphors, Harris didn't have any grand slams in her interview, but then neither did she have any own-goals. She handled herself well, avoided "Gotcha!" traps, and fleshed out who she is as a person and as a candidate. Tim Walz did equally as well. The entire exercise checked off the box of "held a sit-down interview with the press," although knowing the punditocracy they'll start howling about something else soon enough ("Where are the full-blown press conferences?!?" most likely).

Harris has improved dramatically in the time she has served as vice president. She is much more relaxed with the press now, and much more confident. For that alone, Kamala Harris was our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Vice President Kamala Harris on her White House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We know they've technically left the party and are therefore not precisely eligible for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, but we've got nobody else, so we're going to give a joint award to Robert F. Kennedy Junior and Tulsi Gabbard, for throwing their lot in with the Donald Trump campaign.

Both R.F.K. Jr. and Gabbard are complete nutjobs, of course -- meaning they'll fit right in with the Trump clownshow. Kennedy in particular seems to have more skeletons in his closet than anyone suspected -- and in one instance that might not even be metaphorical. An old interview was uncovered where his own daughter tells the story of Kennedy driving down to the beach so he could chainsaw a whale's head off before tying it to the roof of his car and driving five hours back home -- while it leaked "whale juice" into the car. Seems he wanted to keep the skull, which is a federal crime (if he's still got it in a closet somewhere).

While endorsing Trump, Kennedy trotted out yet another conspiracy theory (an "old school" one, this time) and ranted about solving the problem of "chemtrails" (which are not a thing, and not a problem). So like we said, seems like he'll fit right in with Team Trump.

Both Kennedy and Gabbard have already left the Democratic Party, which is a good thing, but we're awarding them both a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week anyway. Good riddance, really.

[Neither Robert F. Kennedy Junior nor Tulsi Gabbard holds political office, and it is our policy not to provide contact information for such persons, so you'll have to look that up yourselves if you would like to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 764 (8/30/24)

Our talking points this week are all about Trump, which is (of course) how he likes everything to be. The last two in particular are designed to do nothing more than get under his infamously-thin skin.

But we did have one note that didn't really fit anywhere else and wasn't really a talking point, but it was fun, so here goes... Vin Morabito of Scranton, Pennsylvania, wrote a letter published in the Washington Post this week where he points out that you can rearrange the letters in "President Kamala" to come up with "animated sparkle."

As we said, it's kind of a non-sequitur, but a fun one nonetheless!



Stolen valor

Why oh why haven't Democrats thrown this back in Trump's face? It's a mystery....

"Donald Trump shamelessly used soldier's gravesites as a political prop this week, filming a video he later shared on TikTok -- which is against federal law. You know what this is, in the truest sense of the term? Stolen valor. Donald Trump -- or 'Cadet Bone Spurs' as he's known, for dodging the draft during the Vietnam War -- does not understand the sacrifice of soldiers. He has belittled such sacrifice in the vilest language imaginable. But he has no problem with using the gravesites of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country as mere props in a campaign commercial. That is stolen valor, folks, and it is downright disgusting and reprehensible."



What Trump would do with the military (Part 1)

Point these out whenever the subject of Trump and the military comes up.

"You know what the truly scandalous thing about Donald Trump and the military is? This is a whole lot more serious than him disrespecting soldier's graves, even. Trump wants to use the armed forces of this country to be his own personal brownshirts -- he has said he'd eagerly deploy them to violently suppress any protest movement that arose while he is president. This is so un-American it boggles the mind, and yet that's exactly what Trump intends. Which, as I said, is far more serious than what he just did at Arlington."



What Trump would do with the military (Part 2)

This has -- amazingly -- not gotten nearly the amount of coverage it deserves.

"Trump also wants to use the U.S. military to round up millions of people living in America, rip them away from their families, and send them to what can only be called concentration camps out in the desert. Yes, you heard that right -- U.S. soldiers conducting raids on neighborhoods right here in America and dragging people away to some horrible camp in the middle of nowhere. Trump has never seen a Latino he hasn't wanted to deport, plain and simple. Coming up with such a policy is disgusting enough, but using America's military to carry it out is absolutely sickening. And yet that's exactly what he says he'll do if he gets back into office."



How weird!

This word has already been annoying Trump, so let's just use it again!

"You know what is truly weird? A person who goes to a soldier's grave and then poses while grinning and giving a big thumbs-up to the camera. Who does that? How disrespectful! How disgraceful! And really, how downright weird. Trump thinks visiting a gravesite is somehow supposed to be some cheerful event... I mean, what would you think if one of your relatives did that? You'd think it was really weird, that's for sure."



Yeah, right. Sure.

Trump suddenly seemed to realize he's got a gigantic problem with women voters.

"Have you seen the efforts of Trump and his running mate to gaslight women voters on reproductive health? I mean, these efforts are just pathetic, because they are so downright unbelievable. JD Vance said last Sunday that he could guarantee that Trump wouldn't sign a nationwide abortion ban if he became president -- which is some pretty laughable gaslighting. Trump trots out the idea that the government would pay for all in vitro fertilization treatments, which is about as believable as his grand health care plan to replace Obamacare -- still waiting to see that one! And Trump proclaimed himself to be 'great' on reproductive rights, but then today announced he'll be voting to keep Florida's 6-week abortion ban. So I guess that's his definition of 'great' on reproductive rights -- making sure women don't have any. I sincerely doubt that any intelligent woman in this country believes anything Trump or Vance have to say on the subject, because they've already both proven time and time again how much they are against women having any reproductive rights at all."



Checked your stock lately, Donnie?

Rub this one in.

"Have you seen the stock prices for Trump's 'Truth Social' company lately? It's in a complete nose-dive. And in a month or so Trump will be able to unload all his shares, so it'll probably continue circling the toilet until then. Just like pretty much every other business Trump has ever attempted, Truth Social is an absolute failure. It almost makes you feel sorry for all the rubes who believed Trump's promises that they'd get rich investing in his worthless company. Almost... but not quite."



Hit him where it hurts the most

We would certainly love to see Kamala Harris taunt Trump with this line during the upcoming debate, that's for sure!

"Did you see that the Democratic National Convention [link:|got better ratings] -- on every single night! -- than the Republican National Convention? I guess Kamala Harris is just more popular than Trump."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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