The Press on Trump

The Press Stays Calm

   I want to congratulate the press—or at least the small (mostly NYTimes) portion that I read—for giving a fair shake to President Trump without criticism or sarcasm. Maybe that’s what it takes to stay in business, but it is something of an achievement to remain calm and “objective” in a piece like this “Trump Says He Has Signed More Bills Than Any President, Ever. He Hasn’t.”* This is a long and respectful article that shows that the President of the United States—Our president—is ignorant about the history that he cites, brags about accomplishments that he didn’t accomplish, and just plain lies.

  Why am I congratulating the press—specifically the NYTimes for producing an article such as this? Because the authors (Michael D. Shear and Karen Yourish) and their editors have resisted the temptation, surely great, to be sarcastic, censorious, hectoring, or in other ways grandstanding. Neither they nor I have experienced a president about whom such a report could (truthfully) be written.

   But they are right to make their report straight. Those of us who are appalled by the president we have acquired don’t need journalists to express any, not to say vehement, feelings in their reporting. Those others—and there are many, since under prevailing rules, Trump was fairly elected, would only be annoyed if the likes of the Times were in such a way implicitly censoring them for having done what they did. That’s what editorials and “commentaries” are for, not news  reports. I do think, to repeat, that such virtuous journalists should be given credit for sticking to the facts, in the face of temptations to express their own opinions.

   *ttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/us/politics/trump-laws-bills.html?hp&action=click&pgtype           

Trump's Sins

Is it Curious? I don’t think so.

   I read a great many articles about Trump, almost all of them negative, many of them exceedingly so. I am sure everyone who is awake to the current scene is having the same experience: being constantly apprised of our president’s stupidities, ignorance, impulsiveness, and more of the same—no doubt all true.

   What surprises me is that as far as I know, there are no rebuttals issued by the Trump camp. These attacks that would be slander if they weren’t true are simply being absorbed, so to speak.

   I have a simple, two-part, explanation and wonder whether any readers have a more complex one.  [1] Trump himself doesn’t read these attacks and, for the most part, is ignorant of them. And [2], his aids and hangers-on have no motive to rebut them, even when on occasion they don’t agree. For them, in the language of game theory: high risk, no gain.

The Endless Articles about Trump

Since the piece below was published, the tape in which Trump brags about his sexual successes, released by the Washington Post, has produced a firestorm of responses. It has induced  Republican politicians to withdraw their support for him and/or to urging him to withdraw his candidacy (you should live so long). And it has produced a firestorm of articles, none of which conforms to the Barnum dictum, discussed below, that there is no touch thing as bad publicity. Let me add, irrelevantly, that I look forward to journalism PT, post Trump.

Regarding Trump, a Modest (and Short) Proposal

   Ignoring the fact that regarding Donald Trump there may be no such thing as a modest proposal, here, in any case, is a suggestion. I made a brief visit to the internet and quickly came up with a count of more than a dozen publications—mostly newspapers, a few magazines—that came out in editorials to say explicitly that they are against the election of Trump as president of the United States.¹ Interestingly, the list includes a few outfits that have not ever or only very rarely made an editorial recommendation for the presidency. Nor does it count the pro-Hillary Clinton editorials that I did not survey.
   The point I want to make does not depend on the number of such journals, as long as you understand that my count includes a healthy proportion of the biggies, such as the Washington Post and the paper I read on my computer, The New York Times.

   What about these publications, other than that they are not for Trump? Without having made a survey, I assert that most of them are nevertheless helping the man they are so against. On the one hand, as just discussed, they oppose. But on the other, they give him publicity, almost endlessly, by daily printing numerous articles about him. I count six of them in the Times of October 6, by way of example.

  Many of these are of course not at all favorable. But recall what P.T. Barnum is reported to have said; and he was a master showman a century and a half ago: There is no such thing as bad publicity.

   He was probably right way back then and is likely to be right today. Moreover, Donald  J. Trump himself seems to agree with Barnum’s dictum, since his budget for television ads is considerably smaller than Hillary’s.  His opponents are in effect helping him.

   I am in firm agreement with those Not Trump editorials and will cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. But let me draw the obvious conclusion from the above account. To ye endless scribblers about Donald Trump: Silence is Golden. I impatiently await the period—not yet, but sure to come—when Trump-empty publications will once again be the norm.

    

PS The above was written before the October 8 publication of the tape that has Trump Bragging About Groping Women.² That one sure didn’t help him. Take that, Mr. Barnum.

_________________________________
¹Here is a selection of these: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/world/us-editorials-line-up-against-donald-trump-20161006-grwgkc.

²http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/donald-trump-women.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Trump

A Resolution
No Doubt Soon to be Broken

   Donald Trump is a kind of grizzly joke. He spouts off daily—coherently or not, in conformity with earlier statements of his or not, rantings of whatever comes to his mind, when not briefly interrupted by formal speeches produced by one or another of his handlers. The press—all  parts of it from mundane reporters to well paid pundits and highly placed columnists—pour out thousands of Trump-related words a day. It’s annoying, since quite repetitive, but I can’t blame those scribes. They have a subject the like of which hasn’t been around in my memory.

   But Trump, unfortunately, is a real person or at least a real phenomenon. Hard to believe, but true. Historians will have to do a lot of explaining about how a joker (“a person considered unworthy of repsect”) came to be the candidate for the United States presidency of one of the two major parties aiming at that ultimate goal. Bizarre.

   I am tempted to join the throng of commentators, but realize that I have nothing to add—other than yet more rhetoric.  That leaves me with my wobbly resolution to swear off on Trump comments.

   Let’s see how long it lasts.

Trump Stands Alone

What’s Truly Unique about Donald J. Trump

   “With his bombastic swagger, changing policy positions and larger-than-life persona, Mr. Trump has proved to be an irresistible subject for writers and political satirists,” thus in the New York Times of July 4. That’s a partial explanation for the endless stories that are being written about him, sometimes as many as three or four in the same issue of the Times. I, too, am essentially hooked and read most writings that I come across about The Donald.

   Trump is indeed unique, no doubt about it. But when you come down to it, only somewhat “more so” than anyone else. (The scare quotes because you can’t be more or less unique; there are no degrees of uniqueness.) To bore you some more, every human being is, strictly speaking unique, meaning that everyone has a combination of traits—a specific bundle of attributes (and not just of secondary characteristics such as location in time and space) that together are not to be found in anyone else, with perhaps some identical twins as close as you can get to an exception.

   Without losing sight of the little lesson in the paragraph above, we must look at what one might call the significance of a person’s uniqueness. If Joe is unique because he has a peculiar shade of red hair together with an unusually long nose, that, in the scheme of things, does not make Joe significantly unique, to make up another label. Well, Trump, with his bundle of weighty characteristics, is, for sure, significantly unique.

  Others have inherited tons of money from their parents. Others have developed hotels, golf courses and much more; others have succeeded in showbiz on TV. How many have done all of the above? Only very few, if anyone. Clearly I’m piling up traits that attest to the ways Trump is distinguishable from everyone else, and probably enough of them.

   I’m no historian, but I have no doubt that many another candidate for high office has been an oddball, if not like The Donald, then in his or her own particular way. Moreover, there have surely been aspirants for important offices, including the presidency, who did not have the qualifications to serve successfully in the positions they sought.

   And Trump is clearly not qualified to be president of the United States. He lacks the temperament, he lacks both the experience required to be a president and he lacks the knowledge of issues that a president has to deal with. All this and more has been widely discussed. Indeed, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a rare political comment for a Supreme Court Justice, refreshingly expressed her dismay at the candidacy of one so unqualified. Still, all this makes Trump’s uniqueness significant, while he is surely not alone as a candidate for a job for which he (most of the time “he”) is not qualified.

   But there is still another and very important way in which Trump is unique. As an unqualified candidate, Donald Trump has attracted the support of voters in the recent primaries to beat off more than a dozen others who aimed to become the presumptive Republican candidate for the presidency. I don’t know how many others can tell the same story, but I do believe that it is quite remarkable.

   A recent very long and excellent article in the New Yorker¹ (among many other accounts) gives a good description of the people who are fervent Trump supporters. Their enthusiasm has them ignore the issue of qualification—not in the sense that they discount it, but in that they don’t think about it in the first place. Moreover, their support of Trump is not so much rooted in a set of beliefs, such as his proposed policies on immigration or what he proposes to do about international trade, etc. Rather, his supporters are jazzed by sound bytes, to conclude with language of yore.

   I don’t think that Trump will win the election on November 8, but that is by no means a sure thing. Justice Ginsburg has, jokingly, threatened to move to New Zealand, were he to become president. I don’t have to pull up stakes to get out from under a Trump presidency, since I’ve already absconded and live with my daughter and family in Mexico. But for all of our sakes, I hope he remains a private citizen and his comet-like appearance goes the way of all comets.

__________________

¹ George Saunders, “Trump Days,” The New Yorker, July 11 & 18, 2016.