The New York Times has always been a weaselly accommodationist to Trump’s nonsense, putting a positive spin on his words and downplaying his general incoherence. That pattern might be ending — they just ran an article titled Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age. It’s scathing.
Mr. Trump frequently reaches to the past for his frame of reference, often to the 1980s and 1990s, when he was in his tabloid-fueled heyday. He cites fictional characters from that era like Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lip” (he meant “Silence of the Lambs”), asks “where’s Johnny Carson, bring back Johnny” (who died in 2005) and ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was (“the most handsome man”). He asks supporters whether they remember the landing in New York of Charles Lindbergh, who actually landed in Paris and long before Mr. Trump was born.
He seems confused about modern technology, suggesting that “most people don’t have any idea what the hell a phone app is” in a country where 96 percent of people own a smartphone. If sometimes he seems stuck in the 1990s, there are moments when he pines for the 1890s, holding out that decade as the halcyon period of American history and William McKinley as his model president because of his support for tariffs.
It’s brutal. I’m not used to seeing this kind of analysis of Trump’s speeches from the NY Times.
He does not stick to a single train of thought for long. During one 10-minute stretch in Mosinee, Wis., last month, for instance, he ping-ponged from topic to topic: Ms. Harris’s record; the virtues of the merit system; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement; supposed corruption at the F.D.A., the C.D.C. and the W.H.O.; the Covid-19 pandemic; immigration; back to the W.H.O.; China; Mr. Biden’s age; Ms. Harris again; Mr. Biden again; chronic health problems and childhood diseases; back to Mr. Kennedy; the “Biden crime family”; the president’s State of the Union address; Franklin D. Roosevelt; the 25th Amendment; the “parasitic political class”; Election Day; back to immigration; Senator Tammy Baldwin; back to immigration; energy production; back to immigration; and Ms. Baldwin again.
It’s interesting, because the NY Times is not written for us — it’s the paper of record for lawyers, stock brokers, wealthy Long Island nepo babies, the aspiring upper class, etc. Maybe the Times has detected a shift in the biases of their readership, which they are quick to pander to.
It could be a good sign of troubles for the lyin’ grifter ahead…
I can see that editorial working two ways:
“See, President Harris, we did support you.”
“Don’t worry, President Trump. We fired the people who wrote that editorial, honest. There’s no need to come after us.”
That the NYT editors are just taking note of Trump’s cognitive state so strongly may indicate their own age-related cognitive decline, as well as their biases. Some of us, even us oldster, noted Trump’s verbal meandering thought processes and probable cognitive impairment during the 2016 campaign when he first emerged into our awareness. On hearing the “Access Hollywood” tape alone, you couldn’t help but think that the man was either on coke, drunk, or mentally broken. Given that we were told, repeatedly, that he doesn’t drink alcohol or do drugs, it leaves the later. Under those circumstances, that the NYT and other major news outlets even once considered Trump a viable candidate is shocking.
I think The Times has been very critical of Trump for some time. I thought PZ had stopped reading it some time ago so may not be aware of this.
Note this recent devastating editorial”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/26/opinion/donald-trump-personality-history.html
Good but are they still sane-washing Trump speeches?
Good but are they still sane-washing Trump speeches?
@ robro : “Under those circumstances, that the NYT and other major news outlets even once considered Trump a viable candidate is shocking.”
Especially after Jan 6th that anyone can think Trump is a viable candidate is shocking.
That Trump is so close to potentially winning & becoming
POTUSactual fucking treason SCOTUS empowered dictator is beyond jaw-dropping and just .. beyond words really. WTF USA?I’m gobsmacked that an establishment paper like the Times is openly discussing how incoherent Trump has gotten. I always thought that was a line they’d never cross.
What next? Are they going to admit that racism exists or that war is bad?
Thing is, everyone who counts (or thinks) knows that Trump is cognitively a turnip.
It’s a little late for the NYT to supposedly be jumping on the Harris/Walz bandwagon. They could have been working for the common good years ago.
Who says anyone thinks that any more?
The Trump voters aren’t voting for Donald Trump.
They are voting for his puppet masters. The ones operating the strings.
Trump is just a meat puppet by now. If he wins, they will just prop him up in a chair with a TV, unlimited diet cokes, and a cell phone so he can text the X website.
The people running the USA will be his handlers, caretakers, the christofascists of Project 2025, and the ultra-rich oligarchies.
If he gets too far gone or even dies, then the president will be…JD Vance. His base and the oligarchies don’t have a problem with that.
PS: This would be the plot of a good horror story.
Except for the part where it is the reality we in the USA are actually living in right now.
Oh really?
Probably almost everyone knows that Trump is turning into a Zombie. With one notable exception.
Elon Musk isn’t much more coherent than Trump is.
Musk isn’t just Dark Maga, he is Dark everything; parent, CEO, employer, ultra-rich oligarch, human being.
Once upon a time, the NYT was a good newspaper. It’s been at best second-tier since it decided, in the wisdom of its long-term-family-controlled editorial board (all too similar to the WSJ, albeit a different family) but contrary to the journalistic judgment of the involved bureau or potentially involved reporters, that the fallout from a local failed burglary was better left to the (sneer) local paper.
In 1972, not very long at all after the NYT stood against the Establishment by publishing the Pentagon Papers and a certain pro-civil-rights advertisement that really pissed off a segregationist in Maaaaaaaaahntgom’ry (and fundamentally changed both the law of libel and general awareness of the First Amendment). Since then, virtually every major story initiated by the NYT has resulted from reporters going beyond what their section editors wanted, and far beyond what the editorial board wanted. And that’s regardless of the nature or purported slant of the story. The less said about the declining quality (and increasing provincialism) of the NYT‘s coverage of “the arts” starting at about the same time, the better.
Some of the MAGA crazies who attended Trump’s return visit to Butler, PA, yesterday are convinced that Biden was behind the July assassination attempt. Naturally they also believe that God intervened to save the life of their Tangerine Messiah (part-time firefighters aren’t quite so important to the good Lord).
Given that SCOTUS has granted presidential immunity for official acts, Biden need only make a convincing argument that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy — Trump’s publicly stated opinions about ‘dictator on day one’ and ‘no more need to vote’ should do — and openly dispatch SEAL Team Six to openly dispatch Trump. Of course SCOTUS knows that Biden wouldn’t abuse a ruling he disagrees with else they would have waited until Trump was in office before granting the power, but naturally the MAGA loons don’t pause to analyse any situation and just scream ‘Conspiracy!’ while pointing at their favourite target.
@7 StevoR: A dangerously high percent don’t think Trump is really viable but will vote against anybody with a D behind their name. There is a large group determined to vote against the Democrats and spite the liberals no matter the cost. They would burn their own house down if you convinced them it would spite the liberals, which is what voting for Trump amounts to.
The Times has been doing scathing exposes of Trump for nearly ten years, ever since he rode down his golden escalator in 2015. They have editorialized three times against his presidential candidacy, most recently branding him “unfit for office.” The Times has a wide readership throughout the greater New York metro area, among people of all economic classes and walks of life, most of whom are as far from being Trump partisans as you can imagine. Those are the actual facts.
@Jaws, evidence for your claim in the sentence beginning, “Since then, virtually every major story …” And how exactly does a reporter “go beyond” what a section editor wants, when the editor has full power to spike the reporter’s story if it is not want he/she wants?
The NYT has unambiguously endorsed Kamala Harris (at least) twice, most recently the editorial board’s “The Only Patriotic Choice for President” only a week ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/opinion/editorials/kamala-harris-2024.html
A Fox News host came out and said the other week that Trump committed a crime to try to steal the 2020 election. I think an increasing chunk of the rich have decided that Trump isn’t going to win and they’re trying to cozy up to the Democrats, who — to be fair — have basically announced that from now on they’re going to behave like the Reagan administration, except that Reagan actually stopped Israel from committing genocide.
Vicar (singular);
There is no such announcement, basic or otherwise.
(I’m pretty sure you yourself don’t believe that stupid lie)
@16: I’m not at liberty to discuss the best evidence that I have. Less-good evidence, however, is in the process (not the way it was presented when fictionalized for cinema) of the “Me Too” movement and particularly the Harvey Weinstein aspect; the following-along-after-everyone-else coverage of policy and intelligence failures in 1989, 1990, 1994, 2001, 2003, 2004… ok, not going to try to list the rest… the flat-on-its-face failure regarding various “loan scandals” ranging from the S&L crisis in the 1980s through the 2006-09 “mortgage crisis” and more on the financial sector (with the exception of James Stewart’s work, the excellence is slightly undermined by it being largely retrospective), a major part of the NYC culture/economy; I could go on for a while just from less-good evidence.
Reporters go beyond what editors (and even moreso editorial boards) with some frequency, especially when being “late to the party” in a desperate effort to regain “relevancy” from the pesky lesser journalists who actually broke the story. Then, too, sometimes they leave…
Digby’s Hullabaloo has a gift article link to the article. Read the whole thing. Interesting
The people responsible for the sacking have been sacked.
That I think is most of the motivation, in a time of diminishing print news survival is paramount. It is not so much all the news that is fit to print but what maintains the readership that is in the lead control.
Where does that leave us the populace? How are we going to be a well informed citizenry ?
Adam Lee@6:
And lose that big fat Lockheed-Martin advertising account? Ha!
I grew up in a household that had the NY Times on Sunday every week. I kept getting it as I advanced to being independent. However about 10 years ago the editorial content of the times became full of misinformation and falsehoods and far to the conservative side. I stopped subscribing and to this day like the normal posts in the times but will not subscribe due to the managements direction.
Look, Trump has proven himself to be a horrible human being since the 1970’s, if not earlier. He has gotten worse but his baseline was, long, long ago, well below where any person running for any public office should be. 50 years ago he was not incoherent all the time like he is now, but he was a lying crook and bully already. I have no sympathy for anyone who supported this monster at any time.
Ask the Central Park 5 what kind of creature he is.
@raven:
I don’t agree with your analysis. Trump is actually a charismatic person, any successful con man and grifter has to be, and a solid majority of the republican base believe in him in a cultish fashion. So the vast majority of the Republicans are actually voting for him. Your analysis of “puppet republican voters following masters” is old and it applied to pre-Trump era. The puppet masters on many occasions tried to move past Trump but the cult did not follow.
@1 timgueguen
I pointed this out in a comment on a Midas Touch video, in which they commented on one of Fox’s new “commenters”, who keeps being the only one that stands up in the group and points out everything the rest keep denying. I.e., “These mini-talk show format ‘news’ shows always have a token pro-democrat on them. In the past this person was very pro-democrat, but what blindingly obviously being paid to spend half their time talking sensible Democrat policy, then end their ‘helpful’ rebuttal of the right’s views by intentionally wandering off into saying things the right wing conspiracy theories want people to believe is Democratic policy, so as to directly undermine their own position – thus showing ‘fairness and balance’, according to Fox’s bullshit definition of it. My immediate thought was that their new pro-“leftist” seems to be playing a different game – her job is to be the proof that they where truly fair and balanced, and allow them to pivot into sensible coverage, if Trump loses, pointing to her as the ‘voice of reason we should have been listening to all along’, and, if he wins, she can be the person they blame for any negative flack Trump throws at them, so as to escape his wrath.”
I went on to say that I have a hard time believing, based on past examples of this, “here is out token person to pretend to represent the left”, tactic that they just “accidentally” hired someone who decided they would go against everyone else on the show, and call Trump out for virtually every thing he does, and then decided, “Lets keep her on!”
Trump and Elmo succeeded in “Make America Cringe Again”.
Creepy and weird is not a good look.