How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Media’s Relationship With Trump?

“Trump didn’t answer the question I asked him at his news conference. But if he had, this is what I think he would have said and meant.”

That’s a razor sharp X post by New York Times Pitchbot, a parody account run by a professor using the alias Doug J. Balloon. What makes it so funny is that it is so on point. Legacy media outlets like the New York Times are either too sycophantic to do real journalism when it comes to the nonsense Donald Trump spews on a daily basis, or they are too afraid of him. And given his penchant for lashing out at the media and directing his army of various white supremacists and malcontents to commit violence—like when they stormed the Capitol chanting that they wanted to hang his then-vice president, Mike Pence—maybe mainstream journalists are correct to be afraid of Trump.

But do they have to be so damn helpful?

It’s been almost eight years since Trump was first elected and the media still doesn’t know how to solve a problem like him. To say that the man is a liar would be an understatement. During an August 11 press conference, Trump lied 162 times in the span of 64 minutes, according to NPR. That’s about two and a half lies per minute. Every 30 seconds he spoke, another lie popped out. They spanned from the truly ridiculous, like his incessant fabrications about the size of his rally crowds, to the sort of misogynoir that we’ve come to expect when it comes to how Trump talks about Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee—she’s not smart; she’s incompetent; and is she even Black?

He lies. Everybody knows he lies. So why does the mainstream media continue to take what he says in good faith? And even worse, perhaps: Why does the media continue to take things he doesn’t say and turn them into things he might have said if he weren’t such a blistering dumbass?

Maybe it’s my mistake: I was unaware it was the media’s job to make a deeply stupid and sinister man seem palatable to mainstream Americans.

But that seems to be what they are doing. Last week, an NBC News reporter asked Trump a question about his policy position on mifepristone access, and his response was absolute word salad. Gibberish. Incomprehensible rubbish.

This is what he said in response to a question from NBC’s Garrett Haake about a national abortion ban and whether he would be open to ordering the FDA to revoke the authorization for mifepristone:

You could do things that will be—would supplement, absolutely, and those things are pretty open and humane, but you have to be able to have a vote. And all I want to do is give everybody a vote, and the votes are taking place right now as we speak.

What is he talking about? Seriously, what is that supposed to mean?

Haake then asked: “Is that something you would consider?” to which I say, literally, what?

Is what something Trump would consider? What are you referring to, Garrett? His insistence that everybody has a vote? Or some nebulous things “that would supplement absolutely” but which also would be “pretty open and humane.” What does that even mean? Where I come from, if a person gives an answer like that, you should follow up with, “What the actual fuck are you talking about?” Or, if unlike me, you’re a professional, “Can you explain what you mean?”

But of course Haake didn’t do that, leaving Trump to continue to ramble about giving everyone a vote: “There are many things on a humane basis that you can do outside of that, but you also have to give a vote.” Give a vote to whom? And for what?

Reread Trump’s responses. Does that sound like a man who knows what mifepristone is? Of course not. Because he doesn’t.

So why have reporters treated this response as if it were substantive? Perhaps it was unfair of me to open this commentary with a tweet from an account that relentlessly mocks the New York Times, because in all fairness to the Gray Lady, the Times is one of few outlets that didn’t run with a headline about how Trump was perhaps open to banning mifepristone.

But the Washington Post did. And so did NBC News. And Vox. Even the New Republic recognized Trump’s response to the question as gibberish, but then gave him an unnecessary assist by reporting the exchange as if he had made some policy pronouncement about mifepristone.

He hadn’t. That’s because he doesn’t know what mifepristone is. He doesn’t know what he was being asked. And what’s more? Even if he did know—he doesn’t care.

Trump doesn’t care if mifepristone is banned or not. He doesn’t even care if abortion is legal or criminalized. The only thing he cares about when it comes to abortion is whether his record on it and the furious response to his Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade two years ago will keep him from winning the upcoming election. Because if it does, it keeps him in the crosshairs of the various state and federal prosecutors like Jack Smith and Fani Willis, who are trying to hold him accountable for his many crimes.

The man lies. And he doesn’t know what mifepristone is. So can we please stop pretending that he does?

Should Trump get reelected, the fact that he really doesn’t care about abortion means he will do whatever the Christian right wants him to do. Right now they‘re mad at him because even though he brags about killing Roe, he knows that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, so he has tried to distance himself from his prior positions. But that’s not because he’s moving to the center on abortion. It’s because he needs to win so that he can avoid jail time for his many crimes.

So to the journalists out there who are covering this ongoing human rights crisis—and I will keep saying that the criminalization of abortion following the reversal of Roe has sparked a legitimate human rights and health-care crisis that Donald Trump has no intention of ameliorating—can you please stop helping this man? Just stop. Just report what he says. Ask follow-up questions. And if he does not or cannot answer your question, then report on that. Just please, for the love of the old gods and the new, stop helping him. You’re embarrassing yourselves.

Will he ban the abortion pill? Yes. But does he know what it is?

Nope.

The post How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Media’s Relationship With Trump? appeared first on Rewire News Group.