CUT HIM OFF – Breaking the Media’s Trump Addiction

Here's a piece I recently submitted to the Opinions Editor of the Minnesota Star Tribune:

Donald Trump is a con man the likes of whom we’ve not met in my generation.

Among his many tricks, he knows that outrageousness, no matter how sordid, sells. And the media—including the Star Tribune—have been all too eager to buy.

It’s no merit whatsoever that’s earned him his notoriety; it’s simply the media’s weakness for his fools-gold patina of fame, his winners-and-losers style, his lies, boasts and grievances. That is the only thing that’s elevated Trump to his role as a cult leader and, preposterously, to his recent status as one of the most powerful people in the world.

As the next presidential election looms, it cannot be overstated how vital it is for the future of our embattled Democracy that, this time around, you in the media reclaim your discipline, your journalistic integrity, in the way you cover this simpleton.

PRESIDENT BUTTHEAD?
If Trump should somehow manage to win the 2024 election, of course you’ll have to keep reporting on him, even if he presides over nothing but chaos. (Hell, you’d have to cover the presidency even if the post were held by Beavis or Butthead.)

(That said, you must avoid normalizing—“sane-washing,” many are calling it—Trump’s absurd comments and behavior as many of your media counterparts have in their efforts to be even-handed. Let your readers see and read exactly how unstable the man is.)

But if he loses—again—I urge you to take a hard look at how—and why—you might want to continue covering Donald Trump. Consider letting his second defeat be the end of your love-hate addiction to this charlatan. Do a reset, work the Twelve Steps and leave this silly, shallow little man alone to the fate he most fears and has always deserved: oblivion. 

PHOTO: The Atlantic

BACK TO REALITY
All it will take is what it would have taken back in 2015: honest, principled journalism, not the yellow kind. Guarding the distinction between news and sensation. Realizing that covering the ravings of a narcissist and pathological liar is no more news than is the reality-show world that begot him.

Yes, we know Trump’s MO for failure: deny, play the victim, accuse others, double down; he will simply not accept defeat. And we know he’ll rally his MAGA base to once again attack the officials and democratic institutions he blames for his short- comings. This will be hard to resist. Maybe you’ll need to wean yourselves gradually.

If, for fear of losing a few readers, you just can’t resist the bait, at least put this trivia in Faces, your page-two entertainment column, or in the Variety section. Just not with the hard news.

Better yet, bite the bullet. Let Donald J. Trump end up where he belongs, back on reality TV. Please!  Just let him go.

PHOTO: Pool / Getty

Given the topic's surging presence in social media, I suppose by now you've heard of Project 2025.

That's the right-wing Heritage Foundation's vision for a second Donald Trump presidency. This vision is so out there, so frightening, that even the Trumpublican party's poster boy is claiming to know nothing about it. 

Right. 

The cretin is mentioned by name 240 times in the document. And CNN found nearly 140 former Trump aides and advisers who have contributed to Project 2025, including six former members of his Cabinet, four of his ambassadors, and Republican National Committee members appointed to their positions in coordination with the Trump campaign.

It's hard to think of an adequate way of responding to such a blatant anti-Democracy, fascist intention. Millions of our countrymen and women have fought and died to defend our country against such ambitions. And this one's taking place right here at home, right under our noses.

PHOTO: Mediadrum Images / NARA

Lacking a military option, we should be facing the threat with whatever weapons we do possess. Writing about it. Sharing it with friends. Flooding social media with it. Taking it to the streets...

...and calling to task major news media for what to date has been their paltry coverage of this existential threat to our democratic way of life.  To wit the letter to the editors I just submitted to the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

To Star Tribune editorial department:

Why is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 once again not front page news today? Why is it not every day?

This 900-plus-page document is chilling in both scope and detail—nothing less than a manifesto for a fascist, Christian nationalist Trump regime.

From a wholesale dismantling of hard-won environmental and consumer-protection regulations, to blurring the separation of church and state, to undermining longstanding safeguards against abuses of executive power, to supplanting capable public servants with regime loyalists, to gutting our government’s vital checks-and-balances design, to suppressing dissent, Project 2025 is a blueprint for the destruction of Democracy.

How much more disturbing would this ultra-right-wing playbook have to be before
the Star Tribune gives it the urgent coverage it deserves?

I urge you to consider Project 2025’s newsworthiness in light of other events and issues which would surely capture front-page, banner-headline coverage in your paper. Like a nationwide power blackout, a major airplane crash, or the U.S. Capitol being overrun by an angry mob of the same kind of traitors who would find new empowerment in Project 2025.

Please, I urge you to pick up whatever weapon of expression you possess and use it to expose the shocking reality of Project 2025. Your voice, your feet, your wit, or, as I have, your pen.

Our precious Democracy—the peace and freedom most of us have enjoyed all our lives and that we so dearly wish for our children and grandchildren—is at stake.

ILLUSTRATION: Norman Rockwell