In a critical ruling last night, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Trump regime’s application for a stay to halt the First Circuit’s decision blocking its U.S. Postal Service rule, which would have bollixed up mail-in voting for tens of millions of voters.
With dissents from Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — and a concurrence from Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh (that the underlying rule might fall within the powers of the Post Office, a stance rejected by multiple courts) — the rule is now, for all intents and purposes, dead.
The effort to rig the election by suppressing mail-in balloting has failed. Although the Trump team will, no doubt, continue its midterm shenanigans, voters should breathe a sigh of relief that even this MAGA-dominated Supreme Court will not enable such a brazen effort to rig our elections.
A “convention” does not begin to describe it
Last week’s RNC appeared to be a fascist gathering, one which included open calls to shoot opposition party members, deification of Dear Leader — “On June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump,” began the head-spinning video tribute — and Trump inciting from the audience a sworn oath to cheat, closing with “I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do.” One would assume such an unhinged spectacle would have drawn coverage at least as alarmed as when President Joe Biden bombed in his debate performance. Calls for Donald Trump to resign? For Republicans to disown him? Not even close.
Instead, this gob-smacking display of authoritarian cultist lunacy was treated in legacy newspapers, broadcast, and cable as just a good ol’ Republican “convention.” Days of coverage took at face value (as if this were a serious policy matter) a preposterous $5000 giveaway scam designed to bribe voters to keep Republicans in office…in case Trump’s threat of voters otherwise going to hell was not sufficient.
Buying into the term “convention” — though the event had none of the attributes of a normal political convention (e.g., a platform, elected delegates, policy discussions, open access for the press) — gave Trump’s cult of personality the patina of normalcy. When a gathering is closer to a fascist rally or religious revival, responsible coverage should reflect that reality. That, however, would have been considered “unbalanced,” hence the default setting: to treat this as politics as usual.
The sanewashing of Republicans’ despotic orgy provides insight into how far astray billionaire-owned media has gone in its political coverage. Outrageous, frightful assaults on constitutional law and democratic values are treated as clever tactics. Treating a party that is no longer bound by fidelity to truth, rational discourse, or nonviolent political competition as indistinguishable from a party that adheres to democratic (small “d”) norms casts legacy media as enablers, not independent guardians of democracy and free discourse.
Instead of sustained, serious critique of the MAGA movement’s descent into fascism, we got — at most — bemused coverage, which treated Trump as uniquely skilled in manipulating his supporters. Nowhere do we get a hint that this is the conduct of an irrational tyrant manipulating a cult that has given up on reality and democracy. The New York Times jocular account was tragically typical:
He played some greatest hits, jabbing the media in advance lest they report that there were empty seats in the hall and that viewers were leaving the arena. [There were, and they did.] He promised Americans $5,000 checks if Republicans retained Congress and later said, “America is not for sale.”
On Thursday, he said, “I’m going to be a little bit brief” and spoke for another 25 minutes.
It was a lot, but whatever notice the convention generated was more likely to come from clips shared afterward. For anyone who did the full binge-watch, there was a home-team feel to the broadcast, because much of the coverage was on Trump-friendly networks. (Other news networks dipped in intermittently.) When Mr. Trump pre-emptively defended his crowd size, the camera on Fox panned the densest part of the crowd.
Former Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob hit the nail on the head in decrying this approach. “The light tone of this piece reflects the NY Times’ attitude that Trump is just a goof and all this madness is temporary,” he observed. “It’s mind-blowing that a major newspaper is trivializing a fascist movement that has committed mass murder and stated openly last night that it will cheat in the midterms.”
Had corporate and billionaire media moguls not taken over multiple outlets, we might have consumed sustained, persistent questioning targeting every Republican on the ballot: Is it acceptable to call for voters to cheat? Are voters who don’t pick Trump going to hell? How can Republicans defend a president whose idea of economic policy entails sending out checks (without congressional approval, no less) that would cost $1.2T and goose inflation?
Sadly, this was not an exception to legacy media coverage. On a near-daily basis, it appears the White House press corps has been thoroughly cowed. Refusing to respond collectively to Trump’s bullying, it refuses to make any institutional response to, e.g., incessant unhinged attacks on female reporters. (Worse, it keeps throwing correspondents’ dinners while treating Trump with decorum he has not earned.) The refusal to interrogate him daily about his transparently deteriorating health is simply inexcusable.
Democrats need not accept this sort of coverage as the new normal. For starters, they can stop relying on corporate and billionaire media outlets to moderate debates. Outlets with particularly egregious records of carrying MAGA’s water (e.g., CBS, Fox, the Washington Post) have disqualified themselves as honest brokers.
Secondly, when confronted with accusations spoon-fed by MAGA operatives (How do you respond to Republican accusations that XXXXX…?) Democrats should call out the questioners (Why are you playing dummy for Republican ventriloquists?) and be empathic about their opponents (I’m not taking serious criticism from a party that tells its followers to cheat). Abdul El-Sayed on CBS’s Face the Nation did this to perfection on Sunday: “Weijia, with all due respect, this is the third time you’ve asked about a Twitch streamer in California … their whole game is to make us fight culture wars so that we don’t pay attention to the fact the president has made $2.2 billion … I’m not all that interested in having a conversation about a Twitch streamer.”
So, please, let’s stop referring to MAGA Republicans’ bizarre political behavior in bland, normalizing terms (e.g., “convention”), the way enfeebled legacy media outlets now do. When Trump holds a fascist rally and spews violent authoritarian blather, it behooves those who consider themselves responsible, independent journalists to describe what they see and hear with their own eyes and ears, and subsequently interrogate Republicans on their acquiescence. Each instance of normalization should remind Democrats that they cannot rely on legacy media to defend democratic values or clearly communicate the distinction between an anti-democratic, authoritarian movement and the only remaining pro-democratic national political party. We need to spell out clearly the message that legacy media will not: The choice in November is between fascism and democracy.
