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.