Where are the headlines that scream: “Mentally disturbed old man spreads nonsense and threatens to forcibly deport immigrants”?
Trump and Harris before the debate in the election campaign
A few days before her debate, Kamala Harris spent time in a spice shop while Donald Trump held rallies.
To the pundits and Republicans who tirelessly denounced President Joe Biden’s age, “cognitive decline,” and “mental acuity” until the day he withdrew from the presidential campaign, allow me to quote a recent quote from 78-year-old Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
When asked “what specific law” he would propose to make child care more affordable, he replied:
“That’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the numbers that I mean, then — look, child care is child care. It’s — couldn’t — you know, it’s something — you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you compare those numbers to the numbers that I mean, when you tax foreign nations at a level that they’re not used to, but they’re going to get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’re going to impose a very high tax when they send products to our country. Those numbers are so much higher than any of the numbers that we’re talking about, including child care. That — it’s going to ensure — we’re going to — I — I look forward to being out of deficits within a relatively short period of time, along with the reductions that I’ve been telling you about, in waste and fraud and all the other things that are going on in our country.”
I can’t quote any more here, but it went on and still made no sense. Child care is child care? Tariffs will make the cost of child care disappear?
The word “outbreak” does not contain any mention of legislation. There are hardly any complete sentences.
Trump’s bizarre tirades are glossed over. Biden received no such special treatment.
If Biden had made such a confused tirade as a Democratic candidate, Republican lawmakers would be calling for him to be institutionalized and cable news would be debating the operation of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But the New York Times’ first report on Trump’s ramblings said: “In a confused response, he said he would prioritize legislation on the issue but stopped short of specifics, insisting that his other economic policies, including tariffs, would ‘take care of’ child care.”
Oh, come on. A 78-year-old convicted felon running for president spouts nonsense speeches demonstrating his inability to form a thought or understand an important issue, and it’s all dismissed as a “wacky response”?
Republicans vote for Harris: Dick Cheney chooses Kamala Harris, giving conservatives one last chance to save their party from Trump
Trump expresses bizarre fantasies, so why is his mental health not an issue?
Trump has recently been spreading the despicable and absurd story that American children go to school and then, apparently during the day and without their parents’ permission, undergo gender reassignment surgery.
At a rally over the weekend, Trump said: “Can you imagine, you’re a parent, your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a great day at school,’ and your son comes back from a brutal surgery. Can you even imagine that? What the hell is going on with our country?”
No one can imagine it because it is not actually happening. It is far more absurd and so obviously fictional that one has to wonder what other fantasies the narrator believes.
If a relative was convinced that something like this was happening, you would take them to the doctor immediately.
A violent, lie-filled tirade about immigrants? Trump seems uncomfortable.
At his rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, Trump brought up his sadistic plan to deport millions of immigrants, and he told a dizzyingly mendacious story about immigrants: “In Colorado, they’re so bold that they’re taking over parts of the state. And you know, getting them out again is going to be a bloody story. They should never have been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them, nobody checked whether they were criminals, whether they were coming out of prisons? They’re pouring out of prisons. We have the worst criminals in all these countries, 168 registered so far, 168 countries. They’re in our country and they say if you come back, you’ll be executed, you’ll be killed immediately.”
Oh man. That’s a bunch of hot nonsense. It probably stems from a debunked, viral claim by the right that an Aurora apartment complex was overrun by Venezuelan gangs — that claim is also debunked. But Trump is inventing a violent fiction that includes the threat that his deportation effort will be “a bloody story.”
Trump’s hate speech: Trump knew Moms for Liberty was the perfect audience for his hate speech, so he let it flow.
Where are the headlines that scream, “Mentally disturbed old man spouts nonsense and threatens to forcibly deport immigrants”? Where are the feverish worries about whether Trump, who will be the oldest elected president if he wins, will be mentally fit to complete his term? Where are the calls for his resignation?
There is no such thing. Even though Trump’s quibbling has gotten significantly worse in recent months, he has never been questioned as critically as Biden.
News agencies whitewash Trump’s confused speeches “sensibly”
Many news outlets are whitewashing Trump’s increasingly insane comments. Parker Molloy of The New Republic recently wrote, “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements is not just bad journalism; it is a form of disinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By repeatedly portraying Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and instead providing cover for the increasingly erratic behavior of a former – and possibly future – president.”
That’s absolutely true. Concerns about Biden’s age were legitimate, if greatly exaggerated. Concerns about Trump’s age and the ease with which he concocts paranoid fantasies are somewhere between muted and nonexistent.
I ask you to watch Trump’s rallies and listen to him. His statements make no sense. He seems incapable of following any logical train of thought.
With just months to go before voters decide whether the 78-year-old should be president, the American public deserves an unvarnished picture of Trump. Full quotes, no matter how crazy they are.
Everything else – from journalists, experts or politicians – is a devastating lie.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
