He has made outrageous commonplace on the trail. And he went for it again on the debate stage.
he tried to interrupt 25 times in the first 26 minutes of the debate, according to Vox—and say a lot of wild, perplexing and untrue things that may well overstimulate the national fact-checking economy
.. Trump came off as an overconfident blowhard, the mouthy guy at the office meeting who never knew much about the topic, didn’t try to get himself up to speed in advance, interrupts all his female colleagues anyway, then tells them to wait until he’s done when they try to get a word in edgewise.
.. he scored points portraying her as a tired politician who had stayed in the game too long. But he did seem a lot less comfortable and more agitated than he does at his rallies, as if mass adulation suits him better than one-on-one confrontation
.. there does not seem to be a lot of recognition of just how remarkable some of Trump’s comments were. Some of those comments have become familiar through repetition, like his suggestion that in America’s minority neighborhoods, you can’t walk down the street without getting shot, or his claim that American jobs are “leaving in bigger numbers than ever,” when in fact unemployment has been cut in half since 2010. But as I’ve discovered after attending Trump rallies, many of us have become so desensitized to his outrageousness that it no longer sounds as abnormal as it is.
.. Janet Yellen is widely considered one of the least political people in Washington, but it barely seemed to register last night when Trump accused her of keeping monetary policy loose for purely political reasons—even though the policy should presumably be even looser if the economy were really in the shambles Trump says it is.
.. Trump also tried to push the preposterous notion that Clinton was a fervent birther, but a less effective one than Trump
.. And when Clinton insinuated that maybe he still isn’t paying the federal taxes that support troops, schools and health care, he again took the bait, not to deny that he’s a free rider, but to scoff that his taxes would just be wasted if he did pay them.
That was a pretty damning non-denial.
.. When Clinton pointed out that it would be a disaster if the country declared bankruptcy the way Trump’s companies have, he said he had just taken advantage of the laws for his own benefit, because “that’s what I do.”
.. it’s hard to imagine another presidential candidate expecting brownie points for allowing blacks in his club.
.. He denied last night that he had ever called global warming a Chinese hoax, even though the evidence remains on his Twitter account. He also clung to his disproven claim that he always opposed the war in Iraq, citing Sean Hannity as his character witness. Trump just keeps blustering through, never admitting error, always assuming his confidence projects authority.
.. “Because I settled that lawsuit with no admission of guilt…It’s just one of those things.”
It’s one of those things that won’t make the news tomorrow, even though “no admission of guilt” at least partially captures the Trump approach to politics.
.. He’s going to keep saying things that normal politicians don’t. He won’t apologize for them. He’ll attack the media for even questioning them. And his supporters will continue to love him for them.
History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump
Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term. Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.”
.. Lead people to feel they have lost control of their country and destiny, people look for scapegoats, a charismatic leader captures the popular mood, and singles out that scapegoat. He talks in rhetoric that has no detail, and drums up anger and hatred.
.. 3. Most people don’t read, think, challenge, or hear opposing views
.. — a charismatic narcissist who feeds on the crowd to become ever stronger, creating a cult around himself. You can blame society, politicians, the media, for America getting to the point that it’s ready for Trump, but the bigger historical picture is that history generally plays out the same way each time someone like him becomes the boss.
.. Russia is a dictatorship with a charismatic leader using fear and passion to establish a cult around himself. Turkey is now there too. Hungary, Poland, Slovakia are heading that way, and across Europe more Trumps and Putins are waiting in the wings, in fact funded by Putin, waiting for the popular tide to turn their way.
.. With a fractured EU, and weakened NATO, Putin, facing an ongoing economic and social crisis in Russia, needs another foreign distraction around which to rally his people.
.. Trump and Putin supporters don’t read the Guardian, so writing there is just reassuring our friends.
The Debate Mismatch
Even late in the primary season Trump never shared the stage with fewer than three other rivals, and mostly he was on stage with many more. And during all that time he wasn’t really trying to debate those rivals; as James Fallows writes, he would go “into a kind of hibernation” whenever the conversation turned remotely substantive, and emerge to hurl insults and declaim his promises of greatness restored.
How to Cover a Charlatan Like Trump
If a known con artist peddles a potion that he claims will make people lose 25 pounds and enjoy a better sex life, we don’t just quote the man and a critic; we find ways to signal to readers that he’s a fraud. Why should it be different when the con man runs for president?
.. In watching the campaign coverage this year, I’ve sometimes had the same distressing feeling I felt in the run-up to the war in Iraq — that we in the media were greasing the skids to a bad outcome for our country. In the debate about invading Iraq, news organizations scrupulously quoted each side but didn’t adequately signal what was obvious to anyone reporting in the region: that we would be welcomed in Iraq not with flowers but with bombs. In our effort to avoid partisanship, we let our country down.
.. When some in cable TV cover Trump endlessly without sufficiently fact-checking his statements or noting how extreme his positions are, because he is great for ratings and makes money for media companies, we are again failing the country.
.. Skeptics note that more rigorous coverage might not make a difference; Only 6 percent of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in the press. After all, few facts are clearer than that President Obama was born in the United States, yet only 62 percent of American voters say he was born here.
.. In the early 1950s, journalists were also faced with how to cover a manipulative demagogue — Senator Joe McCarthy — and traditional evenhandedness wasn’t serving the public interest. We honor Edward R. Murrow for breaking with journalistic convention and standing up to McCarthy, saying: “This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent.”
.. to expose charlatans is not partisanship, but simply good journalism.