for all of his repeated claims that he would be the president of everybody, Donald Trump doubled down with his base, repeating all of right-wing radio’s talking points: emails, conspiracy theories, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.
.. The many television commentators, who have served us so badly throughout this election season, will judge him on these points and not on his constant lies, shameless distortions (“I was against the war in Iraq”), messianic pretensions (“Captain Khan would be alive today if I’d been president”)
.. Perhaps the worst part was that, during the warmest fall in recorded history, there was not a single question on climate change, and only one on energy, at the very end of the debate. Just the same old trivia that has dominated the last year and a half of this interminable campaign. We, the media, have failed the country in this election.
The Death of ‘He Said, She Said’ Journalism
What made it extraordinary was the way the Times covered it.
.. Traditionally, when a political candidate assembles facts so as to aggrandize himself and belittle his opponent, “objective” journalists like those at the Times respond with a “he said, she said” story.
.. “Bush and Cheney Talk Strongly of Qaeda Links With Hussein,” noted a Timesheadline on June 18, 2004. Why were Bush and Cheney raising the subject? Because the day before, the 9/11 Commission had reported that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda did not have a “collaborative relationship.” Nonetheless, the Times reported Bush’s claims and Kerry’s response as equally valid. Bush himself had helped create the Commission to provide an authoritative, nonpartisan account of the events leading up to 9/11. Yet the Times refused to grant its view any more weight than Bush’s own. It refused to render any judgment about what was true.
.. But the Times, once a champion practitioner of the “he said, she said” campaign story, discarded it with astonishing bluntness. The Times responded to Trump’s press conference by running a “News Analysis,” a genre that gives reporters more freedom to explain a story’s significance.
.. Its headline read, “Trump Gives Up a Lie But Refuses to Repent.” Not “falsehood,” which leaves open the possibility that Trump was merely mistaken, but “lie,” which suggests, accurately, that Trump had every reason to know that what he was saying about Obama’s citizenship was false.
.. A certain etiquette has long governed the relationship between presidential candidates and the elite media. Candidates stretch the truth, but try not to be too blatant about it. Candidates appeal to bigotry, but subtly. In turn, journalists respond with a delicacy of their own. They quote partisans rather than saying things in their own words. They use euphemisms like “polarizing” and “incendiary,” instead of “racist” and “demagogic.”
.. He has so brazenly lied, so nakedly appealed to bigotry, and so frontally challenged the rule of law that he has made the elite media’s decorum absurd. He’s turned highbrow journalists into referees in a World Wrestling Entertainment match.
.. Since Trump has largely stopped giving interviews to anyone except campaign sycophants and celebrity lightweights, the debates may serve as his last encounter with actual journalists. Those journalists—Lester Holt, Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper and Chris Wallace—must be prepared to confront Trump in ways they’ve never confronted a candidate before. The more audaciously he lies, the more audaciously they must tell the truth.
Donald Trump’s Big Lies at the Commander-In-Chief Forum
Contrary to some accounts, neither Hitler nor his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, took credit for successfully using what the French refer to as le grand mensonge: the Nazi leaders always claimed they were telling the truth. In Hitler’s mind, it was the Jews of Vienna who spread the original Big Lie—about Germany’s conduct in the First World War. Goebbels later blamed the English, saying they “follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it.”
.. On September 11, 2002, he appeared on “The Howard Stern Show,” where the host asked him if he was “for invading Iraq.” Trump replied, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” This wasn’t the most fulsome of endorsements, it is true. But it clearly indicated that Trump backed sending in troops to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
.. Depending on how charitable one feels, Trump’s blatant disregard for the factual record could be described as chutzpah, self-delusion, or the default reaction of someone to whom lying has become, in the words of his ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, “second nature.”
.. by his demanding standards, as a medium lie, rather than a big one. It is the sort of thing he throws out every so often—a bit like his claims that President Obama founded isis, or that “thousands and thousands” of people in Jersey City cheered the collapse of the Twin Towers. Trump must know such things didn’t happen. But, in his world, the truth’s value is instrumental, rather than intrinsic. “He lied strategically,” Schwartz told Mayer. “He had a complete lack of conscience about it.”
.. When he utters some outrageous falsehood, as he does almost every day, the reaction in some quarters is that it is just Trump being Trump. He’s the P. T. Barnum of the modern age, and he’s been telling stretchers for decades. What else can you expect?
The challenge in Mosul won’t be to defeat the Islamic State. It will be what comes after.
There is no question that the Islamic State will be defeated in Mosul; the real question is what comes afterward. Can the post-Islamic State effort resolve the squabbling likely to arise over numerous issues and bring lasting stability to one of Iraq’s most diverse and challenging provinces? Failure to do so could lead to ISIS 3.0.
.. The challenge of Mosul and Nineveh is the considerable number of ethnic groups, religious sects, tribes and other elements that make up the province. Ultimately, we ensured that the provincial council included representatives of every district in Nineveh, of every major religion (Sunni, Shiite, Christian, Shabak), of each ethnic group (Arabs, Kurds, Yazidis, Turkmen), of every additional major societal element (Mosul University academics, businessmen, retired generals) and of each major tribe not already sufficiently represented... Thus, the most significant challenge in Mosul will not be to defeat the Islamic State; rather, it will be the task we faced there in 2003: to ensure post-conflict security, reconstruction and, above all, governance that is representative of and responsive to the people. All of this will have to be pursued largely by Iraqis, of different allegiances, without the kinds of forces, resources and authorities that we had... Leaders of the various Iraqi elements will likely have their own militias .... it was undone by an inability to get Iraqi authorities in Baghdad to approve initiatives we pursued in reconciliation with former Baath Party members cast out of work by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s de-Baathification decree and in providing work for the tens of thousands of Iraq soldiers also rendered unemployed by the authority... Importantly, Shiite militias should play no role in post-Islamic State security and governance.