Donald Trump is the ultimate shyster. The electoral college strategy that he stumbled into worked out for many reasons on all sides that does not bear reevaluating. Suffice it to say, it can work again if we forget a definition of insanity, doing things the same and expecting a different result.
The media gave Trump a pass early on by not explicitly calling him a racist. It seems that his racist tweet hit a nerve with the mainstream media.
Recently “The Beat DC” Co-Founder and Managing Editor Tiffany Cross appeared on MSNBC and mocked the media for taking as long as they did to explicitly call him out.
“This is the first time that the media have been so bold to say the President made racist comments,” Cross said. “Oh, not comments of racial undertones, not things that some people found racist.”
And she continued.
“I think had we call a thing a thing two years ago when this President kicked off his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers,” Cross said, “Had we called a thing a thing in 2011 when he talked about Obama being a birther. Had we called a thing a thing decades ago when he called for the murder of the Central Park Five, the now exonerated five.”
In effect, had we made Trump’s behavior one that made him persona non grata on TV or elsewhere, the normalization that he has brought to overt racism would be less vogue.
Even as the media are being more explicit in calling out the President for his overt racism, an inkling still remains to create a whataboutism and false equivalence. It is like they feel a need to balance the deserved harshness on the president with a sacrificial innocent being. Recently, MSNBC Pundit Zerlina Maxwell had to check Steve Kornacki on a panel where he attempted to create a false equivalence between Congresswoman Ilhan Omar & The Squad and the President.
When addressing Zerlina Maxwell, Steve Kornacki attempted, in a very subtle manner, to create a false equivalence between the President’s personal attack and pettiness with Ilhan Omar’s statements. Maxwell did not allow the slight to get very far.
“What did she say that was a personal attack on the President,” Zerlina Maxwell asked. “I don’t see impeachment, just to be clear, as a personal attack on the President. That is their constitutional obligation to hold this administration accountable for perceived crimes which were outlined in the Mueller Report. She didn’t come out and call the president names. … None of them attacked the President personally. … None of them called out his patriotism. What I saw today was four patriots come out and represent the country.”
The normalization of Trump has already occurred. That is why no amount of negative news has been effective in moving his polls substantially. In fact, his attack on the four Congresswomen of color, the Squad resulted in a bump in his poll among Republicans.
As the election nears, many will be tempted to go after the President. That would be futile. Those who hate the president hate him. Those who love him love him. Getting down in the gutter with Trump is at best a neutral endeavor. But that is what the mainstream media want for sensationalism.
So what are Progressives to do? We know that Trump’s poll numbers won’t bulge by negative revelations or negative acts on his part. By the same token, we know the media want Progressives to comment on every childish tweet or utterance he gives. We change the narrative. We give a quick answer about the president’s behavior and then we immediately pivot to the jobs that will get created by the Progressive policies we will pass when elected.
Congresswoman Katie Porter illustrated recently how one grabs the narrative irrespective of the subject.
- She immediately answered the question with just a few words.
- She then went on the attack pointing out the opponent’s lie
- She then took over the narrative to put the message she wanted to place in the ethos. Ultimately specify how she will get the people’s work done to overcome the administration’s failures.
While the president fixates on race, we admonish his stance and immediately pivot to what American get when they elect us. We do not ignore the battle. We simply do not allow it to consume the space. We ensure space remains for Americans to see the failures and the potential solutions. Even racists want jobs and more.
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