A few weeks ago, when Crikey interviewed Masha Gessen, the writer and assiduous chronicler of (among other things) the Trump era in US politics said they were worried the US media was falling into all the same traps as they did in 2016.
Gessen cited a recent experience at a conference at Columbia Journalism School where the editors of various major US publications were asked how they would approach a second Trump presidency. “And they all had a version of a response that was like, ‘Oh, we just have to do our jobs. We know what journalism is. Just say what’s out there. Just be objective.’”
But one cannot report on Trump’s manner of speech using the traditional tools of journalism and remain objective — take the examples listed by The New Republic media writer Parker Molloy, who notes that the following Trump post:
I have reached an agreement with the Radical Left Democrats for a Debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. It will be Broadcast Live on ABC FAKE NEWS, by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business, on Tuesday, September 10th, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden. The Debate will be ‘stand up,’ and Candidates cannot bring notes, or ‘cheat sheets.’ We have also been given assurance by ABC that this will be a ‘fair and equitable’ Debate, and that neither side will be given the questions in advance (No Donna Brazile!). Harris would not agree to the FoxNews Debate on September 4th, but that date will be held open in case she changes her mind or, Flip Flops, as she has done on every single one of her long held and cherished policy beliefs. A possible third Debate, which would go to NBC FAKE NEWS, has not been agreed to by the Radical Left. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Was summarised by CNN in the following terms:
Former president Donald Trump on Tuesday announced he has ‘reached an agreement’ to participate in a September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that ‘the rules will be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone.’
Another example — attempting to find footage of Trump appearing to talk as though his opponent was still Joe Biden, rather than Kamala Harris, will get you several pages of results referring to Joe Biden calling Harris “vice president Trump” shortly before he stood down.
Molloy calls the process “sanewashing”, which is probably the only way to get the word “sane” into coverage of the US election in 2024.
For example: the evangelical, ultra-MAGA Republican North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson — who has referred to the LGBTQIA+ community as “filth” — allegedly bought “hundreds” of bootleg porn videos and went to a porn shop nearly every day of the week in the ’90s and early 2000s, according to a recent report.
Louis Money, a former employee of the store, who told the press that Robinson should “be judged on everything else, but he should not be judged for this” quipped “I know he might have problems with gay people, but I don’t think he has problems with lesbians.” Money’s band even did a song about the saga, called “The Lt. Governor Owes Me Money”.
That was only just weird enough to make our list.
Walz comes tumbling down
The Trump campaign and its online supporters have been revelling in the news that various members of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s extended family are Trump backers, after a picture of the “Nebraska Walz’s (sic) for Trump” was circulated by various right-wing figures; including Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, Jack Posobiec and the former president himself.
While Posobiec’s claim that Walz’s “entire family” has turned on him is an exaggeration — this lot are distant cousins — Trump supporters apparently had a great get in Walz’s own brother Jeff, whose Facebook post saying there were “stories (he) could tell” and that his brother wasn’t “the type of character you want making decisions about your future”, was picked up in the media. NewsNation called him to clarify what those stories were, and… brace yourself:
Nobody wanted to sit with him, because he had car sickness and would always throw up on us, that sort of thing. There’s really nothing else hidden behind there. People are assuming something else. There’s other stories like that, but I think that probably gives you the gist of it.
No coming back from that, I think we can all agree.
Basic Tenet
The spectre of Russian interference in US elections, so dominant in the early years of the Trump presidency, has returned. A 32-page federal indictment, unsealed by the US District Court of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday, has alleged that a cadre of online right-wing personalities including Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Sky News favourite Lauren Southern have all become unwitting agents of Russian information warfare.
The Department of Justice is alleging that since its founding in 2022, Tenet, the right-wing media company that has previously employed all of the above, served as a front for Russian agents to spread Russian state-directed content.
The allegation is that a pair of employees of Russia’s state-owned media company RT — Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva — used shell companies in the Middle East and Africa to secretly pour nearly $10 million into Tenet between October 2023 and August 2024, while directing it to spread anti-US and anti-Ukraine messaging.
In one particularly troubling instance, Afanasyeva is alleged to have pressured one of Tenet’s founders regarding coverage of the bombing in Moscow in March, for which ISIS claimed responsibility. Afanasyeva wanted to “focus on the Ukraine/US angle” and claim that “mainstream media spread fake news that ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack yet ISIS itself never made such statements” while saying it was “suspicious” that the attackers had fled toward the Ukrainian border.
The commentators themselves have insisted they had no knowledge of Russian involvement, claiming they have been “deceived“. As never-Trump conservative writer Christian Vanderbrouk put it, there’s a decent chunk of irony in seeing commentators who portray themselves as uniquely sensitive to psyops and conspiracies become so credulous when “a mysterious foreigner offers them fantastic amounts of money for practically nothing”.
