32 Comments

The explanation that I have developed of late is that the media (as with the House) understands that Trump has exposed the rotting infrastructure of our nation. To place a spotlight on this reality would be to jeopardize their actual vs intended roles in society. For those in positions of privilege or power, there is little incentive to behave in ways that endanger these positions. I watched in amazement as Twitter exploded with praise over an NPR reporter who asked 2 questions that were never answered...this is the bare minimum for the WH press corps, and yet it's treated as an act of heroism because the president was 'mean' to her. The truth is that we no longer need a WH press corps in the time of Trump where he reveals his every thought and blatant indifference to human suffering via Tweet or Fox News appearance. Nothing at all is gained from their questions and their rote recitation of Trump's lies is clearly spreading propaganda that endangers life.

Expand full comment

Thank you! Finally someone is saying the emperor has no clothes! I worked for 36 years in the mental health field, but anyone can see Trump has a malignant narcissistic personality disorder, which is different from simple narcissism. It includes sadistic and sociopathic features. Nearly 60,000 mental health professionals signed a petition in 2017 arguing he is unfit to hold office. He is a real and present danger to the nation. The mainstream press has trouble even pointing out that he lies constantly. They prefer innocuous terms like "facts seem to indicate otherwise." Where is our Joseph N. Welch who publicly called out Joseph McCarthy? Trump is literally allowing people to die who may have been saved by a competent president and administration.

Expand full comment

Great article. And yes the incompetence argument does not work here. Any seventh grader could have provided a better response to this crisis. tRUMP-45's slow-walking of any possible Federal response is criminal mass homicide. He is a sociopath folks!

Expand full comment

Incompetence doesn't explain separating children and families, putting them in cages. It doesn't explain pretending to be a Christian, or a even conservative. It doesn't explain encouraging violence at rallies against liberals, or the press. It doesn't explain attacking our intelligence services, or making money off of the office.

It's not fear of the base, which the GOP has led around by the nose for decades. He started out with Bannon and the Mercers. The GOP leadership universally disliked him.

Then, one by one, they spent time alone with him. And they left bowing to him.

It's something something deeply ugly and illegal that is going on and it involves the entire GOP leadership. It is probably kompromat of criminal behavior, involving the most powerful people in the party. It was probably hacked by the Russians, and given to Trump. And he was given a choice to leverage it or be exposed for treason, under penalty of death, along with his kids.

Everything he has done has harmed America.

Every. thing. Cui bono?

Expand full comment

Great newsletter, Eric. I just subscribed. I’ve followed you on Twitter for years.

So, given that there’s definitely something creepy and disingenuous about the press’s refusal to go hard after corrupt Republicans like I assume they’d be going after a much-less-corrupt Democrat, doesn’t it have to be more than just a case of outmoded journalistic conventions that have been hacked and exploited by the GOP? There always seems to be an element of it in which the press is definitely in on the bad faith, don’t you think? Doesn’t it have to be more than just careerism, herd instinct or whatever on the part of many of these journalists? So what do you think it is really?

Expand full comment

Trump is a transnational organized criminal. Anyone who has read Craig Under's House of Trump/Putin or seen Active Measures doc knows this, yet media fails to go anywhere near the subject. Framing the following behavior through an organized crime lens makes its obvious that this was coordinated. Trump:

1. Gave 17.8 tons of med supplies we desperately need right now to China in early feb.

2. Then outbids states for med supplies.

3. Then allocates supplies based upon treatment by said states.

Combine this with the fact that, per below, areas containing swab and mask manufacturers were hit hardest by virus....

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

Expand full comment

Appreciate this article so much. Don't know if you can edit, but typo in 7th paragraph. "Trump be do" should be "Trump to do". Thanks for continuing to address this issue.

Expand full comment

Trump's psycopathic response to the estimate of dead resulting from the coronavirus, while no surprise, is a sick example of the complacency of the media. Facing 100,000 deaths would mean he had "done a good job" is pathological. The alternative to not doing things "perfectly" as Dr. Birx described it, could result in 2.2 million dead from this admininistration's incompetent response to the crisis. Where is the outrage?

In a normal world, Trump would have been removed by now. But the ideological Republicans inaction in the U.S. Senate, and the cabinet's refusal to vote Amendment 25, will result in untold thousands of deaths of innocent Americans. Where is the drum beat?

History will not be kind to this president and his enablers. Assuming anyone is left to read history.

Expand full comment

American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug. As you suggest, establishment media simply cannot comprehend the idea of the U.S. President being a narcissistic sociopath, or of the U.S. not being "the greatest country in the world". It's as insane to them as someone suggesting the Earth is a flat disk made of cheese. So they engage in motivated reasoning to provide an acceptable (to them) explanation of Trump's actions (or lack thereof). It's not that he's fine with the idea of millions of Americans dying! He's just lazy and short-sighted! Remember that the WSJ in particular is a Murdoch rag and basically the house organ of the U.S. plutocrat class. What they publish is a reflection of what the plutocrats are thinking. When they make suggestions about the administration, the intention is to get it out to people like Mnuchin who read the WSJ, so they can influence Trump.

Following on, nothing personal, but it's not true that "no other country" has leaders who are behaving similarly. Authoritarian states such as Turkmenistan, Russia, and North Korea have been not taking public health measures and trying to silence talk about the disease. Those leaders are the ones Trump admires and sees as models. Hungary's ruling party just used COVID as the pretext for formally ratifying their dictatorship. This is the direction the U.S. is headed in.

Expand full comment

Mr. Boehlert, you are so dead on, I have been saying this for 3 years now, and getting blank stares in return. Journalists have not done their job. Most of them anyway and the ones that have really tried can't get enough traction to make a real difference. Thank you, thank you thank you for your astute observation, it's about time somebody just came out and said it.

Expand full comment

Trump as well as the #CorruptComplicitGOP Legislators & Administrators that support & enable should be charged with: #Treason #CriminalNegligence & #CrimesAgainstHumanity. Republicans know Trump is a #RacistMegalomanicSociopath yet they REFUSE to hold #TraitorTrump accountable because they’re ALL PROFITING FINANCIALLY from Trump’s Criminal Acts.

Expand full comment

Taboo for you to say too, you fearless intrepid reporter you.

You go step by step through your piece alleging there's more to Trump's response than gross incompetence and negligence, pointing out reporters are unable to say out loud the 'unthinkable'... and then you end your piece without ever laying out what that unthinkable thing is.

You failed. You've left off the most important part. You've done exactly what you accuse other reporters of doing.

Shut up and away until you can find the stones to say straight up what needs to be said. Until you do you are an accessory to the problem.

Expand full comment

I have a theory;

Some anecdotes might be useful.

Trump habitually declines to pay his bills. When one contractor demanded to be paid the agreed price, Trump complained that the work was substandard, and then tried to recruit the contractor for new jobs while continuing to not pay for the previous work.

Donald Trump is reputed to be a pretty good golfer, but cheats anyway.

Trump is said to routinely ignore the advice of lawyers.

Except I don't think he ignores it.

There was a character in a novel I once read, who bragged about deliberately marching the soldiers under his command in the wrong direction.

It has been a very long time since Donald Trump has had to do anything himself, even for himself, if indeed he ever has.

Probably his entire life, every material need has been fulfilled before deprivation is even notional. Any need or want that isn't already anticipated is satisfied effortlessly by stating it. 

Can you imagine how boring that world is?

How do you affirm your agency when every action encounters zero resistance? How do you tell you are  pushing,  in a universe that always yields?

If you cannot fix a bicycle or write an essay or tune an engine, or do any of infinite number of things humans do to make their mark on the universe and affirm their status as creative beings through agency, there is another path.

Transgression for its own sake has the virtue of not requiring skill or disciple, while achieving the desired end, agency.

So, your lawyer tells you;

"When we get in front of the judge, no matter what, don't say; 'this'."

If you are Donald Trump, when you get in front of that judge, you say; "THIS THIS THIS!!!"

You do it to teach that lawyer who is the object and who is the subject, and to push against the universe, because finally, you have something to push against.

And when your advisors tell you that you, "have" to do A, B, and C to get the country through a pandemic, you stand up and do z, y, x.

The purpose of those advisors is not to guide his actions, it is to provide a new constraint to break.

Trump does it to affirm that he can. It is a deep validation for him. I think that if he could get the contractor above to do more work for him, and then not pay, again, it would be one of the great pleasures Donald Trump is capable of experiencing.

Trumps actions are simply a conscious expression of will to power.

That is what Trump does, and why he does it.

Expand full comment

Perhaps like he said were at war. He IS a war president. He is fighting FOR the country who supported his election. Who wants us on our knees also helped him where he is at. “Our” means not-America. Did we forget that his first meeting as president was with two foreign assets known in tge community, where no one was allowed. And when he met with Putin he refused to allow anyone in the meeting and the translator destroyed the transcripts. I mean is it that hard to figure out?

Expand full comment

Eric, you raise three questions/subjects (which may not be all we can ask); investment strategies, foreign influence, and election interference. Certainly the 500 billion allocated in the most recent stimulus bill provides leverage for targeted investment outcomes, but I tend to weight election interference as the leading candidate. This election is an exceptionally high stakes one for both parties as well as DJT, so I definitely see an incentive for blowing that process up. It appears that there are really no limits or inhibitions for the current Republican actors, so I find that a credible notion.

Having addressed that, I would still believe that there are multiple factors in play here. I'd be interested in an over/under from other commenters as well regarding probabilities.

Media behavior is indeed influenced by journalistic habits, but I see the realistic fear of intense bullying as well as corporate ownership (Republican, of course) as the two major controllers of content. In the end everything leads to *money* as the driver of Trump's behavior as well as media content and style. As I have noted elsewhere, if Wall Street was united in wanting Trump gone, he'd be gone and a media and PR campaign would effectively cover for the event. I'd definitely blame the Democrats for the outcome in any case.

Expand full comment

"It’s time for journalists to stop expressing shock regarding his erratic and heartless behavior..." This. Reacting shocked to every single time Trump does something incompetent/sociopathic/just plain weird also creates, like, weirdness fatigue so that at this point everybody's used to this type of behavior from a president and it's setting a precedent so that it becomes normal. Which is kind of terrifying.

https://melanietheconstantreader.substack.com/

Expand full comment