Behold Donald Trump's Easter morning message of redemption and grace to the American people:
There's an ancient online controversy about how best to respond to manufactured outrage like this. One camp says we should ignore it. The folks who produce this stuff just want attention, so by responding we're taking the bait. The other camp says that it's not enough for only political junkies to see this stuff. The broad public needs to see it in its raw form, and by burying it we let the lunatic right off the hook.
I've gone back and forth about this, but these days I lean toward engaging with it. An awful lot of non-MAGA voters seem to believe that Trump has moderated over the past few years, which just isn't true. Not in policy and not in rhetoric. It's hard to get people excited about policy, but what if Trump's tirades were read every day on the evening news? Would swing voters start to get the message?
More generally, lefty Twitter has lately been discussing the state of conservative opinion chatterers. The current shape of things is that mainstream TV and print outlets feature plenty of "Never Trump" Republicans but not many MAGA Republicans. But MAGA Republicans represent a big chunk of the country. Shouldn't they be represented?
The problem with this is obvious: mainstream outlets don't want people who are going to yell and scream and spout endless lies. They want sober, intelligent analysts. But it's hard to find MAGA partisans who fit this description.
Is it time to give up on this? Maybe middle America needs to be exposed to raw, violent, dimwitted MAGA sewage, if that represents the real world. Or would this just give the lunatics the attention they crave?
It's an endless debate and there's still no good answer.
They still think they're pwning libs with that stuff. Personally it hasn't upset me in several years. But I guess they won't comprehend that, maybe even if I rub their faces in it. They just don't seem to get a lot.
But independents and less-committed Dems might pick up on it.
I am 1000% on board with showing this idiocy, but with the following caveat: do *not* expose it in the way mainstream TV news typically does, which is by paraphrasing it something like this: "former president trump sent out an Easter message claiming that he is being unfairly targeted by politically motivated prosecutors, but also wishing them a happy Easter."
This would be awful, bordering on criminal!
Instead, the talking head should read the message verbatim, including SHOUTING it, since it is in all caps, without taking a breath until the end of the first sentence (note that the entire message except the last 3 words consists of one sentence!)
That would (1) be accurate reporting, and (2) convey the full magnitude of trump's deranged mind.
Really. Seriously. If they don't do that, they are failing in their mission.
👍👍👍👍👍
A+
I don't think ignoring it helps.
How you address it matters a great deal.
No drama approaches work best; I think, but the urge to bully back is powerful. And it often shocks and surprises them and dislodges their most blatantly stupid arguments.
If you broadcast it, you have to mock it and diminish it as the ironic rantings of an idiotic clown, proof that he's gone crazy.
[fade in music, Sound of Silence]
🎶 "Hello darkness, my old friend..."
Cue text: "Today, Donald Trump went off on a delirious, incoherent rant, yet again."
Voice over with Trump ranting.
+1
Something the Press could never do (they'd lose clicks and views) and so the answer is elementary why it doesn't happen.
For your (et al's) consideration:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQLWs0PMe9JE7dAM97EUdI5jqhpotyIVDle0cRUNn9coFG8XfT69g44MxcGdICy9KyZDvAHzk6nPWmN/pub
Nice work!
You don't know it's sewage until you smell it, so if we can't open eyes across America we need to make sure all Trump's vileness is always upwind of most of our fellow citizens.
This I think is Biden's only shot at winning. Make sure that the American people are fully exposed to Trump's outrageous statements and behavior. Then let the chips fall where they may.
I agree - cover it but not as the outrage of the day that needs a response. Instead give it the Al Gore treatment (though he was treated unfairly, in Trump's case it's totally justified). Each stupid offensive rant should be ridiculed, as in 'can you believe the shallow hateful thing this stupid man child said today?'
I think it is worth calling out.
Making the on-the-edge suburbanite Trump supporter uncomfortable is a good thing. Make sure their co-workers see what a vicious loon Don is.
They'll whine about it. That's how you know if it works.
That tweet by Trump would be an absolutely brilliant piece of work if intentionally written as a parody about an obviously unwell and unhinged candidate.
As it now stands, it can be read verbatim as comedy gold. It can be seamlessly transplanted directly into a hysterical Saturday Night Live sketch without changing a word. The “Happy Easter” at the end is just the icing on the cake: it’s comedic genius.
FWIW: I once attended a Lewis Black standup show in which he adopted the approach I describe above. A large part of his act that night was simply reading Trump tweets. And my god they were funny. Black brought down the house when he ended with the “stable genius” tweet (an enduring classic).
And then he asked one of the best questions I’ve heard any comedian ask during the Trump era. Having not even written much of the material (Trump tweets) that the audience had enjoyed so much, Black asked:
“What exactly is my job now?”
His reading was the act. I bet he could get the laughs with banal tweets as well. But I get your point and his - part of our politics has turned into entertainment, almost gladiatorial.
Another point is that he was there, in the flesh. Part of the problem with social network communication is that lack of flesh. We have to mark some of our comments /s because it doesn't come across without a face behind it. The mocking of him needs the flesh, imo. Without people pointing and guffawing (all he really gets is adulation and decision through text, which he can sort), he just blithely shuffles along to his next rally, still free, still not having paid up, still defying the gag order, still running a campaign such as it is.
You need to compare and contrast...
Biden released his Easter message today and asked for peace in the world....
Trump went on an unhinged rant...
Note: it's very easy to find Trump's tantrum, and maybe a blurb about Trans Day falling Easter. But Biden's Easter statement??? Basically ignored.
fyi
https://www.salon.com/2024/03/31/never-forget-unloads-on-cowards-and-weaklings-in-easter-sunday-meltdown/?in_brief=true
The problem with exposure is that you normalize the behavior and people start to accept it as OK. This is exactly how we got to this current state of incivillity.
Well, only one sentence contains lies. The second is filled with disingenuousness (Happy Easter).
t-Rump and his ilk have made it "acceptable" to be mean, boorish, disrespectful, liars, fabricators, etc. He has given fools permission to be absolute idiots and they relish in it. This country is hitting the bottom of the barrel.
I think anything to do with or about t-Rump should be in the classified section of the paper or below obits. Thank heavens I don't read a real newspaper but I despise how he hits the top of the news.
Absolutely expose it, but DON'T normalize it in the process. DON'T cover it as "he said, he said -- on the one hand, on the other hand." DON'T clean it up -- paraphrase, cherry-pick the coherent parts, or edit out the incoherent ones. And DO subject it to fact-based contextual reporting. "He lied regularly: much of what he said was provably false, and he has regularly repeated these things even when they have been exposed as false. His delivery stumbled constantly, verging at times on incoherence: he garbled many words, no subject occupied his remarks for more than 10-15 seconds (and often less), and he routinely veered off in unpredictable directions." Consider what would be written if Biden behaved the same, and write it.
re: "fact based contextual reporting" I agree with this as you have presented it in your example, but the way the media typically does that is problematic in the extreme. They always translate it into coherent english, clean it up so the reader knows what talking-point he is trying to invoke and then present a mealy-mouthed "others disagree" kind of rebuttal. Disgraceful.
Precisely my point in the comment I just entered.
bbleh, your last sentence nails it.
To do its job correctly (as it is taught academically and philosophically), the Industry known as the Press must be prepared to lose money. F A T C H A N C E.
Which is why I feel blessed to live in a country with an effective public broadcasting network (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), despite the Tories' persistent efforts over the decades to dismantle it (cheered on by Rupert Murdoch).
One has to admire the message discipline of the Trump Republican propaganda network. It selects a story to use to bash Democrats and wrings every last drop out of it for two or three days, then switches to a new one before the base gets bored. But each story can be summed up in a line or two, so it becomes an easily-remembered entry in the ever-growing My Big Book of DemonRat Scandals and Atrocities.
Last week, for example, the story was 'Biden Grubs for Donations at City Hall While President Trump Comforts Grieving Family of Officer Slain by Maniac on Bail'. This weekend, it's 'Biden Bans Christ from Easter but Proclaims Sunday Transgender Day'.
Democrats could do the same kind of thing with Trump's tweets if they got their act together. But they don't, leaving the media free simply to report on them as if they were ordinary political discourse.
It's run like a TV series that has no season story arc. Each episode is a single story, then they move on to the next story. The episodes don't build on each other to form a through narrative.
Why do our Paleolithic ancestors have descendants? Because they paid attention to saber toothed tigers. Translation: this is another vote for ...
Of course we have to pay attention, but attention is a tool we have to know how to use and not misuse.
I'm sure if they ignore it, it will just go away by itself.
If I were running Biden's campaign, I'd make sure everyone saw this stuff constantly. Biden's snark response to Trump "winning" his club's golf tournament would be the basic model, and it would be so fun. So, for instance, grab this latest Truth Social post and repost it on Twitter with a comment to tbe effect of, "It is wonderful to see the former president basking in the glory of the risen Christ on this holiest of days! His personalized scripture is for sale [here] for the low low price of $59.99." Have commercials ready to go featuring the Comstock Act and footage of his comments about punishing women for having an abortion. Run ads of him praising the Jan 6 rioters as great patriots and political prisoners, while playing the most graphic footage of the riot on the screen while he speaks. Blanket the country with every dumbass thing he says, in his own words. Resist the temptation to comment yourself EXCEPT for gentle mockery, like the above. Our side always screws this stuff up by releasing hectoring statements that put people off when we really should either be laughing at this asshole or simply broadcasting his stupidity relatively unfiltered. Persuadable voters generally want nothing to do with him when he is the story, so MAKE SURE he is the story!
1+
If I were running Biden's campaign, I'd make sure everyone saw this stuff constantly.
No you wouldn't, because that's not anywhere near feasible. The US electorate is divvied up a thousands way to Sunday in terms of how it receives information. It's not physically possible to "make sure" remotely near "everyone" gets any particular political messaging.
Maybe it would indeed be beneficial to the Biden campaign if a large number of persuadable voters were exposed to this kind of Trumpian inanity. And if so, you've got to try your best (no argument here). But the results of such an effort are near certain to fall very short of getting the information in question to "everyone" you need to reach. That's just political reality in 2024.
Plus, you don't need everyone. The election will be decided by a couple hundred thousand voters in swing states. It's an exercise in micro targeting.
Exactly. You need to reach 2-3% of the electorate residing in five or six states.
Each time there is an authored-by-Trump post*, it should be spammed out to the world. Via email, text message, or on marquee displays. I'm sure a bot could be developed to accomplish that task.
* not his reposts or links to RW media (Fox, Breitbart, justthenews, Daily Caller, Washington Times, Washington Examiner, New York Sun, Newsmax, ...)
Or maybe there could be a widely used social media site where Trump could be encouraged to post his rants. What could we call it? Maybe something that evokes the sounds of chattering birds?
How do you get normal people to read such a crazy rant?
Getting them out is good, no need to comment, they speak for themselves.
But again, will normal people read them?
Pingback: Donald Trump celebrates Easter with yet another vicious rant - Kevin Drum | Bible Prophecy In The Daily Headlines
The old aphorism about pig wrestling comes to mind.
+100
I get so MAD at ----for brains. All I can say is: LOCK HIM UP !!!
Does anyone else picture Bobby Moynihan’s old SNL character “drunk uncle” when reading this deranged spittle?
First, thank you Mr. Drum for the peek inside a rarefied world. Apparently the lefty twiitersphere needs to get a job. Any job, that doesn't involve arguing angels heads of pins. Not sure which is worse, the psychotic rightist sewage or the endless picking through this fecal matter by people who should know better.
As far as Mr. Trump, Donnie boy could not be delivering a more perfectly wrapped package of delusional idiocy obvious to even the most disinterested observer. He has fully realized his destiny of retarded self parody. The best thing that could happen is for SNL and like minded others to STFU and let the monkey throw his scat as his brain melts under the stress. So: show the rant in all its glory. Plaster it everywhere. Let it speak for itself. Stop the endless self-serving analysis or wry, pseudo-ironic shade throwing (that's you, Rachel Maddow). Trump's schtick has become patently ridiculous on its face. Stop engaging with it as an exercise in self importance or topic of "very serious discussion." Trump is a delusional retarded idiot. Treat him as such.
The problem is that the NYT would engage by reporting it thusly:
Former President Trump angrily denounced prosecutors Fani Willis, Jack Smith, and Alvin Bragg on Truth Social arguing that the cases against him are politically motivated.
Though I see that in fact the NYT didn't engage with this one instead doing another "White Christian Supremacists still love Trump" piece without, of course, noticing the whiteness or the desire for supremacy.
Reportedly AI can now recreate a voice with a 15 second sample. Much more than that from Trump, so why not just AI the entire tweet and air it for unmitigated Queeg-like craziness?
That or have Michael Shannon deliver it.
https://youtu.be/dngOH9G4UPw?si=MANeD-it1otF9cGc
The reason Trump and his people aren't popular in NYC is because they sound like the people you move to the next car in the subway to avoid.