Can we all just agree that Donald Trump is the absolute worst?
Haha. I kid. Not about him being the worst. He is trash. But I know that we cannot all agree on this fact. And that definitely makes me fearful for the future of this country.
I have been trying, for my mental health and well-being, to not breathlessly follow political coverage. I mean, I can’t avoid it because I do care deeply about who gets elected and the Republican Party does not share any of my values and morals. Granted, the Republican lurch to the right has accelerated since 2015 when Trump rode down his golden escalator, but Republicans have shown consistently since the 1980s that fascism is A-OK with them.
So it is with dismay that I have witnessed how the media has been covering this race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Granted, the coverage was bad before President Joe Biden dropped out, but it has gotten considerably worse. It’s pretty clear that the press hates Harris and are doing everything in their power to present Trump as a palatable candidate. The media puts every batshit crazy thing he says through a filter to make it seem reasonable. Harris, on the other hand, has the opposite problem. She’ll say something totally fucking reasonable and the press will respond in a way that makes no rational sense.
Take this recent exchange between journalist Dana Bash and Harris on CNN.
Bash asks Harris about Trump’s comment that Harris had recently “turned Black,” apparently expecting some kind of response to this absolutely racist display on the part of the disgraced former president.
Harris responded with, “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.”
In other words, “I am not going to dignify that racist man’s bullshit with a response.”
Politico then posts a story with the headline, “Harris evades questions about her identity.”
Apparently, someone at Politico was like, “Uh, that seems to be a really bad take.” And so they pulled down that headline and replaced it with, “Harris sidesteps the spotlight when it comes to her identity.”
What in the ever-loving fuck is going on here?
With this display of corporate media foolery rattling around in my brain, I then saw a TikTok created by journalist Jamelle Bouie about Trump’s recent sit down with Moms for Liberty (which would more accurately be called Moms Against Trans Kids) in which Trump displayed a total disconnect with reality.
Bouie plays a clip. “The transgender thing is incredible,” Trump says. “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child. And many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say, ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’”
Bouie rightfully calls this “deranged,” saying that “it has no relationship to reality whatsoever.”
This makes me think of the times Trump has claimed that there are places in the United States where abortion is legal right up to birth at 9 months. Trump says that they just kill the baby right there after it’s been born.
That is not true. There is nowhere such a thing is legal. It is pretend.
The same goes for this claim about trans students. First and foremost, if a child goes to school and doesn’t come home for “a few days,” that would be a really big deal. That is not a thing that happens. I mean if my kid didn’t come home from school, that would be a “call 911” situation.
So the idea that any kid goes off to school without coming home for days and then they come home with an operation to apparently make them transgender is not connected to any reality whatsoever. I mean, I have a kid who needs an Epi-pen and I’ve had to fill out paperwork signed by his doctor yearly since he was in Kindergarten to ensure that if he has an allergy attack at school, he’ll have access to this life-saving intervention. Nobody is doing “operations” on kids at schools.
Bouie goes on to say that Trump is “clearly cognitively impaired” and wonders why this isn’t a major news story. After all, Biden’s cognitive health was the subject of headlines every five minutes. But now that Biden’s out of the race, Trump just gets a pass. He literally can say whatever he wants and it’s fine.
But it’s not fine. Trump is a dangerous man. His followers are dangerous people. We already saw how incapable he is at doing the job of President and we’ve already seen to what lengths his followers will go to keep him in power.
I mean, seriously, there is no planet in which a second Trump presidency goes BETTER. We have been warned. By Trump himself. Let’s not fuck this up.