in general, there’s a lack of media coverage of comments like this outside of the partisan blogs–which is absurd to me, since this is the most explicitly fascist Trump has been. the debate over whether he is one is basically over in my view.
At this point, the goal is to normalize the rhetoric. He’s been very effective at being able to downplay things by having said them for years. We know his playbook; he’s continuing to follow it.
CNN is covering it this evening, along with some of his other recent announcements (which amount to rounding up his political enemies & millions more besides), but infuriatingly still downplaying what his vision entails, nor how popular that is with Republican voters.
Trump’s latest comments about “vermin,” “retribution,” “day-one dictator,” and “poisoning the blood” have hit Associated Press, NPR, Reuters, and BBC, who have responded matter-of-factly by comparing to it to the rhetoric of Nazis and Mussolini. Mein Kampf got name-dropped more than once.
I am also seeing coverage from CNN, ABC, USNews, USAToday, and NBCNews.
Now, which media you consider mainstream, and what kind of coverage you consider adequate can change the answer. I don’t know what they’re saying on TV, for example. But when even Forbes runs a front-page article which compares Trump’s rhetoric to Hitler’s in the first paragraph, I’d say there’s no lack of mainstream coverage, and they’re not dancing around the issue anymore.
The warning signs were there in 2008 and Trump saw that undercurrent. He’s leaning full force, this is undeniably now mask off with the rhetoric.
He’s also consistently far and away leading the Republican primary polling, even if he was convicted. The general election data isn’t a slam dunk for democracy either.
Primary polling outside of exit polls is nonsense. How are you going to collect unbiased sample when Trump voters are some of the loudest and most obnoxious people on the planet? You can’t put a filter on their enthusiasm because it’s consistently and directly correlated with their voting habits. So how do you control for enthusiasm bias in getting respondent participation while targeting the information the enthusiasm is related to?
You don’t. You can’t. You ignore it and publish bullshit.
Reason #1405492 why Trump is a fascist.
Trump is a tumor.
Hey everyone! Let’s all be surprised that a fascist says fascist things! And while we’re at it, let’s all pretend that hes never said anything like this before!
