Normalising Trump is killing the media's credibility

Mainstream news media are failing to defend American democracy by constantly working to normalise President Trump’s nothing-like-normal behaviour.

Not only is this failure assisting Trump to maintain his power and to wreak global havoc, but it’s also sending news audiences to alternative sources where Trump is called out for the dangerous, incompetent, unhinged, cruel President he is.

Mainstream journalists constantly fail to tell the truth about Trump. They fail to call out his lies. They fail to call out his organised White-supremacy-racism and gift him a false equivalency with his Democratic opposition. As I’ve written before, the mainstream media lets Trump play them like a violin, sane-washing him rather than describing him as the incompetent monster he clearly is.

What all of these failures amount to is that mainstream news media work hard to normalise Trump. This cowardly, “this is fine” normalising makes Trump’s chaos appear to be structured, ordered, appropriate and, most importantly, legitimate, when it is none of these things.

As one of the audience members who is fed up with this normalising, I have increasingly found myself seeking out alternative media sources which are willing to shout from the rooftops that Trump is ANYTHING BUT NORMAL! Because any other coverage of Trump is not just wholly inadequate, it misrepresents reality.

A classic example of this dangerous mainstream media fantasy-normalising about Trump is this piece to camera by New York Times White House Correspondent Maggie Haberman.

In this piece, Haberman relates the story of how, despite senior administration officials not being aware of any new intelligence suggesting Iran was “racing toward building a bomb”, Israel’s action “forced Trump’s thinking” and he decided to get involved in a strike on Iran.

She then goes on to say that while these strikes were being planned, Trump started “posting”. In the video, she shows examples of this posting with screen prints of Trump’s incoherent ranting on Truth Social, describing the posts as threatening Iran (he actually caused panic by urging millions of Iranians to leave Tehran) and praising Israel.

Alongside this posting, Haberman says Trump told reporters he might strike Iran, he might not, he might change his mind at the last minute and includes a clip of Trump saying, “I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do”.

In a deadpan, monotonic voice, like this was a totally everyday state of affairs, Haberman says that this public indecision by Trump was “concerning” for the “people inside the Pentagon” who were tasked with carrying out the Iran strikes because Trump was “alerting Iran to what the U.S. was up to”. They were so concerned, she reports, that they ran a decoy operation to try to gain as much cover for the real operation as possible.

Once the strikes had occurred, again, Haberman describes Trump announcing the strikes via a post on Truth Social like it was fine and dandy. She then went on to say that Iran responded to the strikes by publicly acknowledging that they now felt even less willing to trust Western countries at the negotiation table — a negotiation to remove the threat of Iran’s nuclear capacity. She finished with a quip, saying this damaged trust with Iran was likely made worse when, days later, Trump posted that he did support regime change.

Dealing with America's 'Toddler in Chief'

The world’s walking on eggshells around a toddler with nukes — maybe it’s time we stopped playing his game.

So, let us just recap the reality of the “news” Haberman shared in this video.

The President of the United States is using his personal Truth Social account and offhand comments to journalists to threaten that he might use the might of the U.S. military to attack Iran, attacks he does not have approval from Congress to carry out.

This erratic and unhinged behaviour undermines the planning and success for such an attack, despite there being no intelligence to say the attack was justified, but just wanting to do it so as to stay buddies with Israel and to distract from the chaos he is causing across America. Despite caring whether it would push Iran away from negotiations for nuclear non-proliferation, negotiations that would make the world safer, rather than pushing us all towards World War Three. Have I got that right?

This does not sound that normal to me. Indeed, it sounds like a dangerously surreal scenario which I cannot believe is the world’s horror-show reality, which should be called out as such.

Being a Washington insider, you would hope that journalists like Haberman would be in the perfect position to tell the public just how not-normal Trump is. But rather than do that, journalists work hard to make Trump’s erratic and dangerous behaviour sound perfectly calm, credible, considered, presidential, authoritative, legitimate — all completely normal.

At the heart of such normalising is a cowardly reluctance to call a spade a spade, to name and shame, to stand up against the bully, to throw a light on reality and to just call Trump what he is: unhinged, incompetent, dishonest, manipulative, a dangerous imbecile who threatens global stability.

Journalists normalising Trump's racism are failing democracy

As Trump builds his power on a foundation of racism and authoritarianism, the media’s silence speaks louder than ever.

Perhaps mainstream journalists fear their access to White House insiders will be withdrawn. Perhaps they fear Trump’s wrath. Perhaps they are more worried about being accused of “bias against Trump” than they are about abdicating their responsibilities to the public. Whatever the reason for their pathetic reporting, mainstream journalists need to recognise that by normalising the world’s most dangerous and powerful man, they are aiding and abetting him, and thus are party to the damage he causes.

When Trump’s never-ending abomination is not called out, it is presented as fine. Dangerous incompetence is not fine. Racism is not fine. Ignoring the rule of law is not fine. Authoritarianism is not fine. Trump is not fine. This normalising journalism is not fine.

It is no wonder when you consider these total and utter failings, that the public are seeking out alternative media voices who are willing to describe the reality of who Trump is and what he is doing in a way that actually depicts the horrors for what they really are.

In the words of one of my favourite such voices – Ben Meiselas from the MediasTouch network, who have risen past Joe Rogan to be some of the most popular podcasters in the world – Trump is “an absolute lunatic” whose “incessant tweets gave away his war plans and convinced the Iranians to hide a ton of uranium — nice job, Donald”.

I bet you’ll never hear any mainstream journalist speak the truth like that.