Michael M. Santiago/Pool Photo via APAP
Donald Trump represents an existential threat to democracy in the United States. If he is elected president, he will try to become a dictator.
That warning must be repeated, over and over again, so Americans don’t forget it in November.
But that’s not the daily news that you will read or hear in the American press today. Instead, it’s mostly coverage of polls favorable to Trump and cute scene-setting stories about the carnival-like atmosphere at his crazed rallies, where his massive cult following is on display.
That daily coverage ignores the five-alarm fire burning up the 2024 election. The mainstream political press is effectively ignoring the coming national apocalypse. How can that be? How can they once again screw up covering Trump?
After all, Trump isn’t hiding his lust for dictatorial power. He admits it publicly. In December, when his Fox News lackey, Sean Hannity, gave him an opportunity to dispel fears that he wanted dictatorial power, Trump instead offered a rare truth. “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked. “Except for day one,” Trump replied.
Trump is planning a second term that is nothing more than a revenge tour: Deploy the Insurrection Act to crush dissent, turn the Justice Department into a personal weapon to imprison government officials who previously investigated or prosecuted him, persecute former aides who turned against him, pardon himself and his lieutenants, and loot the government to enrich himself and his flailing businesses.
In case anybody has missed his autocratic plans, Trump promoted a video this week about “the creation of a unified Reich” if he is elected.
Even this social media callout to Hitler generated a generally tepid response from the press, like one from an ABC reporter who only dared to say that it was “not normal” for presidential candidates to share “references to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.”
Trump is a fascist. But the mainstream political press doesn’t want to say it. They want to act like 2024 is just another election year.
With their obsession with horse-race coverage, political reporters tend to judge what Trump says or does by whether his words and actions will help him politically. By doing so, the press is saying that Trump’s racism, corruption, criminality, and insane abuses of power matter only so far as his electability.
There are exceptions: major news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have done some important stories about Trump’s dictatorial plans for a second term. But those investigative stories are drowned out by the chorus of horse-race stories — sometimes published on the same days and by the same news organizations behind more substantial coverage.
The media is sleepwalking.
I’ve often wondered how the press, both in Germany and around the world, failed to see Hitler for the monster that he was before he gained power. After Trump, I think I understand.
Hitler took advantage of the incremental nature of daily journalism. For years, his rise in Germany was not taken seriously in the United States, and that period of American inattention and isolationism enabled Hitler to become a much greater global threat. The American press played a significant and ugly role in downplaying the threat Hitler posed to the Western world.
American journalists initially viewed Hitler as little more than a German version of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who they saw as a blustering demagogue, yet also a leader who had helped save Italy from the economic chaos of the post-World War I era.
The New York Times credited Mussolini “with returning turbulent Italy to what it called normalcy,” according to a study of the press coverage of Hitler and Mussolini in Smithsonian Magazine in 2016.
When Hitler first burst into German political life, the American press sought to downplay his importance by treating him as a joke; the Smithsonian notes how Newsweek called him a “nonsensical” screecher of “wild words” and that his appearance suggested “Charlie Chaplin.”
Over time, American journalists’ views of Hitler began to shift, but mostly just to show greater respect for his skills as a charismatic public speaker and a successful demagogue. Ultimately, through more than a decade in German politics before he came to power, Hitler was normalized by American reporters. The press became numb to the outrageous things he said and wrote and did. He kept saying the same things for years; he laid out many of his plans and intentions in “Mein Kampf” in 1925, eight years before he came to power. By the time of the crucial 1932 German elections and Hitler’s subsequent rise to power in 1933, his rabid antisemitism and his lust for power were treated as old news.
The American press is making the same mistake today.
Ever since Trump announced he was running for president in 2015, reporters have alternated between depicting him as a goof who couldn’t be taken seriously and showing respect for his skills as a demagogue.
Two impeachments, four criminal indictments, and one insurrection later, Trump is normal now, at least as far as the political press corps is concerned. The January 6 insurrection, in which Trump tried to illegally hold on to power, is old news.
Just as Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch became old news by the 1932 German elections, after Trump’s chaotic four years in office, many journalists are now focusing more on his poll numbers than his criminality or the threat he poses to the United States.
Mainstream journalists are becoming more closed off and defensive, refusing to cover the campaign in crisis terms. This insularity is fueled by years of challenges from social media companies, attacks from right-wing critics, and the push for diversity in newsrooms. The surge in readership during the Trump administration has waned, leading to a reluctance to take a strong stand against Trump.
News organizations, in their efforts to shield themselves from scrutiny, have lost transparency and openness. Recent incidents, such as leak investigations within newsrooms and downplaying scandals involving top executives, highlight the hypocrisy within mainstream media.
The press’s reluctance to sound the alarm about Trump’s threat to American democracy is not only due to the desire for higher revenues but also reflects a structural issue within journalism. The constant need for new stories leads to Trump’s dangerous statements and actions being treated as background information, rather than as urgent news.
Just like Hitler benefited from the incremental nature of journalism, Trump’s authoritarian promises are often relegated to the background in news coverage. This poses a serious threat to America when crucial information about Trump’s dictatorial ambitions is overlooked or downplayed by the media. Please rewrite this sentence.
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