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Trump’s campaign is crazy. Not Harris. This is bad media

Harry October 31, 2024

Consider this: Your neighborhood trash pickup is reliable; Every week a truck comes to collect without interruption.

It’s important, no doubt, but it’s not particularly exciting. Fortunately it is.

Now consider this: Garbage collection is done randomly, seemingly on a whim, and the driver of the truck yells at anyone he doesn’t like and threatens to stop them from collecting.

He then sets the truck on fire.

That’s what covering the presidential race might be like.

It’s not hard to find something to write about when Donald Trump is involved. This is by design; his onetime advisor Steve Bannon advocated filling the area with feces so the media couldn’t keep up.

Whether Trump follows this advice or simply acts like himself at rallies or interviews is anyone’s guess. Probably a little of both. But if the camera is on and Trump is speaking, taking notes helps.

Trump is happy with ugly and aggressive behavior

For example, when he met with the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago in July, Trump repeatedly insulted Kamala Harris, refused to pronounce her name correctly — a favorite tactic — and questioned her racial identity.

It was striking. And it was news.

When Harris finally did her first interview with a major news outlet after becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, it was otherwise news mostly because the media was clamoring for her to do an interview. He met up with CNN’s Dana Bash for a low-key interview; Harris focused solely on talking points in this interview, seemingly trying to avoid making the news. It’s a plan he’s largely stuck to, no matter the event or format.

His interview with him Bret Baier on Fox News This is an exception. It made the news, but not because of him. It made headlines for its almost constant outages.

More recent examples are what candidates announce as their closing statements to the American people.

On Sunday, Trump held a hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe stole most of the attention with his racist routine, but the event was filled with bigotry and suggestive references. This isn’t exactly new stuff from some MAGA genre, but it was bad enough and a big enough venue to be newsworthy.

Kamala Harris returns to old-school campaigning

Later Tuesday, Harris spoke about the Ellipse, with the White House in the background; This was where Trump incited the angry mob that attacked the US Capitol on January 6.

He has lately shifted his focus more to an attack on Trump’s threats to democracy, but in the end, positioning aside, this was just standard stump speeches of the sort politicians routinely make on the campaign trail.

There’s definitely something new in Harris’ campaign. She is the first nominee of a major party who is a woman of color. The way Joe Biden is running for office is certainly unique, having dropped out of the race following his disastrous debate with Trump. But in an age where Trump has accustomed us to the terrible and the ugly, he is just an old-school politician who sometimes backtracks to stay true to his message. Whether you find this comforting or unacceptable probably depends on who you voted for.

Have we lost our ability to cover ‘normal’ politics?

In other words, his campaign is normal in many ways. Trump’s is normal for him, perhaps a new normal; But that statement doesn’t fully capture how he subverts a politician’s relationship with truth (or lack thereof) and the media.

In summary: No one has figured out how to effectively hide Trump. This is the failure of the media. But all the distortions that news organizations tried also made it difficult to cover a “normal” campaign.

The model is broken. It won’t get fixed before the election. The screaming garbage man will always attract more attention than the person who does his job quietly and effectively. Even if he shouldn’t.

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