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Greg Sargent Profile picture
@GregTSargent
Sep 5 • 8 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
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It's a big deal that veteran journalist Mike Barnicle has now called out his media colleagues for failing to adequately cover Trump's visibly worsening mental state. It should spur a real discussion about how to do this, before it's too late. 1/

New piece
newrepublic.com/article/185622…
“We have a damaged, delusional, old man who might get reelected to the presidency," Mike Barnicle said on @Morning_Joe. He said the media doesn't really cover Trump's daily insanity as a window into his mental fitness for the presidency. This is right. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/185622…

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Some in the media will reject this, claiming they do cover Trump's crazier claims. But this misses the point. His mental unfitness for the presidency is *itself* the big story. It merits sustained scrutiny as a topic with its own intrinsic importance. 3/

newrepublic.com/article/185622…

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You can find some examples of reporting on Trump's mental state. But it's not remotely adequate. A lot of stuff gets overlooked entirely. Trump's deranged claims about gender at Moms for Liberty event were not adequately covered, as @mtomasky noted. 4/

newrepublic.com/article/185622…

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As @jbouie notes, the whole premise of Biden age coverage was that his mental capacity for the job is a matter of national importance. Why not apply this to Trump's addled incoherence, lack of curiosity, serial lying, and sadistic verbal abuses? 5/

newrepublic.com/article/185622…

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To imagine what real coverage of Trump's mental unfitness might look like, I took 10 real Biden age headlines and rewrote them around Trump's unfitness for the presidency.

Read them below; the effect is striking. Why don't we see saturation like this? 6/

newrepublic.com/article/185622…

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Those are real headlines about Biden's age at top news orgs, reimagined as heds about Trump's mental unfitness for the job. We should treat those Trump traits and the politics around them as *themselves* being the news.

Link to full argument below. END

newrepublic.com/article/185622…
Related, important point from @JRubinBlogger: Inadequate scrutiny of Trump's mental unfitness ends up insulating Republicans more broadly from hard questions about their continued enthusiastic support for him. Also citing @JeffreyGoldberg

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/…

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More from @GregTSargent

Greg Sargent Profile picture
Nov 15
Awful: Senate investigations into Trump's solicitation of $1 billion from Big Oil and Jared Kushner's financial dealings with Saudis will now hit a wall with GOP control, Dems tell me. We're headed for unchecked elite corruption under Trump.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/188467…
For many reasons, conditions are ripe for right wing elites to loot the place from top to bottom. Remember when Trump vowed to give Big Oil execs what they want in exchange for $1 billion in campaign funds? Now we'll likely never get to the bottom of it.

newrepublic.com/article/188467…Image
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“The next four years are going to be a smash and grab under Trump,” Sen Ron Wyden tells me, because “special interests who put Trump back in office expect a return on their investment."

His probe into Kushner's dealings will get much harder w/GOP control

newrepublic.com/article/188467…Image
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Read 7 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
Nov 9
Disturbing: A big reason Trump won was undecideds couldn't be persuaded that millions of jobs lost in 2020 and death of Roe were Trump's fault, internal Harris campaign polling showed. Biden/Ds let Trump rehab himself to disastrous effect.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/188238…
Internal testing in the battlegrounds over many months showed that Dems were having a very difficult time persuading undecided voters that Trump was a bad president, per sources. They didn't hold him responsible for things they disliked about his presidency.

newrepublic.com/article/188238…Image
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Some Dems still blame the leading pro-Harris Super PAC, Future Forward, for failing to spend enough of its enormous budget on bloodying up Trump early on. This let Trump rehabilitate himself and get his favorables back up.

newrepublic.com/article/188238…Image
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Read 6 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
Nov 5
How did Harris close the gap w/Trump on the economy?

Here's how: Harris campaign and Dem groups have spent a whopping $225 million on ads about the economy, per data provided to me by AdImpact. GOP caught napping, outspent by $70 million.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/187950…
Harris campaign/Dem groups spent $225 million on econ ads from 7/21, when Biden bowed out, to the present, per AdImpact data. Trump/GOP: $155 million.

This challenges idea that Ds are so obsessed w/Trump hatred that they took eye off the ball on econ.

newrepublic.com/article/187950…Image
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A fascinating thing: Harris/Dem ads on economy are aimed at different groups in the potential anti-Trump coalition: Some aimed at working class whites who are soft Rs, some at nonwhite working class who are Trump curious, some at more affluent voters.

newrepublic.com/article/187950…Image
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Read 5 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
Oct 31
Today’s NYT featured a headline above the fold that read as follows:

“Biden Misstep Delivers Grist to Harris Foes”

This gets at one of the very worst things about the way political media has functioned during the Trump era. Here's a thread on the problem. 1/
I'm not sure what Biden meant w/the "garbage" comment. But even the harshest interpretation of it can only be that he meant Trump supporters *who openly make virulently racist displays* are "garbage."

That's news, I guess. Cover it, sure.

But what made it *front page* news? 2/
Why did this merit above-the-fold coverage days before the election?

*Because Trump/Rs made a big issue out of it.*

The headline itself gives away how this works. The news hook is literally that it provided "grist" to Republicans.

The problem with this should be obvious. 3/
Read 9 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
Oct 28
People keep saying Trump's rally was originally intended as his closing argument, but devolved into a hate rally instead.

But the rally we all saw IS his closing argument. He is running explicitly on much of what we witnessed on that stage.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/187616…
Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden is best seen as an explicit, very public declaration that if he wins, well, he told you exactly what you were going to get, so you’d better bend the knee and get ready to swallow all of it.

It's a coming-out party.

newrepublic.com/article/187616…Image
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When Stephen Miller declared that "America is for Americans and Americans only," that echoes the "100 percent Americanism" of the 20s and 30s.

“Miller is evoking the extremist fascist rhetoric of pre-war America,” fascism scholar Lauren Young tells me.

newrepublic.com/article/187616…Image
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Read 5 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
Sep 25
Utterly repulsive: Trump is now attacking Haitians in a small PA town with truly vile smears.

But the town manager tells me all Trump's claims are lies:

*Haitians not taking Americans' jobs
*No 2000% population increase
*No uptick in crime

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/186331…
At a rally this week, Trump claimed Charleroi PA has seen a 2000% population boost due to Haitians.

But as town manager Joe Manning told me, if this were true, its pop would have gone from 4K to nearly 100K. He literally burst out laughing at the idea.

newrepublic.com/article/186331…

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Trump said the Haitian "invasion" of PA is part of Harris' "war on workers." But the town manager told me Haitians were lured to Charleroi after a local employer couldn't find workers. And PA's unemployment rate is 3.4%.

More from the town manager below:

newrepublic.com/article/186331…


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Read 6 tweets

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