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MORE ON TRUMP AT MOUNT RUSHMORE. Yesterday I wrote about the coverage of the president’s July 3 speech as an example of egregious anti-Trump bias. Then it got even worse.
Initial news coverage featured the New York Times characterizing Trump’s celebration of the American founding as a “dark and divisive” address that marked a “full-on culture war against a straw-man version of the left,” and the Washington Post reporting that the speech was a “dystopian” exercise that “excoriated racial justice protesters.”
By the way, the Post even hated the speech’s backdrop. Reviewing the event, the paper’s art critic called Mount Rushmore “kitsch: gigantic, colossal, nationalist kitsch.”
All that might seem a bit extreme to anyone who actually watched Trump’s speech. But now the Post has upped the ante. The paper’s editorial board declared that Trump “plumbed new depths of depravity” in the speech. OK, they didn’t like it. But “depths of depravity”?
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The Post’s opinion editors were particularly upset by Trump’s declaration that “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.” The paper said Trump’s words were “an obscene misrepresentation of the mostly peaceful marches by millions of citizens in hundreds of cities and towns.”
With that, the Post lost touch with reality. There really have been angry mobs trying to tear down statues of our Founders. There have even been angry mobs in Washington, DC! They almost tore down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park and would have torn down a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Park had federal police not stopped them.
And what about that wave of violent crime in our cities? Just read the Washington Post! A few hours after posting the “depths of depravity” editorial, the paper published a front-page story, “Major U.S. cities, gripped with crises, now face spike in deadly shootings, including of children.”
There has been a “burst of bloodshed” in some of the country’s big cities, the Post reported, “with 65 people shot over the weekend in New York and 87 in Chicago, and homicides climbing from Miami to Milwaukee.” The phrase “burst of bloodshed” — featured in the paper edition headline — had a Trumpian, “American carnage” ring to it.
The news made the Post’s “depths of depravity” opinion look even more disconnected from reality. “This editorial is simply insane,” Fox News’ Brit Hume tweeted. “Yes, [Trump] criticized the violent rioters and radicals rampaging in the streets. But his speech was mostly a full-throated defense of American’s history and heroes.”
Indeed it was. In an appearance on Fox News, Hume added, “As I followed this over the weekend, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such dishonest and biased coverage of any event.”
Does any of this matter? Most episodes like this fade away with the next big news event, and the Rushmore matter will, too. But it does, likely, presage a new level of anti-Trump coverage as the presidential campaign enters its final months. Can the president make that work for him? Certainly with his most devoted followers. But making non-base voters see him as the target of unfair attacks is a much more difficult task — even if some media outlets are doing their best to help.
