President Trump’s enduring legacy will be that he smashed all norms regarding decorum and decency – and that drove his critics insane.
It seems every week now that some outspoken Trump opponent in the press says something either as dumb or worse as anything the president has said since taking office on Jan. 20, 2017. How these members of the press manage that is beyond me.
Take, for example, GOP-operative-turned-MSNBC-host Nicole Wallace, who speculated this week on her show about the mental and emotional well-being of the Trump women. Wallace wondered whether the women could still feel emotion. She also wondered if they’re only sticking with the president because he’s paying them to.
“Are they just the most stoic human beings, are they numb, are they dead inside, are they paid off, I mean, what’s their deal?” the MSNBC host asked.
Her questions, which came on the heels of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani saying he doesn’t respect adult film actors, especially the one who claims she had an affair with the president, were meant to tee up Vanity Fair reporter Emily Fox. And Fox jumped at the chance to speculate about the first family. “Yes, yes, and yes,” she replied. “But I think they do not see President Trump the way that all of us see President Trump. They have such a distorted image of who he is that they don’t have the kind of reaction that we do.”
Remember, Wallace is the ringmaster in this television segment, and she let Fox run wild.
“The president has incredibly sexist, misogynistic views about how he treats women in general, we’ve heard the way that he talks about women, calling them dogs and pigs, talking about grabbing them by their genitals,” Fox continued. “So, he may not have shared these views about these specific women, but the way that the president talks about women and behaves towards women, it’s not so out of line with what Rudy Giuliani said, and, what he said about Stormy Daniels was disgusting, gave me a pit in my stomach from the second I woke up this morning, but my first reaction was, this is so disrespectful to the first lady.”
In media, reporting and commentary included, it’s advised that one sticks to what one knows. Speculation is hollow. We know Trump holds a dim view of many women. We also know he has been and can be a pig, as he was caught on tape.
But neither Wallace nor Fox nor anyone else outside the immediate Trump family knows what the Trump women think or feel about any of this. It’s ridiculous and irresponsible for members of the news media to pretend otherwise, just as it was irresponsible for Giuliani to try to speak on Melania’s behalf without so much as having spoken to her.
And so from the Oval Office all the way down to MSNBC’s studios, there appears to be a truth free-for-all.
Humorously enough, Wallace wondered that same day what once-highly regarded public figures with solid reputations are “doing as part of the president’s conspiracy rabbit hole he seems to be circling down.”
What is it about Trump that makes formerly sane people no longer sane? One wonders indeed.
