NBC News’ Chuck Todd offered a good reminder this weekend that many in the press view people of faith as regressive knuckle-draggers.
On Sunday, the Meet the Press host highlighted a letter to the editor from a Kentucky newspaper that claims only a person who enjoys “fairy tales” like Noah’s ark could vote for a man like President Trump. Todd called the letter a “fascinating attempt” by a Lexington Herald-Leader reader to explain the president’s support.
The letter itself states: “[W]hy do good people support Trump? It’s because people have been trained from childhood to believe in fairy tales.”
It adds, “From childhood, they were told stories that were fascinating but simply not true. This set their minds up to accept things that make them feel good. Later in life some people mature, study facts and cause and effect, and start thinking more logically, even if the results are undesirable.”
This reads like something copied straight from r/atheist.
The letter continues:
Show me a person who believes in Noah’s ark and I will show you a Trump voter. There are multiple solid scientific reasons the ark did not happen. Some people learn this and some don’t, and those who don’t will accept Trump. But can the world survive on fairy tales?
For the record, at least three major faiths — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism — believe in the flood narrative. We are currently in the eighth and final day of Hanukkah, and the fifth day of Christmas. This “fairy tale” slander is some excellent timing by Todd, especially coming on the heels of Saturday’s machete attack on a Hanukkah celebration in New York.
“Look,” said the Meet the Press host following his recitation of the letter, “This gets at something … that my executive producer likes to say: Voters want to be lied to sometimes. They don’t always love being told hard truths.”
Todd’s guests, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron, put as much distance as possible between themselves and the strange choice to hold up this letter as some kind of sound thinking.
“We can’t dismiss everybody that supports Donald Trump,” Baquet said. “I think we have to get out in America much more than we do and talk to people.”
Baron said, “I don’t want to be dismissive of people who support the president.”
Todd’s promotion of the letter to the editor is not just a cheap shot at those who voted for the current president, but it is also an act of extreme cowardice.
Todd agrees with the sentiments expressed by the Lexington Herald-Leader reader. He just does not have the guts to claim ownership of them himself. By pretending he merely found the letter “fascinating” enough to recite on national television, Todd can claim he did not say that thing about “fairy tales” and Trump voters — the letter said it (wink!).
It only makes things worse that the letter isn’t that terribly profound or insightful. It’s really just the sort of partisan expression you’d expect to see in a letter to the editor, about the other side deluding themselves.
Not everyone is as stupid as Todd thinks. It does not take a genius to see why — of all the letters to the editor in all the newspapers in the world — the Poynter Institute’s “media personality of the year” chose the one letter that claims Trump supports enjoy “fairy tales” like Noah’s ark.
