Trump's Dangerous And Unchallenged Vague Racist Musings
Media outlets were unsure how to cover Trump's openly xenophobic Presidential campaign in 2015. We cannot repeat the same mistake again.
In 2015, the world witnessed Donald Trump launch his presidential campaign by dehumanizing and demeaning immigrants across the United States. "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people," Trump said as his dangerous and inflammatory rhetoric began to seep into mainstream media outlets, unsure how to cover the most openly xenophobic Presidential campaign in recent American history.
Outlets like the Huffington Post relegated Trump to the entertainment section instead of news, while Saturday Night Live gave him top billing as host of their iconic show. These and other members of the media opted to satirize Trump, even if that meant they were complicit in minimizing the danger his political rise would mean for their audiences.
Pundits, reporters, editors, and media executives were slow to realize the danger in covering Donald Trump for ratings and entertainment, as opposed to showing him as a threat to American democracy, as images of migrant children being caged and protests against Muslims being banned from our country (to name a few of Trump’s extreme policies) spread like wildfire across social media.
Now, as we head into the 2024 general election cycle, it is disturbing to witness some in corporate media forget the hard lessons from 2016 as they fall into the same trap of covering Trump’s candidacy with the same performative neutrality that allowed him to turn journalists into stenographers for his clickbait-driven, headline-chasing campaign against democracy.
Last week, Univision broadcasted an exclusive sit-down interview that allowed Donald Trump to spew some of his most unhinged and radioactive one-liners while gaining broad access to a Spanish-language audience he increasingly relies on.
Dylan Byers of Puck News called the one-hour block a “softball interview” that "raised alarms" among current and former Univision journalists for having "effectively functioned as propaganda." David Weigel of Semafor compared the questions Univision asked Trump to “pillow stuffing,” adding that “there's a misconception out there that an interviewer must Destroy Trump with his questions. That doesn't work. But neither do versions of "sir, please state your talking points." " “
Univision, the network that had their top journalist shouted at by Trump to "sit down" and escorted out of a press conference to "go back to Univision," seems to have undergone a total change of heart towards Donald Trump either for ratings or due to a drastic shift in ideology and political considerations under its new management.
“The Latino vote is so incredible because they’re unbelievable people … All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision,” Trump told Univision’s Enrique Acevedo. “They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people. And they like me.”
https://twitter.com/AmericasVoice/status/636395949137375232
And to what end, if not to give millions of Spanish-speaking households across the United States a soft, barely challenged, and almost apologetic view of Trump’s character — all while Trump continues promising to triple down in pursuing the most openly anti-Latino and anti-immigrant agenda in modern times.
Shortly after his interview with Univision, The New York Times came under intense pressure and ultimately changed a tepid headline describing Trump’s categorization of political opponents as “vermin,” a reference condemned by historians and politicians from both parties who saw it as echoing authoritarianism, whose “entire existence” (or “sad, miserable existence” depending on who you choose to believe”) existence will be crushed” should Trump return to the White House.
Right now, Donald Trump is lining up loyalists to help further test the public’s trust in our institutions, which is why reporters and mainstream media must ensure Trump has to answer for his awful policies and record in a way that informs voters, rejects his lies, and denies him the ability to hide behind generic populist demagoguery that relies on racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
Otherwise, as put by Greg Sargent at the Washington Post, people across the country will come to accept Trump’s “agenda built on white nationalist sadism,” and we’ll (once again) begin to see social media posts about everyday people having to make plans to hide friends, family, neighbors who Trump’s deportation force might target.