Lessons from the First Eleven Days
Trump will be Trump. Democrats and the Media need to seriously raise their game.
Welcome to all my new subscribers. Thanks especially to those who have taken the step to pledge support. It means a lot, especially to a retiree on a fixed income.
I got some news on my book. According to my publicity team at Eerdmans, the book is the “#1 new release in Christian Institutions & Organizations” on Amazon, whatever that means.
One of the reasons I don’t pre-write these newsletters for scheduled release is that often things get stuck in my craw and the post I was thinking about can wait until next week. This is one of those days.
I have to start with President Trump’s press conference yesterday addressing the horrible accident over the Potomac on Wednesday (I didn’t watch and am relying on news coverage). After brief condolences to victims and families, he spoke of options the Blackhawk helicopter had, and then launched into his attacks on DEI initiatives within the FAA and air traffic control.
When confronted by the press corps on how he could make such a claim given the paucity of evidence and the ongoing investigation, he said it was because he had common sense and most people didn’t. I observed on BlueSky yesterday that it’s not common sense if most people don’t see things the same way. I was reminded of Scot Coley’s argument in Ministers of Propaganda about “common sensism”:
Common sensism holds that all ordinary humans have the cognitive capacity to directly perceive moral truth. But his capacity can, of course, be corrupted through enculturation into morally illegitimate social practices, motivated reasoning, ideology, and propaganda (23).
Later in the afternoon, the President doubled down with an executive order slash press release about the dangers of DEI in the FAA.
This is Trump’s motis operandi (if all you have is a hammer, etc.). It’s important to be in the spotlight making bold claims regardless of their accuracy.1
Imagine if after the Challenger explosion Ronald Reagan had immediately blamed NASA for ineptitude or explained that this is what happens when you put a school teacher on a space mission.
I sort of feel sorry for the press stuck in the briefing, trying to get called on to ask follow-up questions while knowing that they won’t shed any more light on the original answers.2 But really, I wish that in the middle of the so-called briefing, they had put away their phones and Ipads and just left the room.
Which brings me to the press. I have long been a reader of James Fallows, Jay Rosen, Dan Froomkin, Margaret Sullivan and others trying to improve press behavior. It’s very difficult to do accurate reporting in the midst of unfolding news.
And yet they have bad habits that make matters worse. One of these is their insistence on passive voice. Musk attempts firings or takes financial data and we wonder abstractly what this might mean and under what authority he does so. But what the situation requires in reporting on the law violations and the impacts (once known).
Here’s an example from Wednesday’s accident. Almost all news reports talk about it as a “mid-air collision”. While accurate, it is incomplete. This morning I watched a YouTube video of a pilot (Captain Steeeve) who was looking at the flight paths and ATC communications with the helicopter. It is clear from the video (screen shot below) that the helicopter hit the plane from Wichita.
It’s worth 14 minutes of your time. The bright light in the inset is the approaching plane. The smaller light to its left is the helicopter. The video shows the helicopter moving from left to right into the airplane.
Every story from here on should be talking about why the Blackhawk hit the plane. As I told Jeralynne, it would be like someone running a stop sign and t-boning your car and then describing the event as a mutual accident. If the press correctly reported the fault of the Blackhawk, the entire DEI attack on the FAA wouldn’t have been possible.
Another illustration. Consider how the media has covered the hearings for Trump cabinet secretary nominees. Since the Republicans are mostly going to support them (at least with the help of VP Vance), they aren’t worth covering. Hallway conversations with them about any concerns will get blown off. So the coverage is about gotcha moments like Patel not knowing the podcaster whose show he was on multiple times or how he doesn’t have an enemies list. Or RFK being asked to denounce his prior organization or him misquoting some scientific study to dodge the question.
What isn’t covered is the ways that nominees dodge or refute questions in spite of the evidence. It’s as if whatever they say in that room is covered in the old Get Smart “cone of silence” and bears no relationship to what they will actually do once approved. If decades of Supreme Court hearings haven’t taught us not to take these responses seriously, I don’t know what to say.
Which brings me to the Democrats.
Let’s begin with those cabinet nomination hearings. While it’s true that they don’t have the votes to stop the nominations if all Republicans are aligned, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have a public role to play in terms of advise and consent.3
What’s the point of asking RFK about the anti-vax onesies as Bernie Sanders did? Is that the most pressing question? Is it worth knowing that Tulsi Gabbard dissembled about her knowledge of Hezbollah’s intents? Or that Patel said he doesn’t have an enemies list when there is one in his book? Why ask them if they would obey an illegal order from Trump? They will say no (or that he would never give such an order) and not feel at all bound by their promise when the day comes.
Why not ask about how they would implement the actions of the office they are nominated to? How would Gabbard prioritize information in the President’s Daily Brief? Or how Patel would address increasing violent extremism on both ends of the political spectrum? Or what RFK thinks we should do in case the bird flu infections spread exponentially?
Let me zoom out further. The Democrats are the opposition party as Dan Pfeiffer and Brian Buetler keep reminding us and need to act like it.
They need a rapid response team. Introducing a resolution condemning the Jan 6 pardons a week after the announcement isn’t it. Besides, it’s a messaging bill meant to put the Republicans in a bad place. But since they’ve lost all sense of shame, and their constituents want them to hold the line, that isn’t going to work.
While I wish that Senators Schumer and Durbin would step down from their leadership positions in support of someone a decade or two younger, that’s not going to happen. What they could do, however, is establish a shadow government within then Democratic caucus. They could designate a couple of senators who are better at speaking to the public and have them make daily comments about the state of government. There are several who could play this role, but my nominees would be Chris Murphy and Andy Kim in the Senate and Jasmine Crockett and AOC in the House.
All this is to say that we cannot do business as we used to — for the media or for Congress. Trump, with the help of Musk and Vought, is after big changes and doesn’t think anybody will stop him. The loyal opposition must rise to the occasion.
It would have been great to have started that on November 6th. But this weekend would be great.
I’m two chapters into Chris Hayes’ The Siren’s Call which explores how demands for attention dominate our lives. It’s very good.
Trump has always had a tendency to simply repeat his claim as if that were an elaboration.