“He’s on our side”
Fascist agitation begets violence.
Via PBS: Man arrested after storming press area at a Trump rally will face charges, police say.
Police said Saturday that a man will face misdemeanor charges after he stormed into the press area at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, before being surrounded by authorities and eventually subdued with a Taser as the former president spoke at the campaign stop.
The incident Friday came moments after Trump had criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and had dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.
It was not immediately clear what motivated the man or whether he was a Trump supporter or critic.
I understand that journalists ethics dictates that the reporter should not speculate on the motives of an individual without doing the necessary reporting to confirm what might or might not be the case.
But guess who made those assumptions and assumed that he was a Trump supporter?
Donald J. Trump, that’s who.
Some video from the incident details his reaction. He first, vaguely, refers to this situation as “beautiful”–and the says, “That’s ok. No, He’s on our side.” And added, “we get a little itchy.”
Look, on the one hand, there are possibilities such as drug use or mental illness that might explain this man’s behavior. But the razor in Occam’s hand suggests that he was a Trump supporter who was reacting to Trump’s attacks on the press.
Certainly, and I stress again, Trump thought so. And yet again Trump praises violence from his supporters. A reasonable politician would condemn such actions in his crowd. A fascistic one extols such behavior.
A reminder from January 6, 2021:
We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil.
I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.
Here are a bunch of examples from his 2016 campaign.
Here’s another clip from the rally:
I also find the press coverage of this to be problematic (based on what I could find via a Google search). While I understand that they should not speculate on the man’s motives, almost all of the reports I saw utterly leave out Trump claiming the guy as one of his, but instead note that Trump made a joke about how much fun his rallies are.
One exception was Vanity Fair: Trump Calls Journalists “Enemy Of The People” During Pennsylvania Rally Minutes Before Man Storms Into Media Section.
This is messaging spin. Either the media is controlled by people who don’t want to antagonize his supporters, or else controlled by people who want his candidacy kept viable.
The same spin applies to all MSM reporting on Trump – compare the reporting on Biden’s age and cognition to the way Trump’s apparent dementia is steadfastly ignored.
Trump benefits greatly from encouraging violence which largely keeps him from being held to account – example the employee afraid to press charges over the Arlington incident.
@charontwo:
I agree.
I would add that the by-now decades-long rightwing attack on the so-called Main Stream Media has had an effect too. I believe that many in the MSM are intimidated and so engage in a lot of ‘both sides do it’ reporting.
This carries over to op-ed pages too. A few days ago the NYT gave a half page to Rich Lowry (of the National Review) to let him present conservative talking points as to why Trump should be elected on he basis of character, and Harris is unqualified and unsuitable for the presidency. Only an intimidated MSM flagship does this.
@charontwo:
One might wish that those in media creating the content – those people on the media platform during Trump rallies, for example – might rebel against those who control the media. Their jobs are hard enough, so expecting them to make trouble with their paymasters is likely too much to ask. Nevertheless, there must be a breaking point.
@al Ameda: NYT and Lowry got toasted all over the internet for that stupid column. But I wonder if they know. I can’t find it to quote, but Brad DeLong commented that NYT management is concerned with their taxes and in such a bubble they can’t recognize the criticism. I think that’s true.
One of the talking heads on MSNBC, IIRC Chris Hayes, commented that they get almost real time feedback, viewers, share, demographics, and, for good or ill, respond to that feedback. NYT, and the rest of them, see subscription numbers, ad dollars, and probably clicks. I have no idea what other feedback they get. Do they look for what’s said about them online and in other outlets? If 90% of comments on a Bret Stephens column are pointing and laughing, do they know? Did dropping the Public Editor years ago mark an indifference to feedback? There’s a lot of heat directed at them right now. I wonder if they feel it.
@gVOR10:
If all they care about is engagement, then, according to what I understand, negative engagement works just as well as the positive kind. Think of it as an updated version of “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
@al Ameda: “A few days ago the NYT gave a half page to Rich Lowry (of the National Review) to let him present conservative talking points as to why Trump should be elected on he basis of character, and Harris is unqualified and unsuitable for the presidency.”
And just the other day in an article about Trump addressing the “Moms For Liberty” convention, they described one of that group’s leaders approvingly quoting Hitler in a newsletter as a little mistake, instead of pointing out that Trump was addressing a group that, you know, liked Hitler’s approach to child-rearing.
@wr: That bit pissed me off. The heart of bothsides, voice from nowhere, journalism is that the reporter should never make a judgement. But they happily concluded they should say “accidentally quoted Hitler” when all they really knew was “quoted Hitler”.
We have various outlets sitting on hacked material on Trump’s vetting of Vance. They say they don’t want to publish illegally obtained info. OK. But that sure as hell was not the rule in 2016. They can set their own rules, but I think they owe it to us to publish the rules and stick to them consistently. They seem to feel otherwise.
@gVOR10:
Thanks for this feedback, I didn’t follow-up.
I hope they were toasted for publishing that middle school level piece.