Even Fox News has decided to stop carrying Trump’s political rallies live—a decision that a Trump official says they “will look into.” Other networks stopped regularly carrying Trump’s rallies some time ago, and with his insistence on carrying on more and more of his hate-fests even in the face of disaster and tragedy, it’s not surprising that even Republican state TV has turned away … plus Trump tends to ramble so long they have trouble fitting in commercials.
But while there has been less media attention directed at Trump’s high-frequency rallies, it’s certainly not because what’s being said there is less newsworthy. In fact, the words from Trump, and from his followers at these rallies demands more media attention, not less. Cutting Trump off from his media fix may seem like a good idea, and he certainly doesn’t need any more praise from his friends at Boot-licking Central. But what Trump says to his supporters when the cameras aren’t running—is a serious concern.
Susan Glasser at the New Yorker followed the six Trump rallies that happened in just the first ten days of October. At those events, Trump didn’t just deride Democratic candidates (multiple times) and accuse Hillary Clinton of conspiring with Russia to fix the election (multiple times). He made statements that go to both US relationships with allies and Trump’s willingness to follow US law. Among other things, while much of the world is fixated on discovering the fate of a missing journalist, that didn’t come up at Trump rallies. What did come up was Trump insisting that the First Amendment needs to be weakened so he can prosecute reporters for “fake news.”
Trump may be famous for telling lies, but at his rallies he tells them in concentrated form. The Washington Post fact-checked one rally and found that 76 percent of Trump’s statements were misleading, baseless, or plain old lies. And, as Glasser reports, that was months ago. Trump is getting worse. He’s telling more lies, and he’s elaborating on old lies. Whether it’s claiming that Kavanaugh was at the top of his class at Yale or that he won the majority of women voters in 2016 or that new steel plants are being built, Trump is telling a high power stream of lies.
But the lies are not the most notable things at Trump’s increasingly frequent rallies. What’s more important are the threats.
Bashing the press is a major theme at every Trump rally. It’s often Trump’s opening shtick. And that attack often forms a major part of his speech, including pointing out the people caged in the press box and encouraging the crowd to scream at them. But it’s not just the media who Trump presents as the “enemy of the people,” increasingly it’s anyone who objects to any proposal from Trump. And that absolutely includes all Democrats. Trump may be making some of the same attacks on Democrats that other Republicans have made in the past, but Trump is insisting that “Democrats not only want to legislate their way to socialism but that they are an actual clear and present danger to Americans.”
What the President of the United States is actually saying is extraordinary, regardless of whether the television cameras are carrying it live. It’s not just the whoppers or the particular outrage riffs that do get covered, either. It’s the hate, and the sense of actual menace that the President is trying to convey to his supporters. Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous.
Trump likes to brag about keeping his promises to his followers. What Trump is promising them now is that both the media and Democrats need to be destroyed … for the good of the country. He’s not presenting Democrats as the loyal opposition, or even just the opposition. He’s positioning the Democratic Party as the enemy, in line with his attacks on MS-13. Trump has more good things to say about Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un than anyone in the Democratic Party.
Writing in the Financial Times, Edward Luce also sounded the warning this week about dismissing Trump’s words as just more of the same.
… a culture of lying leads to nihilism. When people believe in nothing, they can believe in anything. As Timothy Snyder, the Yale scholar, put it: “Post-truth is pre-fascist.” That is another way of saying that Mr Trump has created the space to do things that were until recently unthinkable.
Things like detaining children and separating families. Things like naming the media “enemies of the people.” Things like deriding democratic governments and supporting dictators. Those have become the baseline of Trumpism. Those are the items that, through many repetitions, have become almost too boring to cover.
Donald Trump’s rallies are no longer getting media coverage. That may seem like a good thing. But as the New York Times points out, Trump has held over 500 such rallies. That’s an astounding number. Even discounting Trump’s inflated reports of attendance, there is no doubt that millions—millions—of his supporters have been present to watch him demonize the press, demonize Democrats, and present himself as the only man standing between an immigrant horde and the one, true, white America.
This is not a fire that will stop burning because because Fox decides to skip airing a few. These are the core events where Trump explains to his supporters what he is going to do next. Trump can’t even be distracted from his events by the third most intense hurricane to ever hit the United States. These are the most important items on his agenda.
Trump is telling everyone what he intends to do. Listening is important.