We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times and its take on media coverage of Donald Trump’s candidacy for president:
In the Republican field, Mr. Trump has distinguished himself as fastest to dive to the bottom. If it’s a lie too vile to utter aloud, count on Mr. Trump to say it, often. It wins him airtime, and retweets through the roof.
This phenomenon is in fact nothing new. Politicians targeting minorities, foreigners or women have always existed in the culture. And every generation or so, at least one demagogue surfaces to fan those flames. [...]
This isn’t about shutting off Mr. Trump’s bullhorn. His right to spew nonsense is protected by the Constitution, but the public doesn’t need to swallow it. History teaches that failing to hold a demagogue to account is a dangerous act. It’s no easy task for journalists to interrupt Mr. Trump with the facts, but it’s an important one.
The Washington Post:
These are not random errors. All of them appeal to the basest instincts in supporters; they reinforce fears and prejudices. All of them, Mr. Trump knows by now even if he did not know when he first stated them, are false, but he does not care. The amplification of the lies is accompanied by growing intolerance in his campaign, with Mr. Trump praising supporters for beating a protestor, crudely denigrating anyone who challenges him and penning reporters into designated zones so that they cannot speak with his followers. And all of this matches the brutality of his policies: mass deportation of longtime U.S. residents, torture of foreign detainees, expulsion even of refugees who are here legally .
The New Jersey Star-Ledger:
Donald Trump must apologize to Muslim Americans and to Jersey City for his untrue, divisive and reprehensible comments perpetuating an old rumor we thought had rightly died.
By repeating – and indeed embellishing – this hateful rumor, Trump once again ratchets up the ugliness in the current political climate.
Thousands and thousands of people in Jersey City did not cheer the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Period. End of story. There is no need to continue to "fact check'' his words.
Damon Linker at The Week:
In its nativism and xenophobia, in its willingness to use inflammatory, demonizing rhetoric against minorities, in its deployment of demagogic lies to whip up and mobilize populist fury and whet appetites for Blackshirt-style political violence — in all of these ways, the Trump campaign (along with its opportunistic imitators) is undeniably toying with fascism, as some commentators are beginning to recognize.
And most distressingly of all, an alarmingly large number of Americans appears to approve of the organized illiberalism.
The San Diego Union-Tribune:
Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, John Kasich and Mike Huckabee can address these legitimate concerns while also denouncing Trump for his ugly insistence on depicting Muslim-Americans as a fifth column with no loyalties beyond religious ones.
If that happens, maybe the Trump bubble will finally burst, and maybe the briefly successful campaign of the first former reality television star to run for president will be looked back on as a passing storm.
Or maybe he will be looked back on as someone who defined modern Republicanism to millions of impressionable voters as mean, dishonest and hallucinatory.
And on a final note, this from Ryan Cooper at The Week:
As of August, Trump had most of the ingredients for a fascist movement: the victim complex, the fervent nationalism, the obsession with national purity and cleansing purges, and the cult of personality. He was missing the organized violence, a left-wing challenge strong enough to push traditional conservative elites into his camp, support for wars of aggression, and a full-bore attack on democracy itself. He's made much progress on all but the last one.
