We begin today’s roundup with James Fallows at The Atlantic, who calls out the media for not learning from its 2016 mistakes and details the flaws in their 2020 coverage:
Many of our most influential editors and reporters are acting as if the rules that prevailed under previous American presidents are still in effect. But this president is different; the rules are different; and if it doesn’t adapt, fast, the press will stand as yet another institution that failed in a moment of crucial pressure. [...]
[T]here is certainly no reason to present Trump’s claims on equal footing with other information. Once again, that is because the track record indicates that if Trump or one of his press representatives say something, it’s probably not true. And yet the instinct is so hard to resist, the impulse to add “some critics say …” so powerful.
Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times describes Donald Trump’s shredding of civil liberties:
Trump has repeatedly sent American law enforcement the message that members of antifa are terrorists who should be treated with extreme violence, and that protests against racial injustice and his administration are dominated by antifa.
There are many ways the presidential election could go sideways, leading to mass demonstrations over ballot counting. In the same Fox News interview in which he gloated over Reinoehl’s death, Trump was asked what he would do if his opponents “riot” on election night.
“We’ll put them down very quickly,” he said. All those who’ve demonstrated against this president should know that what’s done to antifa today can be done to them tomorrow.
Meanwhile, on the climate crisis, Eugene Robinson looks at how Trump’s rejection of science is threatening lives:
One of the most tragic impacts of the Trump presidency has been to undermine trust in science, and thus in the best tools we have to fight the warming of our world; witness the thousands of people who attended his indoor campaign rallyin Nevada on Sunday without wearing masks. Trump has given his supporters permission to believe wild, paranoid, completely untrue rumors about the West Coast fires — including that some of the Oregon blazes were deliberately started by members of antifa. Inventing scapegoats is always much easier than accepting responsibility.
And on the pandemic front as well, the administration’s actions (and inactions) are still threatening lives, as Ryan Cooper details at The Week:
The most jaw-dropping thing Trump has done recently is hold anotherindoor, in-person rally in Nevada — over the furious objections of state officials. (Federalism and subsidiarity are just one of many things that conservatives pretend to believe in if and only if it benefits them personally.) This comes after his indoor rally in Tulsa months ago likely caused hundreds of new infections, and even might have killed Herman Cain. But not to worry, says Trump, he personally is far away from the baying masses, so probably won't be infected. "I'm on a stage and it’s very far away," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "And so I’m not at all concerned." That evinces not only a sociopathic disregard for the welfare of his own supporters, but also unfamiliarity with the latest evidence, which suggests the virus may be fully airborne and thus able to travel substantial distances indoors.
On a final note, don’t miss Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Alexander Vindman:
Ultimately, he says, he wants to put his knowledge of authoritarianism to good use, “before it’s too late.”
“Authoritarianism is able to take hold not because you have a strong set of leaders who are forcing their way,” he says. “It’s more about the fact that we can give away our democracy. In Hungary and Turkey today, in Nazi Germany, those folks gave away their democracy, by being complacent.”
He goes on, “Truth is a victim in this administration, I think it’s Orwellian—the ultimate goal of this president is to get you to disbelieve what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard. My goal now is to remind people of this.”