Jamison Foser calls out the press:
A new Quinnipiac poll finds that Americans oppose Trump’s move to send troops to the streets of Washington, DC by a 15-point margin, with independents rejecting the move by nearly 30 points. That’s despite the fact that Quinnipiac’s poll question was biased in Trump’s favor. (More on that later.)
That poll finding might comes as a surprise to you. The nation’s media elites have been working overtime these last few weeks framing Trump’s moves not as an authoritarian effort to seize power but as a bold effort to fight crime – and insisting that the public is with Trump.
He is not trying to stop crime. He’s putting on a show to win the midterms. And the media is helping him.
Foser writes:
[P]undits and media outlets insist that Trump is fighting crime (though that plainly isn’t what he’s doing) and that the issue is a political winner for him (though most Americans dislike his actions and disapprove of his handling of crime.) So many of them frame the issue the same way – Trump has set a “trap” for Democrats, who will fall into it if they dare speak out against his authoritarian military occupation of America’s cities – you’d think they were reading from the same memo. Or sharing a single brain.
The wild thing is, the “trap” claim would be dumb even if the pundits and journalists are right about how the public will view Trump’s actions.
Let’s accept, for the sake of argument, the premise that Donald Trump sending the military into American cities on the pretext of fighting crime is something the American people will agree with (although, again, polls suggest they do not.) What does it even mean to say Democrats shouldn’t fall into the trap of opposing him? Are we supposed to believe that the president of the United States sending the military into American cities would go unnoticed were it not for criticism of the action by Democrats? Of course it wouldn’t. Are we supposed to believe that the American people would notice it, but wouldn’t realize they agree with it unless Democrats oppose it? Of course not. But that’s what you have to believe in order for the pundits play-acting at political strategy to make sense.
There are things political figures can choose not to talk about in hope that they’ll go away. Tanks and troops rolling through the streets of America’s largest cities on orders from an aspiring dictator is not one of them. People are going to notice. Better that they hear criticism of it instead of just praise.
He goes on to point out how politicians can talk about this, referencing JB Pritzker’s great speech this past week.
Pritzker chief of staff Anne Caprara later posted on Bluesky “I am begging my fellow Dems to emerge from the reflexive ‘it’s a trap’ position on these issues and realize that some things are very simple: the public doesn’t like the federal government turning the military against its own citizens. The public doesn’t like the armed occupation of a city. Period.”
Word.
Read the whole Fose piece. He’s one of the few calling out the media for their retreat to the “vibes” argument, this time over crime instead of eggs. For some reason it always seems to benefit Trump.
