Mainstream Media Sanewashing

all for a couple of weeks. Now you have heard me use the term sane washing, right, This idea that the media has been interpreting Donald Trump's absolute, incoherent ramblings and dissecting them and then presenting the public with what they deem to be the kernels of truth and intellect

that are at the core of his ramblings. And journalist Parker malloy coined the term in The New Republic, say washing this idea that we're going to take incoherent and crazy ramblings and that everyone from the New York Times to the Associated Press and others are going to make sense out of Donald Trump's nonsense and sell it to us as if he's a normal candidate and this election is in a normal place, so that they can give us the horse race bullshit that they love to do.

The reality is is that Donald Trump is not sane. He is not normal, and the media needs to stop fucking treating him that way. And frankly, you know, I set this on Monday with regard to Maggie Haberman and her recent comments at NPR talking about how the left is going after, you know, journalists and undermining people's faith in journalism. No, your fucking Saine washing is undermining people's

faith in journalism. And they are realizing right that you have become absolutely unreliable because you need to hear Donald Trump for yourself. And then you would wonder how the fuck did they get a topic and a headline on economic policy when all the man did would spout the

word tariffs and say the word economy. But if you were just reading what these outlets write and not listening to what Donald Trump is saying at these rallies, saying in these spaces, you would think that he's completely normal, when in fact, he fucking is not. And most recently, right, Donald Trump was speaking to a Jewish group to where he told them that if he loses this election, it is going to be Jewish people's fault and things could

get wild. Wait what, yep, folks, that actually happened. He actually said it. And if you have not watched the

episode of Democracy Ish from Friday, September twentieth. I urge you to go ahead and listen or head over to my YouTube channel at Danielle Moody Underscore and watch that episode so that you can see that video that watch and I discuss over there, because folks, let me tell you, he is planting the seeds for violence as well as all of the election interference that is happening in Georgia, in Nebraska and in other places. They are fit to take this election regardless of what it is that the

people vote for. They are no longer going to take our votes as our bond. They are going to manipulate, they are going to lie, they are going to use stochastic terrorism and more because they cannot win without it. So coming up next my conversation with journalists Parker Maloy. I am super excited to welcome I think for the first time. I'm not one hundred percent sure, Parker, because I talk to you in my head after I read, after I read your pieces all the time, I'm just like,

m hmm, that's right. But to welcome to ok F Daily for I think the first time award winning journalist who writes at the New Republic who has a newsletter called The present Age that you all can subscribe to, and as most recently written a piece that allowed for us to put a definition, a name, and a definition to what the media has been doing around Donald Trump, which is sane washing. In Parker Maloy's piece at The

New Republic, how the media sanitizes Trump's insanity. The political press's efforts to rationalize Trump's incoherent statements are eroding our shared reality and threatening in form democracy. Parker, I come to you today after a weekend where, according to reports, there was a second attempt on Donald Trump's life. A man was found with a rifle and a scope in the bushes at one of his golf horses and has

been arrested. And Donald Trump found himself on social media talking about how the rhetoric on the left is what has led to these attempts on his life, with other Republicans echoing this same foolishness or what I like to call what is that word, oh, a lie about the rhetoric on the left. Talk to us about this moment in the context of sinewashing and how we find ourselves else here.

And in ninety nine percent of cases that's fine. You know, if you're talking to someone whose house just got demolished by a hurricane, you're not going to quote their rambling statement with all the ums and ohs and all that verbatim. You're gonna write something like John Smith, whose house was just lost in the hurricane, said he was devastated. And you know, but when it comes to Donald Trump, doing

that has a nasty side effect. You're essentially sanitizing what he's saying, because in his case, he's never just saying that he agrees to a debate. He says he agrees to a debate against Comrade Kamala Harris and the radical left Democrats, Crooked Joe Biden, and ABC fake news. You know. So that's kind of this idea of sainwashing, where you'll take this rambling statement and then you'll present it in

a way that's made for the general public. You know, it presents him as is more put together than he actually is. And I think that over the weekend this past week, basically the town of Springfield, Ohio has been terrorized by a lot of this language that Trump in vance and a lot of others on the right have been pushing, arguing that Haitian immigrants have been stealing people's pets and eating them. And there's no factual basis to this. It's just a racist lie. And so they've been pushing that.

And then on Sunday do you have someone show up to Trump's goll of course, apparently with the gun, and the Secret Service considers an assassination attempt, but they stopped the guy before he got there, you know, which is

great and all. But then Trump takes to truth social as he does, and he writes this thing where the first half I find fascinating because he says the rhetoric lies exemplified by the false statements made by Comrade Kamala Harris during the rigged and highly partisan ABC debate and all the ridiculous lawsuits specifically designed to inflict damage on Joe's then Kamala's political opponent, me has taken politics in our country to a whole new level of hatred, abuse,

and distrust because of this communist left rhetoric. The bullets are flying and it will only get worse. And then he goes and starts talking about He says, allowing millions of people from places unknown to invade and take over our country is an unpardonable sin. Our borders must be closed and the terrorist, criminals and mentally insane immediately removed from American cities towns to ported back to their countries of origin. We want people to come and through countries.

Blah blah, blah, blah blah. So he has this thing where he's complaining about rhetoric as he uses some of the most wild rhetoric possible. He's adding insults to people's names. He's trying to blame Democrats for what they've been doing. But one thing I find really kind of funny about this is that it was just, you know, over the weekend, JD. Vance was asked about Trump's rhetoric, and he said, to try to distance himself from the people making bomb threats

against places in Springfield. So are we not allowed to talk about these problems because some psychopaths are threatening violence,

and that was his excuse. And so I think that right now there's this sense after the assassination attempt where someone actually shot at him, the press kind of went in to this kind of protective cocoon surrounding him, and it was it was very much, you know, they were projecting all of these things onto him, saying he had changed, he was nicer, he was toning it down, and he wanted the whole country to tone it down. And of course that didn't last.

to call you all sorts of names. He's allowed to demonize whatever group he wants, and you're not allowed to say that that's bad and it's insulting. It's insulting to voters, to readers, to journalists, and I hope that journalists see through that and don't parrot that line.

what you're saying is not true. But what is true is that, in the course of a week that you all, you and Donald Trump have been escalating the rhetoric, there have in fact been bomb threats. There have in fact been hospitals that have been closed down. His response to her rightfully connecting the dots and putting together the timeline for the viewers was She's disgusting for even insinuating that

his rhetoric could lead to any type of violence. So I'm like, how, And I honestly I think that what I am seeing because frankly, this is not top story today, the assassination attempt. There are like eighteen other stories that are trending on top of this. So what does that say to you, Parker, when you're looking at and we follow what is trending, what people are in conversation about.

You know, I see more people saying something to the effect of it seems that every time that's Donald Trump is down in the polls, something you know, outlandish happens right to keep his name in the press. And so are you sensing a bit of exhaustion, a bit of like hole humness with regard to something that, let's just be honest, ninety year years ago happening would have literally stopped the presses.

Trump just consuming their lives. You know. There's an Onion article written from Trump's perspective that came out and I think twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen, and it's headlined with something like happy Monday, everyone, I'm here to infect every moment of your daily life by Donald Trump, you know, and it was about how everything everything from sports to culture to just everything he had put himself into it, and I think people are kind of just tired of it.

I mean, obviously, it's horrible that a guy showed up to his club with a gun, and I think that obviously it has to be covered. But I think a lot of people are just like, I'm exhausted, get this guy out of my news. They want to they want to hit mute on Donald Trump. Yeah, they just want to move on. And I think that that's really what the Harris campaign has going for it in a big way, is that a lot of people are just tired of

Donald Trump being everywhere all of the time. And it seemed for a brief moment at the beginning of the Biden administration that there was maybe hope that Trump would would kind of fade away, and that was you know, I'm sure that there were a fair number of Republicans who hoped that that would happen too, because they don't have to then push back against him, they don't have to make excuses for him. It was a chance to

move on, but they didn't take it. And Trump came back and they embraced him and they had him speaking at events, and you know, I think it worked to his advantage. Honestly that he was suspended from Facebook and Twitter for as long as he was because it helped people kind of forget forget Trump, forget his how outlandish he was, which allowed him to kind of creep back in and it's like, oh, Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad. Maybe he wasn't everywhere, maybe he didn't infect our lives

that way. And then he starts running for president again and everything is just Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump constantly, and so yeah, I mean after that, after even after the first assassination attempt where someone shot at him and killed another person, after that, it's kind of amazing how that just sort of faded in right away. Yeah, it's there was just so little curiosity about it. It's just like, well, that happened.

you buy a ticket once you're amazed, ooh ah. But if I'm going to the circus every single week and there is no change in the performer or the performances, then at some point in the time, I'm going to be like, I actually hate this and not even I don't like the circus and I don't want to go. I actually hate it now. Yeah, And I think that that is where we are with Donald Trump absolutely.

And obviously, like we follow politics closely, so it's like we'll be aware of all of this, but it won't just be everywhere all of the time, And that I think is really where the public is.

his life is how quickly they fade. Is that also not just a testament to our level of exhaustion, but also going back to your piece sanitizing the amount of violence that we've been willing to ingest and just considered normal in our everyday politics. Yeah, And I think that that's it speaks to how we're kind of desensitized to everything that's happening around us, and that's not necessarily.

it's the same way if every day. You know, Hillary Clinton one time said that half of Trump's supporters were deplorable while the other half were you know, everyone always leaves that that second half of her quote, where she's like, the other half you can't write off. So she said that once and it was news for weeks. You know, Trump says something completely bonkers and it's in the news for a couple hours because he's going to say something else,

because he's gonna he's going to bury it. And everything that he does, it's just one thing on top of another, on top of another, and we eventually, you know, you start to tune it out, and even the big things, even even someone showing up at his club with a gun, ends up being something that the public is just tuned out of. And you know, I don't blame the public for wanting to tune out of that.

that's where journalists like yourself come into play. So Parker, thank you so much for your work, for making the time to join me here on WOKF. Please tell folks how they can follow you and just stay up to date with all of your amazing content.