We begin with deadly chaos on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Brutal eruption of violence sparked by white nationalists.
You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest.
Protesting very quietly.
Jews will not replace us!
Very fine people, on both sides.
Graphic images like this, showing 20-year-old Deandre Harris being beaten with sticks, going
viral.
There was a group on this side, you can call them the left, that came violently attacking
the other group.
The driver, charged with murder, accused, of plowing his car into a crowd of counterdemonstrators.
I think there’s blame on both sides and I have no doubt about it.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of Trump’s response to the white supremacist
rally in Charlottesville.
White supremacists are celebrating.
We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.
And Republicans are once again scrambling to distance themselves from the president.
But what stuck out to me the most is how news networks have covered Trump’s comments.
In the last Strikethrough episode, I talked about “normalcy bias,” and how political
journalists seem to be unphased by the subjects they cover.
But that hasn’t been true this week.
A lot of reporters and commentators seem genuinely stunned by Trump’s comments.
Folks, what I just saw gave me the wrong kind of chills.
Honestly, I’m a bit shaken from what I just heard.
I think we saw the president’s true colors today and I’m not sure they were red, white,
and blue.
He’s now given safe harbor to Nazis, to white supremacists.
He’s a disgrace.
The president of the United States revealed so clearly who and what he really is.
The president of the United States traded away the moral authority of the office and
lent support to those who would destroy the values of this country.
It’s awful.
That kind of reaction is unusual.
I don’t know what to say tonight.
I usually have something clever, something smart.
I’m just hurt.
And I think a lot of people are hurt tonight.
And it’s got me thinking of a unique question about journalism in the Trump era: How should
news networks treat a president who is profoundly immoral?
I know even asking that question will make a lot of people shut down.
There’s this expectation that journalists should stay neutral when covering the president,
even if they strongly disagree with him.
But Charlottesville is different.
What Trump is doing here is not the same as personal drama or a political scandal or even
a massive policy failure.
He’s challenging our most basic notions of right and wrong.
He’s suggesting that neo-Nazis are on the same moral footing as people who protest racism.
He’s saying that many attendees at a white supremacist rally are “very fine people.”
After Trump’s Tuesday press conference, many commentators argued that he had lost
the moral authority of the presidency.
This president seems to have completely abdicated the moral authority that should go with the
office of president.
But even that feels inadequate.
What he’s doing is actively using that authority to play defense for a hateful ideology, an
ideology that’s responsible for some of the biggest human rights atrocities in history.
I don’t know how you keep covering Trump the same way you’d cover any other president.
How do you go back to talking about politics as usual?
Keep airing White House press conferences about infrastructure or tax reform?
Keep inviting White House surrogates to defend Trump during panel debates?
How do you talk about Republicans, about Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who so far have
done nothing to punish Trump for his behavior, without describing them as enablers of white
supremacy?
I’m not asking those questions in the cute Voxy way where I’m going to tell you the
answer.
I genuinely don’t know.
We have truly entered into uncharted territory.
But here’s what I do know:
The reason we pay so much attention to the news is because it’s how we tell stories
about what’s happening, who we are, and what we stand for.
It’s not only immoral, it’s unpatriotic, it’s un-American.
The stories we hear in the news help shape our understanding of right and wrong, good
and evil.
I can’t believe people get up here on CNN and on other networks and defend, actually
try to defend, what Donald Trump said yesterday.
There is no defense for what he said yesterday.
What he said yesterday was disgusting.
But if news networks go back to normal after this, if they end up treating Charlottesville
as just another Trump misstep, our story about what happens when an American politician dabbles
in white supremacy will change.
Our norm about what’s allowed, what’s tolerable from a sitting president will change.
Trump’s response to Charlottesville tells us a lot about who he is as a person.
How news networks adjust from here on out will tell us a lot about who we are as a country.