I have long complained about how the press has treated Donald Trump with kid gloves while badgering President Biden and his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. They tend not to ask Trump clarifying questions while overdoing it in the case of Biden and his press secretary.
Sometimes, the press attempts to clarify Trump’s incoherent pronouncements themselves. This process has precipitated the use of a new term, “sane washing.” That is when the press engages in trying to make sense of Trump’s “crazy talk.”
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell used this term to discuss a seriously problematic explanation of Trump’s rhetoric by none other than the venerable New York Times.
The NY Times article referred to a meandering, hard-to-follow answer to a question on childcare at the Economic Club of New York a few days ago. Asked how he would help American working families stressed by the cost of child care, “Trump wandered through a thicket of unfinished sentences, non sequitur clauses and confusing logic that tied the answer to tariffs on imports.”
The so-called “confession” came in a passage in the article where the Times reflected on the former president’s recent word salad response to the question about how he would make child care more affordable.
The Times wrote: “Often his mangled statements are summarized in news accounts in ways that do not give the full picture of how baffling they can be. Quoting them at length, though, can provide additional context.”
The newspaper then included a lengthy quote of Trump’s incoherent rambling:
“It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that — because the child care is, child care, it’s, couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care.”
The NY Times “explained” the statement in a quintessential bit of sane washing.
“What he seemed to be saying was that he would raise so much money by imposing tariffs on imported goods that the country could use the proceeds to pay for child care. In itself, that would be a disputable policy assumption.”
There are two problems here. One is the obvious sane washing. The other is the Times calling Trump’s obvious misunderstanding of tariffs “disputable.” That is not disputable. It is flat-out false—a fact that is widely known. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods that American citizens pay when they purchase some imported goods.
I agree with some media critics who indicate that when journalists try to make sense of Trump’s pronouncements, when they may not be sensical, they help Trump’s ideas sound more coherent than they are.
