As Ruth Ben-Ghiat says, the wall-to-wall lying we're seeing Trump engage in right now as the election nears is par for the course for authoritarians, who have to control reality for their followers. She says that "Trump’s campaign … is better understoo...

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"They are cranky because 'their relevance relies on being the sole arbiters of asking the questions.' But in the current media ecosystem, people have lots of options that are not the NYT and Politico. And that makes the NYT and Politico sad. ...

Harris doesn’t have any obligation to help the mainstream media hand the election to Trump again.

#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/8

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

And as Trump's niece Mary Trump reminds us, his lies are lethal, including for his followers:

"In my first book, Too Much and Never Enough, I wrote:

'If [Donald] can in anyway profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.'

That’s really all we need to know."

#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation
/9

The Bringer of Death

Disinformation and the danger we face

(www.marytrump.org)

[kathylk@universeodon.com]

@wdlindsy

Maybe Mary Trump should be holding her own rallies.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@KathyLK She may be doing that in her own way by blogging, I think.

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@wdlindsy

Somehow interviews with the NYT and other corporate media evolved into gotcha sessions focusing on insipid nonsense, and now they are super cranky because no one wants to sit down with them to be screwed over. They did it to themselves.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@mastodonmigration They did it to themselves seems so right to me. So much of their failure is rooted in colossal arrogance, which is always blinding.

[dave_goldsmith@mastodon.scot]

@wdlindsy

And Trump has been doing this his entire life, even before he entered politics.

Trump's motto, taught to him by Roy Cohn, is: "The whole world is a con, and only suckers play by the rules."

[martinvermeer@fediscience.org]

@wdlindsy So very perceptive.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

Evan Hurst writes,

"Josh Marshall tweeted a screengrab last night from the New York Times, saying, 'This arrangement and editorial gloss may stand for, capture the journalism about the entire campaign.'”

The screengrab is below.

#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #NewYorkTimes #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/10

New York Times Pretty Sure Trump Just Loves Science! Something Real Shifty About Kamala, Though.

This is getting worse, not better.

(www.wonkette.com)

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"We don’t know what kind of malignant sickness is metastasizing throughout the political newsroom at the Times. And we don’t know what’s going to happen on November 5.

But if Kamala Harris loses, the New York Times’s absolute failure to meet the historical moment — not just this year, but ever since 2015 — will be a big part of the story of how the United States of America ended up where it ended up."

#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #NewYorkTimes #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/11

[eberhofer@defcon.social]

@wdlindsy wow - utter dereliction of journalistic duty was my phrase so far.

This is worse - it's, like, prime spreader of propaganda? Or co-conspiracy?

#MoronikaForMorons

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

Mary Trump notes that Washington Post has jumped on Kamala Harris for saying she would like to see Medicare expanded to cover long-term at-home care. WaPo asks where the money will come from.

Mary Trump responds:

"Here’s a question I never hear the corporate media ask: What is the cost of not addressing an issue that affects millions of Americans?"

#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #WashingtonPost #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/12

https://www.marytrump.org/p/what-it-costs-us?

[djhdjh@mastodon.social]

@wdlindsy

maybe they are just too intellectual

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"In the wake of two devastating hurricanes, Helene and Milton, that’s a question we should be asking in context of climate change: What is the cost of failing to address the increasingly dangerous combination of increasing air temperatures, warming waters, and rising sea levels in terms of loss of human life, destruction of property, and the quality of our existence?"

#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #WashingtonPost #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence #Helene #Milton #hurricanes #ClimateChange
/13

[phoenixgee@soc.k512.studio]

@wdlindsy This is like looking at the Pravda pre-1989...

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@PhoenixGee Indeed, it is.

[patricks@mas.to]

@wdlindsy They never ask how we're going to pay for corporate tax cuts either

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@DJHDJH It's not clear which particular excerpt in the thread you're responding to. Since your comment follows Evan Hurst speaking about New York Times, I'll assume — but I may be wrong — that "they" refers to NYT.

To which I'd reply: Yes, they think they're highly intellectual.

But what we think about ourselves and the reality of ourselves is often highly disconnected, especially when arrogance distorts our self-understanding.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@patricks Never. That question is ONLY ever asked of Democrats. Never Republicans.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@eberhofer A good phrase — utter dereliction, indeed.