‘The Woman in Michigan’

James Fallows, writing for The Atlantic:

It’s nearly three-and-a-half years later. Everything we saw about Trump on the campaign trail we have seen from him in the White House, including the limitless fantasy-lying.

I submit that these three-and-a-half years later, much of the press has still not rebuilt itself, to cope with a time or a person like this. Or with a political party like the subservient Trump-era GOP.

To choose only a small subset of examples, from only the past three days’ worth of history, here are some illustrations. These are words and deeds that, each on its own, would likely have been major black-mark news events in other eras. Now they are just part of the daily onrush.

As Fallows repeatedly points out, the news media has normalized much of Trump’s aberrant behavior — not just including, but perhaps especially so, during this pandemic crisis — as “Trump being Trump”. It is in fact Trump being Trump, but Trump being Trump is anything but normal.

★ Monday, 30 March 2020