Dear John,

There’s a new term catching on to describe how the mainstream media has normalized Donald Trump’s increasingly dangerous lies and extremism.

It’s called “sanewashing.”

Sanewashing occurs when the media takes a typically incoherent speech by Trump and makes him seem like he’s just another normal politician.

Take, for example, how the New York Times covered last week’s presidential debate. You and I watched Trump fly completely off the rails with a whirlwind of bizarre and racist conspiracy theories about stolen elections, crowd sizes, and Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs.

Here’s how the Times headline described it: “Harris and Trump Bet on Their Own Sharply Contrasting Views of America.”

What? Is that a joke!? I nearly spit out my coffee when I saw it.

We created Inequality Media Civic Action in order to educate the public through social media while bypassing the traditional corporate media filter — and between now and Election Day, we’re ramping up our biggest election-year campaign ever to make sure voters know the truth.

Will you donate $5 a month to help educate the public, overcome the corporate media’s seemingly incessant “sanewashing,” and defeat Donald Trump?

Yes, Robert! I’ll start a monthly donation.

No, I’m sorry, I can’t chip in monthly.

I’ve seen it over and over again. Trump will hold an event and spout unhinged nonsense for an hour or more — and the corporate media will find some policy detail or brief moment of teleprompter-assisted lucidity and elevate that as the headline.

Here’s another example: At a recent Trump event in Wisconsin, he made the preposterous claim that children are getting sex-change operations at school, saying “Can you imagine you’re a parent, and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school’ and son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this?”

It’s a disgusting transphobic lie, and the rest of the speech was full of similar racist and hate-filled rants that would have dominated coverage about any other politician.

But Reuters ran this absurd headline on their story covering the event: “Trump Revs Up Small-Town Base in Wisconsin.”

Give me a break.

Of course, people who closely follow political news know how disconnected from reality headlines like this are. The problem is that the undecided voters who will decide this election tend not to follow politics closely at all, especially young people.

Inequality Media Civic Action is using our huge following across social media to reach these voters — including with a new video we just launched called “The 10 Worst Things About The Trump Presidency” that’s blowing up across YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms with 11 times more views (including from new audiences) than what we usually see.

Now, with Election Day fast approaching, we need to ramp up our efforts to reach the tens of millions of voters we need to persuade to defeat Trump.

Will you donate $5 a month to help educate the public, overcome the corporate media’s “sanewashing,” and defeat Donald Trump?

Yes, Robert! I’ll start a monthly donation.

No, I’m sorry, I can’t chip in monthly.

Thank you for joining with us,

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action