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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 “sane-washing.”
Sane-washing occurs when the media takes a typically incoherent speech by Trump and makes him seem like he’s just another normal politician.
When, time after time, the media “sane-washes” Trump going off the rails, the resulting double standard is that Kamala Harris must be twice as good. As author Michael Eric Dyson describes it to MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell,
“We’re grading Trump on a curve, and we’re grading him with a great dispensation of grace and mercy, ‘Ah, that’s just Donald being Donald,’ whereas she has to be held to a higher standard.”
For example, while you and I watched Trump fly completely off the rails debating Kamala, spewing false and racist conspiracy theories about legal Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, The New York Times headline blithely offered a false equivalency: “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 must fight this pernicious form of election disinformation! Demand the networks, media, and press: Stop “sane-washing” Donald Trump now!
We’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 event in Wisconsin, Trump made the preposterous claim that children are getting sex-change operations at school. He said,
“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 your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this?”
No, we can’t imagine this, because nothing like this has ever happened! No school nurse has ever performed a gender-affirming surgery! Give me a break!
But how did Reuters report this absurdity? They ran it under the anodyne headline, “Trump Revs Up Small-Town Base in Wisconsin.”
Of course, those of us who closely follow political news know how disconnected from reality headlines like this are. But unfortunately, the undecided voters who will decide this election tend not to follow politics closely, and this is especially true of young people.
We must hold the media to account! Demand the media stop “sane-washing” Donald Trump by adding your name now!
Thank you for advocating for a standard measure of sanity in the presidential race.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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