“Trump did not answer the question I asked him at his press conference. But if he had, that’s what I think he would have said and meant.”
This is one X post razor from the New York Times Pitchbot, a parody account run by a professor using the pseudonym Doug J. Balloon. What makes it so funny is that it’s so timely. Older media such as New York Times they’re either too slanderous to do real journalism when it comes to the nonsense Donald Trump spews on a daily basis, or they’re too afraid of him. And given his penchant for attacking the media and directing his army of assorted white supremacists and thugs to commit violence—like when they stormed the Capitol shouting that they wanted to hang his then vice president, Mike Pence—maybe mainstream journalists are right to fear Trump.
But do they have to be that useful?
It’s been almost eight years since Trump was first elected and the media still doesn’t know how to solve a problem like this. To say the man is a liar would be an understatement. During a press conference on August 11, Trump lied 162 times over the course of 64 minutes, according to NPR. That’s about two and a half lies a minute. Every 30 seconds he spoke, another lie came out. They ranged from the truly ridiculous, like his incessant fabrications about the size of his rally crowds, to the kind of misogyny we’ve come to expect when it comes to how Trump talks about Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee—she is not smart; she is incompetent; and she is also black?
He’s lying. Everyone knows he’s lying. So why does the mainstream media continue to take what he says at face value? And even worse, perhaps: Why the media keeps picking up on him it doesn’t say and turn them into things he power they said if he wasn’t such a puffy dumbass?
Maybe it’s my fault: I was unaware that it was the media’s job to make a profoundly stupid and awful man look palatable to mainstream Americans.
But that’s what they seem to do. Last week, an NBC News reporter asked Trump a question about his policy position on access to mifepristone, and his answer was utter bullshit. Gibberish. Incomprehensible garbage.
This is what he said in response to a question from NBC Garrett Haack on the national abortion ban and whether he would be open to ordering the FDA to revoke the license for mifepristone:
You could do things that will be – they will be filled, absolutely, and those things are quite open and human, but you have to be able to have a vote. And all I want to do is give everybody a vote, and the votes are being taken as we speak.
What is he talking about? Seriously, what is that supposed to mean?
Haake then asked, “Is that something you would consider?” to which I say, literally, what?
It is What would trump think anything? What are you referring to, Garrett? His insistence that everyone have a vote? Or some nebulous stuff “that would absolutely complement” but that would also be “quite open and human.” What does this even mean? Where I come from, if someone gives a response like that, you have to follow up with, “What the hell are you talking about?” Or, if unlike me, you’re a professional, “Can you explain what you mean?”
But of course Haake didn’t do that, leaving Trump to continue rambling on to give everyone a vote: “There’s a lot of things on a human basis that you can do outside of that, but you also have to give a vote.” Vote for who? And for what?
If Trump is reelected, the fact that he really doesn’t care about abortion means he’ll do whatever the Christian right wants.
Re-read Trump’s answers. Sound like a person who knows what mifepristone is? Of course not. Because he doesn’t.
So why did journalists treat this response as if it were substantive? Perhaps it was unfair of me to open this comment with a tweet from an account that mercilessly mocks them New York Timesfor in all justice to the Gray Lady, the Times is one of the few outlets that didn’t have a headline about how Trump might be open to banning mifepristone.
But the Washington Post did. And he did the same NBC News. And Voice. Even the New Republic he recognized Trump’s response to the question as arrogance, but then gave him an unnecessary favor by reporting the exchange as if he had made some political statement about mifepristone.
He hadn’t. This is because he does not know what mifepristone is. He doesn’t know what they were asking him for. And what more? Even if he knew – he doesn’t care.
Trump doesn’t care if mifepristone is banned or not. He doesn’t even care if abortion is legal or criminalized. The only thing he cares about when it comes to abortion is whether his record on it and the furious response to the Supreme Court overturning his Roe v. Wade two years ago will keep him from winning the upcoming election. Because if it does, it keeps him in the crosshairs of various state and federal prosecutors like Jack Smith and Fani Willis, who are trying to hold him accountable for his many crimes.
The man is lying. And he doesn’t know what mifepristone is. So can we stop pretending it does?
If Trump is reelected, the fact that he really doesn’t care about abortion means he’ll do whatever the Christian right wants. Right now they are angry with him because even though he brags about the kill Roehe knows abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, so he’s tried to distance himself from his past positions. But that’s not because she’s moving to the abortion center. It’s because he needs to win so he can avoid prison for his many crimes.
So, to the journalists out there covering this ongoing human rights crisis—and I’ll continue to say that the criminalization of abortion after the overthrow Roe has sparked a legal human rights and health care crisis that Donald Trump has no intention of improving — can you please stop helping this man? Just stop. Just quote what it says. Ask follow-up questions. And if he doesn’t or can’t answer your question, then report it. Just please, for the love of the old gods and the new, stop helping him. You are embarrassing yourself.
Will he ban the abortion pill? Yes. But does he know what it is?
No.
