Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
Following the latest racist outburst from President Donald Trump -- this time targeting four Democratic congresswomen -- many in the mainstream media quickly moved on from covering the despicableness of Trump’s comments to entertaining the possibility that his attacks were evidence of a high-level political strategy to sow division among Democrats in Congress. In doing so, the press is assisting in Trump’s attempts to rebrand his open bigotry as strategy and giving cover to a Republican Party that allows it.
The morning of July 14, Trump sent out a series of tweets that told four Democratic congresswomen -- Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) -- to “go back” to their home countries. (All four congresswomen are American citizens, and three of them were born in the United States.) Trump’s racism immediately became a major news story, although some outlets struggled to call it what it clearly was -- e.g., The New York Times deployed a tortured euphemism “racially infused politics.”
After much hand-wringing over what to call Trump’s racism, some mainstream commenters moved on to pushing the notion that Trump’s comments were not mere bigotry but evidence of a planned political calculus -- an attempt to heighten the disagreements that Democratic lawmakers are reportedly having about political strategy.
By the morning of July 15, right-wing defenders of the president's racism were already pushing this narrative:
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) July 15, 2019
Just hours later, the narrative jumped to mainstream press when NBC News published an article by Jonathan Allen who claimed that Trump’s racist attacks were part of a plan to “quickly ... flip the script” and heighten his reelection chances:
Analysis: President Trump wants the Democratic Party stuck to its progressive fringe so that he can portray his opponents as too extreme to lead the country.
As Democrats defended Speaker Pelosi, he moved quickly, sending some tweets to flip the script. https://t.co/xRu5lpX7NO— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) July 15, 2019
And so on the narrative went:
This fight w/ the squad is exactly where Trump wants 2020 fought. The more media/Dems engage him, the better for him. All this fight does is re-polarize the partisans and leaves the up-for-grabs voters (who want to hear about bread-butter issues ) tuned out.
— amy walter (@amyewalter) July 16, 2019
He is also extremely Team 11 Dimensional Chess. pic.twitter.com/CVU4rS2Nn2
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 16, 2019
CBC headline: “Tweets condemned as racist are part of Trump's plan, and strategists say it may work":
Mainstream outlets have an insatiable urge to assign a higher meaning to Trump’s daily outrages -- perhaps out of an instinctual attempt to make some sense of his presidency. But the best explanation for Trump’s Twitter outbursts remains that he spends a lot of time watching Fox News and then offering his often instant reactions.
About 20 minutes before this morning's grotesque Trump rant, Fox & Friends ran a segment about “the Squad” and aired comments Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley (both born in the U.S.) made at Netroots Nation.
Left, Fox & Friends Sunday, 8:06 a.m.
Right, Trump, 8:27 a.m. pic.twitter.com/BPClb9Ir1x— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 14, 2019