In their coverage of Trump’s appearance last week at The Economic Club of New York, the major broadcast evening news programs completely failed to inform viewers about the disgraced ex-president’s dangerously incoherent response to a simple question about child care policy.
There is a name for this type of sanitized coverage — “sanewashing” — and it’s a disservice to the public.
On September 5, Trump appeared at The Economic Club of New York for an event hosted by the group’s board and trustees. Over the course of more than an hour of often-confusing and disorganized remarks, Trump touched on various economic, tax, and trade policy talking points with a particular focus on making tariffs (taxes paid by consumers on imported goods) a centerpiece of his second term agenda. At the end of the event’s question and answer session, Trump was asked to name a “specific piece of legislation” he would champion as president “to make child care more affordable” and he proceeded to ramble for nearly 2 minutes.
Media Matters reviewed archived video and transcript of the September 5 and 6 editions of ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS’ Evening News, and NBC’s Nightly News and found zero mentions of Trump’s incoherent answer when questioned about child care policy.
Broadcast news completely ignored Trump’s “gibberish” response, which the questioner — Economic Club trustee Reshma Saujani — described as “incomprehensible” and later said was proof that Trump is “not fit to be president.”
Rather than discussing any of this, each broadcast network on September 5 focused instead on Trump’s proposed agency tasked with government “efficiency” while dressing up the contours of Trump’s economic agenda:
- On ABC’s World News Tonight, Trump’s appearance at the Economic Club garnered only a few seconds of notice, with anchor David Muir and correspondent Rachel Scott focusing on Trump using the appearance to float his future “government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government.”
- On CBS’ Evening News, correspondent Robert Costa outlined Trump’s scattershot second-term agenda of tax cuts, reduced regulations, and heavy tariffs on imported goods, but he made no mention of Trump’s rambling tariff-centric response when asked how he would address child care costs. CBS’ coverage also focused on Trump’s proposed “efficiency” agency.
- On NBC’s Nightly News, correspondent Vaughn Hillyard claimed Trump was “zeroing in on a top issue for voters: the economy,” and included video of Trump mocking Harris for purportedly “copying” his plan to cut taxes for tipped workers. After also discussing Trump’s proposed “efficiency agency,” NBC pivoted to another segment on the economy focused on Trump and Harris’ shared opposition to a foreign acquisition of U.S. Steel.
Viewers of broadcast evening news programs would have no idea that Trump’s disastrous appearance earlier that day in New York featured perplexing comments from end to end. Reporters didn’t just have Trump’s incoherent nonanswer on child care policy to choose from — as University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers pointed out, Trump’s response when asked about the fiscal impact of his proposals was equally incomprehensible.
Trump’s bizarre rant in New York was also unmentioned on the September 6 editions of each program on ABC, CBS, and NBC, even though a monthly jobs report published earlier that morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics might have given reporters a good hook to discuss Trump’s unintelligible views on the state of the economy.
And the problem wasn’t limited to broadcast news. The headline writers and reporters at several major mainstream news outlets still did their best to treat Trump’s inane responses on child care as if they were possibly serious proposals:
Trump’s wild tangent about tariffs and child care did not even register in The Wall Street Journal’s analysis of his meandering hour on stage, with the Journal bizarrely claiming “he largely stayed on message” during the event.