Well, it certainly has been nice reconnecting with so many of you. And I’m both surprised and gratified by the response, especially since I have been careful not to oversell what we’re doing here. A reminder: this newsletter is going to be irregular, inconsistent, contrarian, often non-political, and usually accompanied by dog pictures. Actually, always accompanied by dog pictures.
So don’t expect a daily (or even weekly) outpouring of insight… and it’s not going to be a replacement for Morning Shots. But it’s going to be free, so there’s that.
Today, I’d thought I’d catch up on some of what I’ve been up to:
Chris Sununu's sad capitulation shows what's ahead for Republicans
Why the Ford Foundation's Trump-inspired Liz Cheney snub matters
Bill Barr Puts Party Over Country by Saying He’ll Vote for Trump
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But first, of course, the obligatory dog pictures, beginning with a flashback to our old guy, Pete, who was our alpha until the very end...
Here’s Pete with Baby Moses.
A typical scene when we made our morning hamburger run. (From left: Auggie, Eli, Pete.)
And this is the time of year when we start looking forward to this, as Auggie explains again that I should throw the damn ball.
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Probably not. And it may actually be worse.
To be sure, a lot of this is not the fault of journalists, given the fragmentation of media audiences and the economic headwinds facing the profession. The digital landscape has transformed the way information flows, and even the way our brains process it.
But it’s also clear that lessons were not learned, and with few notable exceptions, what we think of as “journalism” is being overwhelmed by forces that we only partially understand.
In our digitally chaotic world, relying on the reporting strategies of the past is like bringing the rules of chess to the Thunderdome.
ICYMI: Here’s is what I wrote for The Atlantic (where I’m sitting in for my friend, Tom Nichols, at the Atlantic Daily):
Lest we need reminding, this year’s election features a candidate who incited an insurrection, called for terminating sections of the Constitution, was found liable for what a federal judge says was “rape” as it is commonly understood, faces 88 felony charges, and—I’m tempted to add “etcetera” here, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? The volume and enormity of it all is impossible to take in.
The man is neither a riddle nor an enigma. He lays it all out there: his fawning over the world’s authoritarians, his threats to abandon our allies, his contempt for the rule of law, his intention to use the federal government as an instrument of retribution. Journalists must be careful not to give in to what Brian Klaas has called the “Banality of Crazy.” As I’ve written in the past, there have been so many outrages and so many assaults on decency that it’s easy to become numbed by the cascade of awfulness.
The former White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer points out a recent example in his newsletter: On a radio show earlier this month, Donald Trump bizarrely suggested that Joe Biden was high on cocaine when he delivered his energetic State of the Union address. It was a startling moment, yet several major national media outlets did not cover the story.
And when Trump called for the execution of General Mark Milley, it didn’t have nearly the explosive effect it should have. “I had expected every website and all the cable news shows to lead with a story about Trump demanding the execution of the highest military officer in the country,” this magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, told The Washington Post. “If Barack Obama or George W. Bush had done so, I’m sure [the news media] would have been all over it.” (Trump’s threats against Milley came after The Atlantic published a profile of Milley by Goldberg.)
Then there is the whole chaotic whirl of our digital age.
It is certainly possible that richer, more insightful media will emerge from the digital revolution, but we’re obviously not there now. Back in 2016, we worried that social media had become a vector for disinformation and bigotry, but since then, we’ve seen Elon Musk’s extraordinary ensh*ttification of X. In 2016, we worried (too late) about foreign interference and bots. In 2024, we are going to have to contend with deepfakes created by AI….
As Paul Farhi notes in The Atlantic, MAGA-friendly websites have experienced massive drops in traffic, but social media continues to thrive on negativity and providing dopamine hits of anger and fear. And of distraction—last week, the most-liked videos on TikTok about the presidential race included a video of a man singing to Biden and Trump’s visit to a Chick-fil-A.
To put it mildly, the arc of social media does not bend toward Edward R. Murrow–style journalism.
I offer some admittedly modest suggestions, because I don’t think there are any easy answers.
Getting it right this time does not mean that journalists need to pull their punches in covering Biden or become slavish defenders of his administration’s policies. In fact, that would only make matters worse. But perhaps we could start with some modest proposals.
First, we should redefine newsworthy. Klaas argues that journalists need to emphasize the magnitude rather than simply the novelty of political events. Trump’s ongoing attacks on democracy may not be new, but they define the stakes of 2024. So although live coverage of Trump rallies without any accompanying analysis remains a spectacularly bad idea, it’s important to neither ignore nor mute the dark message that Trump delivers at every event. As a recent headline in The Guardian put it, “Trump’s Bizarre, Vindictive Incoherence Has to Be Heard in Full to Be Believed.”
Why not relentlessly emphasize the truth, and publish more fact-checked transcripts that highlight his wilder and more unhinged rants? (Emphasizing magnitude is, of course, a tremendous challenge for journalists when the amplification mechanisms of the modern web—that is, social-media algorithms—are set by companies that have proved to be hostile to the distribution of information from reputable news outlets.)
The media challenge will be to emphasize the abnormality of Donald Trump without succumbing to a reactionary ideological tribalism, which would simply drive audiences further into their silos. Put another way: Media outlets will need all the credibility they can muster when they try to sound the alarm that none of this is normal. And it is far more important to get it right than to get it fast, because every lapse will be weaponized.
The commitment to “fairness” should not, however, mean creating false equivalencies or fake balance. (An exaggerated report about Biden’s memory lapses, for example, should not be a bigger story than Trump’s invitation to Vladimir Putin to invade European countries.)
In the age of Trump, it is also important that members of the media not be distracted by theatrics generally. (This includes Trump’s trial drama, the party conventions, and even—as David Frum points out in The Atlantic—the debates.) Relatedly, the stakes are simply too high to wallow in vibes, memes, or an obsessive focus on within-the-margin-of-error polls. Democracy can indeed be crushed by authoritarianism. But it can also be suffocated by the sort of trivia that often dominates social media.
And, finally, the Prime Directive of 2024: Never, ever become numbed by the endless drumbeat of outrages.
You can read the whole thing here.
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I also had some thoughts about Chris Sununu's sad capitulation:
In the primary, Sununu endorsed and campaigned for Nikki Haley but had said that, eventually, he would endorse the GOP nominee, which presumably meant he would be OK if it were Trump after all.
On Sunday, we saw what that Faustian bargain means.
By degrees, Trump has demanded that Republicans commit to ever more absurd positions and defend ever more egregious conduct. Not just Trump’s “locker room talk” of grabbing women but the actual finding by a federal judge that he was liable for sexually abusing and then defaming E. Jean Carroll. Not just his unhinged lying but also the alleged stolen documents, the threats against judges, the hush money for p*rn stars, a purported massive financial fraud, and, of course, his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
..
By any measure, it was an embarrassing episode for Sununu. But here’s the point: It’s not just Sununu. This is what’s in store for the entire Republican Party.
In 2024, any Republican who backs Trump will be in the same position as Sununu. Every Republican at every level — up and down the ballot — will have to defend what Peter Wehner calls Trump’s “kaleidoscopic corruption.” All of it. Again and again.
On Sunday, Sununu merely held up a mirror for an entire party to see what it has become.
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From Thursday’s Morning Joe, via Grabien:
SYKES: “This is a choice. I mean, this is one of those WTF moments where you have Donald Trump waging this campaign to undermine the rule of law.
Bill Barr knows all of this.
And he's decided it's a binary choice, because in his world in order to stay relevant and viable, he has to put party over country.”
And, speaking of profiles in non-courage, I wrote about why the Gerald R. Ford Foundation’s snub of Liz Cheney matters:
Indeed, the foundation’s allegedly pre-emptive surrender was a reminder that self-censorship is a feature of authoritarianism. The most effective regimes rely on a population internalizing the need to submit. Fearful of what comes next, they put the handcuffs on themselves. A vengeful president does not need to take punitive executive action; he only needs to seem capable of doing so.Like clockwork, politicians, institutions and businesses fall in line.
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Finally, the poetic stylings of the former president, who is not demented or deranged at all. (An actual transcription.)
BONUS: This — via @EdwardVersaii — is chef’s kiss.
