(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . About Trump's deranged speech in Anaheim - video clips and questions for the media [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-01 Remember when Trump was all over the airwaves because he was good for ratings? Something odd has happened lately. While the media spends time agonizing over how old Biden is and his occasional verbal slips, Trump seems to have dropped off the airwaves — except for media tongue baths like his appearance on Meet the Press. That interview was relatively sedate — for Trump — but it still had the usual lies, exaggerated claims, etc. To see the real Trump you have to see him speaking to his cult, as he did before the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim. Tom Sullivan at Digby’s place has a write up which notes the press doesn't seem able to get a handle on his performance these days. ...The Associated Press politely describes the speech as “occasionally dark and profane.” Marty McFly had to admit that his parents’ 1950s selves were not ready for guitar-shredding. The American press is still not ready to call Trump’s batshit lunacy “some weird shit.” Trump advocated shooting on sight anyone who robs stores. He recommended solving the state’s wildfire problem by watering the forests with free water from the north of the state. It was an applause line. The MAGA champion belongs in a padded room. The crowd cheered as Trump spoke of standing up to “crazy Nancy Pelosi.” Trump added snidely, “How’s her husband doing, anybody know?” It’s not just that Trump sounds deranged and is inciting violence — it’s the way the crowd responds to him with enthusiasm. (I heard Rosemary Armao on WAMC’s the Media Project compare things today in America to living in Germany in the 1930’s, in a weekend news recap.) Aldous J. Pennyfarthing has a write up: Trump gave a speech. It was weird. Super weird. Why isn't the media's hair on fire? The press is beginning to sound alarms, but is still struggling with it. Egberto Willies features Joy-Ann Reid in a video excoriating the way the media is going after Biden — but not Trump Digby has put together a compilation of video clips from Trump’s California speech. It would be one thing if this was “that crazy uncle” spouting off at a family gathering after a few beers. This is a former president and likely party presidential nominee sounding totally unhinged — to applause and cheers. Watch them and share them — this is what Trump looks and sounds like when he’s playing to his base. Take him literally and seriously. Them too. (Note, the video clips are coming from the app formerly known as Twitter, and may be a bit fussy to play back.) The clips capture only some of the more egregious highlights of Trump’s speech, but the overall tone of the entire speech is set right from the beginning. He has got it down to a polished routine, doing all of his greatest hits: his false sorrow, his exaggerations, his bragging, his grievances, his lies, the random stuff he just makes up. He hits the MAGA talking points as well as his own greatest hits. What he has to say about gender issues, the auto workers, President Biden, and anything else is all over the place, from outright lies to delusions and slander. And the crowd loves it — and him. You can’t argue with this stuff on rational grounds — this is all coming right from the gut, and the gut is a moron. Logic, reason, facts — they’re all out the window. As Charles P. Pierce presciently put it in Idiot America, we’ve gotten into a strange place. The truth of something is defined by how many people will attest to it, and facts are defined by those people’s fervency. Fiction and nonfiction are defined by how well they sell. The best sellers are on one shelf, cheek by jowl, whether what’s contained in them is true or not. People wander blindly, following the Gut into dark corners and aisles that lead nowhere, confusing possibilities with threats, jumping at shadows, stumbling around. They trip over piles of fiction left strewn around the floor of the nonfiction aisles. They fall down. They land on other people, and those other people can get hurt. Trump is first and last a salesman, and he is the product. What he’s selling is himself as leader of an authoritarian personality cult, and he has plenty of Fascist wanna-be’s ready to follow him off the cliff, over the corpse of democracy and the shreds of the constitution. If you can stand it, here’s the entire Anaheim speech. Trump sets the tone right in the first few minutes, and it doesn't get better. It’s tough to watch, but it’s worth doing so to have a real appreciation of just how far he and the rest of the Republican Party is prepared to go. While the video clips Digby links to above are shocking on their own, seeing them in the context of the entire speech is in some ways even more alarming. What you see is how well they fit into the narrative Trump is creating for the alternative world his audience lives in. It’s a place where parents are being stripped of their rights and their children are undergoing mandatory sex change surgery. It’s a place where rich people in California smell — because radical Socialist Marxist Communist Democrats won’t let them have enough water in their giant mansions to wash their hair, because it’s all going to a little fish. It’s a place where businesses are going under because cops aren’t allowed to shoot the daily looters emptying out the stores in the Democratic urban hellholes. It’s a place where a senile criminal illegal president is perverting the legal system to persecute/prosecute him, because he won the last election and is leading to win the next one. And so on and so on. The mainstream media is having trouble with this because to look at it is to be forced to realize that this can’t be both-sided away or normalized any more, and that it’s larger than just Trump. You don’t see the audience, but you can hear them eating it up. That is the truly scary part. The Media is also having trouble with Biden’s latest speech honoring John McCain because he chose to speak about what they are reluctant to confront: ...And there is something dangerous happening in America now. There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy: the MAGA Movement. Not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, adhere to the MAGA extremist ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with Republicans my whole career. But there is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it. My friends, they’re not hiding their attacks. They’re openly promoting them — attacking the free press as the enemy of the people, attacking the rule of law as an impediment, fomenting voter suppression and election subversion…. ...We should all remember: Democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn the threats to democracy, when people are willing to give away that which is most precious to them because they feel frustrated, disillusioned, tired, alienated. I get it. I really do. I get it…. ...I’ve said it before: We’re at an inflection point in our history. One of those moments that not only happens once every several generations, it happens once every eight or nine generations, where the decisions made in the short period of time we’re in now are going to determine the course of this country and the world for the next six or seven decades. So, you, me, every American who is committed to preserving our democracy and our constitutional protections, we carry a special responsibility. We have to stand up for American values embedded in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, because we know the MAGA extremists have already proven they won’t... Here’s the video of the speech — Biden comes on at about 5 minutes in. x YouTube Video Read the whole thing from Biden if you don’t have time to watch it. It’s worth seeing just to contrast with the speaking style of Trump — and to put the lie to the media narrative that Biden is not an effective speaker. The energy, the passion comes through, as does the sincerity. This needs media exposure just as much as showing the full picture of the threat Biden is addressing. The problem for the media is that the difference between the two is so stark, showing it could be seen as ‘biased’. I could believe the media narrative obsession with Biden’s age is coming from a kind of moral cowardice — they are desperate to make him seem as undesirable a choice as Trump so they can’t be accused of taking sides. (The insanity on display by Republicans in the House has proven too outrageous to sweep under the rug — but we’ll see how long that lasts now that there is a temporary budget fix.) As someone observed recently (can't recall where I saw it) it’s a choice between neutrality or truthfulness. The choice the media makes in the months ahead is going to be critical. As will the choices all of us make. Democracy is not a spectator sport. 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