Many millions of Americans will be watching Donald Trump deliver his State of the Union address tonight.
They will hear him lying, and threatening, and sowing division. They will listen to him bragging about the economy they know is slumping and gloating about the brutal immigration regime that has shocked their consciences.
They will shake their heads as he describes himself as a peacemaker, even as he has set the nation on the brink of war.
They will observe a man increasingly disconnected from reality ramble on in a disordered fashion about how great he is, and how contemptible are his enemies.
Many of the people tuning in will then turn to news coverage from journalists who will appear to them to have watched something entirely different.
Those journalists, if precedent holds, will pull out select quotes and proposals and lead with them, as if Trump had been articulate. They will repeat his outrageous falsehoods without immediate and thorough rebuttal.
They will write about his “tone” and whether he appears empathetic, and whether he can accomplish a “reset.”
Case in point, Wednesday’s New York Times Politics newsletter put forth “5 big questions” about the speech. They included “Voters are worried about the cost of living. Can Trump show he sympathizes?” Another is “What’s his tone on immigration?”
The journalists will act as if he delivered a speech about policy, not a list of unhinged grievances. They will treat it like it was normal, and try to glean some meaning from it.
To the extent that they pass judgement on the speech, it will be in the context of whether it is likely to help or hurt Republican political prospects.
A Wall Street Journal preview of the speech on Wednesday was a perfect illustration. This is how it began:
President Trump will use his State of the Union address to sell the public on the economy and unveil new measures meant to lower costs, as Republicans try to address voters’ concerns ahead of the midterm elections later this year.
The Possible Pivot
What’s my point? My point is that tonight offers our top news organizations a unique moment in which to pivot away from the distortions required to normalize the abnormal, and instead turn to something more honest.
So many people will be watching, why not validate what they saw and heard with their own eyes and ears?
I wrote recently that the news industry is fixated on increasing trust — and that nothing makes people lose trust as much as when they see news coverage that doesn’t comport with what they themselves experienced.
Well, here’s a chance to earn some trust: Produce journalism that confirms people’s experienced reality rather than distorts what they know to be true.
And it’s not just that so many people will be watching. It’s also that so many people are now fed up with Trump and MAGA. They see through it.
The latest poll finds that six out of 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance — including 47 percent who strongly disapprove.
And in his second term, he has done nothing that has actually improved the quality of life for Americans. He has done nothing that has improved our global standing. He has spread terror in our cities, and hunger, disease, and death abroad. He has corrupted and debased the government. He has seized near-dictatorial powers. And he’s not mentally well.
I wrote last week about how any news coverage that doesn’t situate Trump’s actions in their essential context is effectively disinformation.
I have no doubt that Trump will say things tonight that can only be adequately explained by stating clearly that he has seized authoritarian levels of power, or that he lies constantly, or that he’s a con artist, or that he’s unhinged, or that he’s corrupt, or that he’s racist, or that he’s divisive. Journalists should provide that context.
In fact, one topic alone – his inevitable pitch for the SAVE Act, the voter suppression bill before the Senate – will require all that context, and more. Trump’s push to demand proof of citizenship before voting is based on two provably false conspiracy theories – that he won the 2020 election, and that non-citizens commit widespread voter fraud. It is an attempted usurpation of states’ rights. It is intended to disenfranchise millions of voters, particularly minorities (but also women). Trump lies when he says it’s just a normal voter ID bill – this one is particularly onerous. And he lies when he says Democrats oppose it because they want noncitizens to vote.
My Version
If it were me, and I were writing up Trump’s speech tonight, I would lead with the lying. That’s the most essential context. Always. A separate “fact-check” is insufficient.
I would also point out that a joint address to Congress is ideally aimed at fostering national unity despite deep partisan divisions — but that for Trump, it is all about delusional self-aggrandizement, taunting his enemies, and playing to his base.
I would call attention to the shocking reality that the folks listening to him in the House chamber include Republicans who have ceded Congress’s Constitutional power as a coequal branch, and members of a Supreme Court that — despite its narrow decision on Trump’s tariffs — has almost entirely enabled his seizure of dictator-like powers.
I would write that while Trump asserts that the state of the union is strong, he has in fact badly weakened it — to the point where its survival as a democracy is in doubt.
I would keep an eye out for pauses and ad libs that suggest an altered mental state. Will he struggle to read the words his staff prepared for him? Will he mistake Iceland for Greenland?
And I would end with the observation that he was speaking to a country that increasingly doesn’t buy what he’s selling.
the press is the reason his disapproval is only 60%
With real journalists it would be 100%.