Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

Money, Trump And The Media

The longer we suffer the agony of the Trump administration and its assaults on governance, science, logic and basic decency, the more I become convinced that our current information environment is largely responsible. The enormous growth of online propaganda is partially to blame for the fact that 37% of Americans still tell pollsters they approve of Trump.

But the Internet isn’t the only culprit allowing MAGA and MAGA-adjacent folks to escape confrontations with reality. The party that holds the White House has a built-in information advantage, and Trump’s visceral need for attention–and his ability to command it– has made use of that advantage.

That said, I have become more concerned about the decline of what we think of as “mainstream” journalism.

Take the reporting about the administration’s refusal to fund SNAP. On the NBC evening news I watched, the lack of funding was attributed to the shutdown; there was absolutely NO reference to the fact that the administration was refusing to release funds that had been appropriated for precisely this purpose–to ensure ongoing funding of a critical program in cases of government shutdown.

That failure to explain the actual reason for the SNAP crisis is journalistic malpractice. It allows partisans to point fingers and distort the political conversation. In a very real sense, it’s participation in a lie.

NBC isn’t the only network or mainstream source to evade this reality, and the question is: why? Why are major networks and news sources “both siding” multiple reports rather than accurately reflecting the fact that one side is primarily responsible? Why are they normalizing so many aspects of a profoundly abnormal Trump administration?

One recent report from the American Prospect provides a chilling answer to that question.  It involves Trump’s “stage-managing” the business of information.

Warner Bros. Discovery—which owns a movie studio, numerous cable networks (CNN, Discovery, TBS, TNT, HGTV, Cartoon Network, TCM), the pay-TV channel HBO, streaming service HBO Max, DC Comics, part of The CW network, part of Fandango, several gaming studios, some theme park in Madrid, and much more—has publicly announced that it is for sale. Several companies, including Comcast, Netflix, and Amazon, are sniffing around a purchase, but the one that’s clearly amped to acquire WBD is Paramount, fresh off of being acquired itself by David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Ellison and his billionaire father have been moving to consolidate ownership of the mass media. Ellison’s Skydance Media has already taken control of CBS through its recent merger with Paramount Global. Reportedly, the Trump administration has vowed to block Comcast, Netflix or Amazon from buying WBD, and to facilitate its acquisition by Paramount. The Ellison family is a longtime Trump ally, while Comcast and Netflix “have angered the president with Saturday Night Live parodies or perceived wokeness; and these grievances are driving the discretionary application of law.”

Trump pays more attention to media mergers than other business combinations, as befits his obsession with how he is portrayed to the public. The Ellisons, who already have their hands on TikTok, would add CNN to CBS News, building out a right-leaning rival to Fox in old and new media. Doing so through a shotgun wedding with implicit (if not explicit) approvals is just deeply corrupt.

This wouldn’t be a slam-dunk: under the Clayton Act and new guidelines written by Biden antitrust officials, such a merger would trigger several structural presumptions of illegality.  State attorneys general can use them and the relevant federal laws to block the merger–assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t put a corrupt thumb on the scale. But the very prospect of yet another merger, another consolidation of ownership of the media, should be a wake-up call.

There has already been far too much consolidation, too much transformation of journalism into just another business, where owners worry more about official reprisals for stepping out of line than providing first-rate reporting.

A study by the University of Chicago found that, in the last ten years, consolidation of America’s TV broadcasting has accelerated–that currently 40 percent of all local TV news stations are controlled by three conglomerates: Gray Television, Nexstar Media Group, and Sinclair Broadcast Group, each of which owns about 100 ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC stations –and that those stations operate in more than 80 percent of US media markets. The research found “weaker constraints on owners’ interference with editorial decisions, whether for purely economic or for political motives.”

No kidding.

Our would-be King wants to control the information we receive–and with the help of his billionaire friends/courtiers, he’s well on his way.

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Building Back Better

There’s no avoiding the fact that U.S. citizens are currently experiencing a world of hurt. As one newsletter glumly reported, the federal government is now a subsidiary of Trump Inc. and the laws meant to prevent such a takeover go unenforced. There’s no investigation into Trump’s open corruption and self-dealing. The U.S. Supreme Court has elevated the president  above the law. Congress won’t even meet. 

No wonder Americans aren’t having policy debates.

The current lack of interest in the intricacies of policy may be entirely understandable, but–unless we are prepared to give in to Trumpian autocracy, we need to be thinking about how we go about rebuilding once the would-be king is gone and his MAGA racists have crawled back under their rocks.

According to a recent article in the American Prospect, a new think tank is doing precisely that. The organization is called Common Wealth. It is based in both Britain and the U.S., and it is focused not only on policy repair, but upon analysis of the policy failures that enabled Trump’s rise.

Common Wealth’s focus is on public ownership, public provision, and building state capacity. The first reason for this is simple reality: Despite the utter madness of what Trump is doing, the mess he’ll leave is going to have to be cleaned up. A future Democratic president, should there ever be one, will have no choice but to rebuild much of the entire administrative state from scratch—so they might as well build it back better, to coin a phrase. “We’re in a moment where things feel really perilous politically,” said Common Wealth’s U.S. program director Melanie Brusseler, “but also there’s a lot of hope in response.”

One important focus for Common Wealth is the affordability crisis. It has become obvious that neoliberal strategy didn’t work- belief in shipping jobs overseas to cut labor costs and keeping supply chain investment low finally collapsed during the pandemic, as supply shocks led to skyrocketing prices for goods and shipping. But it isn’t simply manufacturing; Common Wealth researchers point out that our current crisis of affordability is primarily driven by prices for things that can’t be offshored and/or imported– housing, education, health care, transportation. 

As a result, Common Wealth supports public provision, including Medicare for All and free college. As its researchers point out–and as this blog has frequently noted–America’s health care system is so plagued with hyper-complicated rent-seeking in which “uncountable private actors maneuver to swindle each other and/or the government and thereby claim a fat slice of America’s world-historical spending on health care, that the case for state coordination of providers as well as insurance practically makes itself.’

A primary focus of the new think tank is–understandably–climate change, and the policies necessary to ameliorate or slow it. Their researchers advocate “adaptations and asset development” –the creation of a huge number of publicly owned electrical generating assets that would be totally disconnected from volatile global markets for oil and gas.

Common Wealth claims affinity with previous efforts at what it terms “public provision.

Many Trump critics are focused on what he is doing to our basic democratic compact, and rightly so. But there’s a reason that all the presidents who led us through our worst previous crises also had an aggressive program of reform—and these also included public provision and ownership. Abraham Lincoln had greenbacks and land grant colleges; Franklin Roosevelt had Social Security, a massive public works program, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and much more. A core purpose of a democratic republic is to protect the welfare of the citizenry, and if a future government is to repair the damage inflicted by Trump and fight climate change as well, they will have to think even more ambitiously.

I will admit to significant reservations about some of the “public provisions” Common Wealth endorses, but we should all take comfort from the fact that there are institutions and individuals who are engaging with what will be a truly monumental task: rebuilding our governmental guardrails and ensuring the ability of those we elect to do their jobs. 

And speaking of “their jobs”–policy wonks need to start with a foundational inquiry: what is government’s job? What parts of our civic and economic life should government control, and what parts should be left to individuals and voluntary organizations? What aspects of our common lives must be approached collectively, and what parts must be protected against government overreach? 

That inquiry must be the framework within which we evaluate proposals to “build back better.”

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Ignoring The Obvious

America’s “legacy media” continues to downplay–or ignore–two of the most obvious sources of our current democratic crisis: Trump’s manifest mental disorders, and the undeniable corruption of the Supreme Court’s current majority. Our “papers of record”–the New York Times and the Washington Post–continue to normalize behaviors that are decidedly abnormal; they are aided and abetted by network news reports that carefully avoid even the implication that Trump’s behavior is “unusual” or that the Supreme Court’s majority is laying waste to its own jurisprudence.

There are, of course, independent newsletters and Internet sites that point to these realities, but those information sources are largely singing to the choir–Americans have long since sorted ourselves into audiences for “information” that panders to our preferred worldviews. As a result, MAGA folks are highly unlikely to have encountered the multiple psychiatric evaluations of Donald Trump–and equally unlikely to understand the radical extremism of the high Court’s majority.

One of my cousins is a cardiologist with a longstanding interest in psychiatry. He recently shared with me a column he’d written for his local newspapers, in which he reported on published psychiatric diagnoses of our demented President. I was especially interested in one published warning titled “Donald Trump, Like Hitler, is a Psychopath.”

Dodes warns that “this constitutes the most dangerous of all mental disorders, since it is the only psychological condition in which behaving in a morally reprehensible way is an essential part of its nature.” Manifestations of this disorder include the intentional creation of harm to others without guilt or remorse, for personal gain or self-gratification, which includes the sadistic pleasure of wreaking revenge against imagined enemies. Psychopaths cannot be reasoned out of their beliefs or their behavior, because they are unable to comprehend that others have value, or the concept of questioning themselves. The fact that Donald Trump has the most dangerous form of this disorder has two long-term consequences: It means that he is never going to stop intentionally harming others for his personal benefit, and it means that he will become worse over time. 

Basically, the psychiatric community has concluded that “Trump lacks the ability to listen to reason and draw conclusions from facts.” (As a frame of reference, the average score for psychopathy for someone in the general population is 5; the average for felons in a maximum-security prison is 22. Experts give Trump an average score of 34.) Add to that the fact that Trump is manifesting numerous, unmistakable and increasing signs of dementia, and the danger becomes too obvious to ignore–unless, of course, you are a member of the traditional news media.

If we had a properly functioning Supreme Court, Trump’s ability to destroy our government might be slowed. But we don’t have such a Court, a fact that Josh Marshall–the eminently moderate and reasonable editor of Talking Points Memo–recently addressed in a column titled “There is no Democratic Future without Supreme Court Reform.”

Marshall noted that–in the absence of Court reform– even a Democratic trifecta taking control and passing laws supportive of democracy, separation of powers and the rule of law wouldn’t be sufficient to solve the underlying problem, which is that a substantial minority of Americans really do favor autocracy. (What he didn’t say–and I will–is that what they favor is a White Christian autocracy.)

Any repairs would be at risk the moment Republicans were once again in control.

The simple truth is that none of the laws that are essential for reinforcing the federal system against Trumpist attack would survive the scrutiny of the current Republican court majority as soon as there is another Republican president. Most would be overruled much sooner because they would, like an anti-gerrymandering law, place limits on Republican states. You cannot consider the last three to four years and doubt any of this. And what follows from that is that no plan to recover from or even seriously battle with Trumpism can have any chance of success unless reforming the Supreme Court is the first order of business. The dire corruption of the Republican majority governs everything.

I agree. But the people who really need to understand what the mental health experts and constitutional scholars are telling us are unlikely to encounter discussion of these issues unless traditional mass media sources address them. The consolidation of media ownership by America’s plutocrats makes it very unlikely that we will see those sources engage in the journalism we need–a journalism that reports the obvious.

Talk about your perfect storm….

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MAGA’s Defender Of Christianity

Trump’s base is disproportionately composed of Christian nationalists–people who tell you they support him because he is a defender of (their version of) the Christian faith. The notion that Trump has ever encountered Christianity–or any faith tradition–is ludicrous, but then, so is the pretense that Christian nationalists represent any variety of authentic Christianity.

The other day, I was reading Heather Cox Richardson’s daily Letter, and after reading the following passages, I wanted to find a self-identified Christian nationalist (Micah Beckwith? Jim Banks?) and ask “Do you really think this is what Jesus would do?”

Here’s what Richardson wrote:

Yesterday the Trump administration said it would not use any of the approximately $6 billion the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) holds in reserve to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The government shutdown means that states have run out of funds to distribute to the more than 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP to put food on the table.

Roll Call’s Olivia M. Bridges notes that this position contradicts the shutdown plan the USDA released in late September. Then, it said: “Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operations should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds that can be used for State Administrative Expenses to ensure that the State can also continue operations during a Federal Government shutdown. These multi-year contingency funds are also available to fund participant benefits in the event that a lapse occurs in the middle of the fiscal year.”

Yesterday’s USDA memo also says that any states that tap their own resources to provide food benefits will not be reimbursed.

That last paragraph especially infuriated me, because it makes the fact that the cruelty is intentional too obvious to miss.

The Trump administration is not only withholding food from families and children. It clearly recognizes that–as food banks have been warning–nonprofit agencies will be unable to make up the deficit. This “let them eat cake” administration is well aware that a stoppage of SNAP means that millions of Americans (disproportionately children and the elderly) will not have enough to eat. And just in case some potentially “woke” Blue state government might be tempted to step in to ameliorate the situation, the administration is sneering that they’d better not expect reimbursements.

I guess those states will join the other “suckers and losers” who put themselves at risk to help their fellow Americans…

I’m not a Christian, but I cannot imagine this cruelty being consistent with the genuine teachings of Jesus. For that matter, I cannot conceive of any religion or religious tradition that teaches adherents that it’s fine to deny basic sustenance to millions of people in order to score political points. Or, for that matter, deny disaster relief to people who have the misfortune to live in Blue states, as the administration is also doing.

These and multiple other travesties are consistent with Trump’s war on “woke-ism”–and with MAGA’s belief that kindness, civility and concern for our fellow-Americans is evidence of a wimpy, “librul” unAmericanism.

At the No Kings rally I attended, a number of signs went beyond anger aimed at Trump and the incompetent clowns in his cabinet. Those signs were rebuttals to the utter inhumanity of this administration–the masked ICE goons, the effort to portray all immigrants as criminals, the constant, vicious assaults on concepts like equity and fair play.

When I was young, I could not have conceived of a President willing to portray himself as a King showering the citizens of his country with excrement–with shit. I could not have imagined a senile occupant of the Oval Office posting incoherent, misspelled diatribes on social media, or a President turning the Justice Department into a weapon of personal, petty vengeance. I absolutely would not have believed that a President of these United States would be willing to deny food to children in order to satisfy a political pique.

But this is where we are. Trump is the Jim Jones of a MAGA cult that is willing to shut the government down rather than restore the subsidies that make health insurance affordable to millions of Americans.

If these are the behaviors of a defender of Christianity, I’ll eat my hat.

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A Visual Representation

A recent newsletter focusing on a conversation between Charlie Sykes and Adam Kinzinger opened with a list of Trump’s  offenses against the rule of law (and arguably, sanity…) during just one week.

Posted a video of “King Trump” dumping feces on fellow Americans.
Announced that he is completely demolishing the East Wing of the White House to make room for his sh*tty ballroom.
Demanded that the DOJ cough up $230 million in taxpayer dollars to salve his wounded ego.
Murdered two more people on the high seas, without providing either due process or actually any evidence at all.
Presided over the explosion of the national debt to $38 trillion.
Screwed over America’s farmers as he bailed out his buddies in Argentina.
Commuted the sentence of chronic fraudster, fabulist, and MAGA lickspittle George Santos; even as we learn that one of the J6 rioters pardoned by Trump was arrested for plotting the murder of a top congressional Democrat.
Failed to end the killing in Gaza or the war in Ukraine. Failed to reopen his own government.
Declared that he — Donald J. Trump — is greater than either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

And that was just one week! 

Each of these offenses warrants an in-depth discussion. Some of them are additional evidence–as if additional evidence were needed–of his accelerating mental decline; others demonstrate his utter lack of qualifications for any public office, let alone the highest office in the land. But I want to focus in on what might seem like the least consequential of these assaults on decency and respect for the rule of law–the demolition of the East Wing of the People’s house.

That demolition is a metaphor for the entire Trump Presidency–not only because it is vivid, but because it demonstrates Trump’s inability to understand the office he holds.

In a very real sense, Presidents are tenants–entitled to reside in the White House during their terms of office. We the People are the landlords. Our tenants can make alterations if they are properly approved by the agencies entrusted with those decisions–a process that Trump has contemptuously ignored. 

Not only has Trump destroyed part of a historic structure that is not his, he is proposing to construct a gaudy and inappropriate “ballroom” that will extend over the site and dwarf the rest of the White House. And as Paul Krugman has explained, the fact that the proposed addition is gaudy and tasteless reinforces our understanding of Trump’s mentality.

Why, you might ask, at a moment of national crisis am I writing about Trump’s bad taste?

Masked government agents are snatching people off the street. The National Guard has been sent into major cities on the obviously false pretext that these cities are in chaos. The U.S. military is essentially murdering people on the high seas. Huge tariffs are, in addition to their economic costs, undermining a system of alliances former presidents spent generations building. Green energy is being eviscerated, vindictive prosecutions are the norm, and many millions are on course to lose their health insurance. So why do I want to talk about Trump’s appalling design sense?

But these aren’t separate issues, because tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand. Yes, Trump has terrible taste and probably would even if he didn’t have power and, thanks to that power, wealth. But the grotesqueness of his White House renovations is structural as well as personal. For the excess and ugliness serve a political purpose: to humiliate and intimidate. The tawdry grandiosity serves not only to glorify Trump’s fragile ego, but also to send the message that resistance is futile.

Trump’s tastelessness has long been the subject of derision. (The interior of his New York apartment–with its gold toilet, overscaled rooms, and inaccurate historical detailing has been widely mocked.) But as Krugman notes, the ballroom isn’t simply one more sign of Trump’s personal vulgarity. “Trump is turning the people’s house into a palace fit for a despot partly because that’s his taste, but also to show everyone that he can.” 

There’s an old adage to the effect that a picture is worth a thousand words. The photos of the East Wing’s destruction will test  the accuracy of that adage.

Citizens who are unaware of the administration’s assaults on democratic processes and the rule of law–people whose “information bubbles” don’t include the appalling behaviors of the incompetent clowns Trump has installed, or the video of Trump dumping shit on the American public– may nevertheless react to the visual evidence that this man is both mentally ill and exceptionally dangerous.

Not to mention vulgar and trashy.

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