A long time ago, I was an English composition instructor at Georgia Southern University. My job was to teach first-year students how to write college-level essays and how to communicate effectively. With rare exception, all my students brought with them a habit borne of childhood. To achieve success in my class, they had to break it.
What habit? The habit of depending on a grown-up to do the work of understanding what they are trying to say. To be sure, we all do this in casual conversation. However, you can’t do that in public writing or in public speaking. In a formal setting, you are 100 percent responsible for what you are trying to say, and if I don’t get it, that’s on you.
I would say most of my students understood this. Others, however, were not ready. They were not willing to accept as theirs the responsibility of communicating. Some would even grow visibly upset at realizing I would not do the work for them. It was, after all, a shock. I was sometimes the first adult to hold them accountable not only for what they said, but for what they didn’t say. If they wanted to reach the standard for the class, they had to be responsible for themselves.
I haven’t thought about that experience in 20 years, but it suddenly occurred to me while reading Parker Molloy’s latest piece in The New Republic. Her argument is familiar to those of us who have been critical of the Washington press corps’ coverage of Donald Trump, and its practice of making his habitual incoherence seem coherent. Most important is Parker’s introduction to a wider audience of Aaron Rupar’s term to describe what reporters do. It’s sane-washing.
"This 'sanewashing' of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former — and potentially future — president.
"The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering Trump’s words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality. When major news outlets consistently present a polished version of Trump’s statements, they create an alternate narrative that exists alongside the unfiltered truth available on social media and in unedited footage."
I was thinking about my experience as a college writing instructor, because, as powerful as Parker’s argument is, it still feels like it’s missing something. It’s like there’s a recipe for understanding the media but every cook has so far forgotten a critical ingredient.
“Sanewashing” explains a lot. So does Jeffrey Goldberg’s coinage, “coherence bias.” But neither puts front and center the role of labor, responsibility and the fact that communication is a two-way street.
For a former president and presidential candidate, every setting is formal. So Trump is 100 percent responsible for doing the work of saying what he’s trying to say. However, like some of my 18-year-old students long ago, he’s unwilling or unable to do it. He even expects the grown ups in the room to do it for him. And so far, in his very long life in the public eye, political reporters have been happy to oblige him.
I have called the press corps Trump’s “affirmative action program.” Borrowing from the illiberal interpretation of the term, I have said that Trump hasn’t earned his political standing. The media has given it to him. But “affirmative action program” no longer seems quite right.
Since his attempted assassination, his cognition has deteriorated rapidly. This week, I even went so far as to say that he has dementia and is trying to cover it up. What do you call it when the Washington press corps helps “a damaged, delusional, old man,” as Mike Barnicle recently said, who is no longer fit to communicate on his own?
Perhaps we should call it the media’s version of assisted living.
Think about the most basic element of communication. Politicians, or any public speaker, not only must choose words, but they must base their word-choices on how they will impact their intended audiences.
Trump can no longer choose words soundly on his own. After watching him respond to a question at the Economics Club of New York, the Post’s Catherine Rampell said, “my job is to analyze policy. I can't even find a complete sentence in this.” Later, on CNN, she said his remarks seemed like “words randomly chosen out of the dictionary.”
And he can no longer assess how that word-choice will impact an audience. At the Economics Club, he was asked: If you win, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable. And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance. His answer:
"I would do that and we’re sitting down you know I was somebody we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue but I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because childcare is childcare. It’s something you have to have it in this country you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to but they’ll get used to it very quickly and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we are talking about including childcare that it’s going to take care I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time coupled with the reductions I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country because I have to say with childcare I want to stay with childcare but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about including growth but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive it’s relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in."
I think he’s trying to say tariffs will pay for childcare, which is a laughable policy, but also beside the point. I shouldn’t be doing his work for him. Neither should the press corps, but it always does.
Last night, Parker Molloy posted on Twitter a transcript of these same remarks side-by-side with a news summary published by the Times.
The summary represented a grown man capable of making sound choices on his own for the purpose of persuading his audience.
The transcript, however, represented “a damaged, delusional, old man.” He can no longer make sound choices, not even the choice of words. He can no longer communicate in a way that’s coherent or persuasive.
Yet he expects others to do the work he’s no longer fit to do.
We are beyond sane-washing.
We have arrived at assisted living.
