The Truth About Cats and Dogs

When the crazy can’t be hidden.

For weeks now in the pages of this blog I’ve been complaining about how the press has been “sanewashing” Donald Trump, giving him a pass on outrageous and deranged comments that for any other politician would have been not just campaign-ending, but career-ending.

That phenomenon has been in play since he descended that golden escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his presidential run, but has been particularly egregious of late. Trump claims that elementary schools are performing gender reassignment surgery on children without their parents’ knowledge, and the press reports his remarks with headlines like “Trump Ties Healthcare to Public Education.” OK that one is fictional, but it’s actually not any more outlandish than any of the real examples out there, like the incomprehensible word salad he unleashed in answer to a straightforward question about childcare, which prompted The New York Times to report “Trump Praises Tariffs, William McKinley to Power Brokers.” Or when he risibly says, without explaining how, that his proposed tax cut for the 1% won’t add $7 trillion to the national debt — atop the cut he gave those same rich people in 2017 that already added $7 trillion the debt — and The Washington Post reports that “analysts are skeptical.”