It was a revealing moment for Donald Trump.
“When I say ‘enemy from within,’ the other side goes crazy,” he said Sunday.
He is right about that. I brought up this topic in my Trump Tower interview last weekend, saying that the phrase sounded bad, and the response — that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff are really enemies, not just adversaries, of the media universe. I was raised.
But on the other hand, driving nuts is Trump’s specialty. When he told a rally in Madison Square Garden that the media was “the real enemy, the enemy of the people,” there were loud boos from a party that already despises and mistrusts the press.
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A bit of disagreement: the argument that Trump shouldn’t have been in the Garden because the Nazis held a rally there in 1939. FDR held an event there two years later, and Democrats have held nominating conventions there. It’s where I’ve seen many Knicks games and a George Harrison concert. And Billy Joel has been selling out arenas for years.)
Trump knows how to infuriate the media, reigniting the debate over whether they should cover more of his high-profile rhetoric or if he’s normalizing it.
In our Mar-a-Lago interview a few months ago, the former president admitted to me that he sometimes uses deliberately incendiary language to drive news coverage. Remember, even negative coverage helps it dominate the headlines.
And if you think media companies aren’t afraid of that, consider the killing of Kamala Harris endorsements by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiung in favor of a non-endorsement stance. Look at the unfair decisions that clearly help Trump. . Two columnists, including Michelle Norris, have resigned, three top editors have left the Times, and thousands of subscriptions to both papers have been canceled.
Trump’s speech at the Garden was almost completely overshadowed by what came before. Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian, called Puerto Rico a “floating garbage dump.” He joked that Jewish people were cheap, and that he and a black friend “carved watermelons.”
“These Latinos, they like to have babies too. Just know they do,” Hinchcliffe said. “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come in, like they did to our country.”
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It got to the point where Trump spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt said on Fox yesterday morning: “Look, this was a comedian who made a joke in poor taste. Obviously, this joke doesn’t reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign. would.”
The Trump camp quickly put out word that it hadn’t vetted what Hinchcliffe was going to say. This, if true, was a huge mistake.
But it wasn’t just comedians. Conservative New York radio host Sid Rosenberg referred to Riley as “f****** illegals,” and called Hillary Clinton a “sick son of a bitch” and a “Jew-hater.” The anti-Christ. “
Now Trump hasn’t said any of that, but has made no attempt to distance himself by saying, for example, that he doesn’t agree with everything that’s been said.
A New York Times story was headlined “Trump at the Garden: An Ending Carnival of Grievances, Misbehavior and Racism”.
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And he gave the opening to Kamala Harris. She said Riley “highlighted a point that I’ve been making … he focuses and actually settles on his grievances, and dividing ourselves and our country.”
Meanwhile, Trump delivered an absolute coup with a three-hour sit-down with Joe Rogan.
Sure, he sometimes went around talking about whales and extraterrestrial aliens. But the podcast garnered 33 million views, mostly by men and primarily young men. That’s more than a candidate can get on several top-rated cable news shows.
Many believe the sit-in helped humanize Trump, and Rogan told him he gets endless publicity because he says it’s “weird.” It was clearly a sympathetic conversation, and Rogan said the media is “the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.”
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Harris was also in talks to do Rogan’s Spotify podcast, and he said he’s welcome there, but if he wanted it, he’d be taping the show today. To save face, he then announced that he had scheduling issues. Instead, Harris produced Brene Brown, which obviously appeals to women. Vice Presidents need to improve their gender gap among men.
With one week left in the election, every message and mistake counts. And every day you’re playing defense is a missed opportunity.