Trump stopped talking about the 'caravan' the moment the polls closed. Surprise: so did the press.
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Yeah, New York Times. Go figure. There was little dispute, even before Election Day, that Mr. Trump was exploiting the caravan for political purposes. But analysts, historians and veterans of previous administrations said there were few comparable instancesTrump stopped talking about the 'caravan' the moment the polls closed. Surprise: so did the press.
Yeah, New York Times. Go figure. There was little dispute, even before Election Day, that Mr. Trump was exploiting the caravan for political purposes. But analysts, historians and veterans of previous administrations said there were few comparable instances of a commander in chief warning about what he called a looming threat, only to drop it as soon as people voted. What might have helped, of course, is for all of the news outlets who already knew full well Trump was «exploiting the caravan for political purposes» to have mentioned that rather more prominently to their readers. Instead of, say, writing breathlessly on the «caravan» every last time some Trump-allied idiot blurted out some new word-mush about it. Media Matters, on November 2, via Atrios: The New York Times and The Washington Post have run a total of 115 news stories in their print editions mentioning the caravan over the last three weeks. Each paper has run at least one such story on its front page on nine of the last 10 days. In a shock to absolutely all of us, ahem, it's fair to say that the Times and the Post appeared to lose interest in the still-moving, still-a-humanitarian-crisis caravan pretty much the same moment the Republican Party did. So what's up with that? If you're wondering, the current New York Times story about the caravan (above) is, in fact, entirely concerned with the political implications of the caravan. Did it boost Republicans, or hurt them? Did the exit polls have anything to say about the caravan? Are the bored-out-of-their-minds soldiers on the border noticing Trump's new disinterest in the caravan? Here's a thought experiment: Does it actually matter, and did it ever actually matter, whether the caravan actually existed? If it did not, and if the whole thing was a figment of Donald Trump's imagination, a dream he had that he kept insisting on and that allies repeated for his benefit and amusement, would the New York Times have treated it markedly different? Read more