Will Trump run again?
The question pops up in the press every few weeks, usually because some former consigliere to the still-sitting mob boss has proffered a premature answer. Earlier this month, for example, erstwhile Trump-advising Jason Miller ventured the odds of a campaign redux at 99 or 100 percent — "news" which made Medialite.com — while U.S. Representative and Insurrection Counselor Jim Jordan blurted in Iowa that Trump will announce "any day now," which the NYT's Maggie Haberman promptly re-disgorged on Twitter.
Yet however intriguing the question may be, its gruesome potential is nothing compared to the End Times reality that he could go all the way. Twenty-sixteen was a black political swan, we reckoned — a successful one-in-a-million shot; a crazy, guttersniping marketing scheme impossible to replicate. Four years and countless presidential disgraces later, the twice-impeached troll collected 11 million more votes. President Biden won by a mere 44,000.
It's old news that Republican state legislatures are hellbent on fixing the Electoral count of battleground states in the next go-around. Old news indeed, but still scary as hell. That said, the plausibly conceived and best defense against Republicans' outright theft of the 2024 presidential election has been a Democratic turnout so immensely staggering in numbers that the election thieves would be forced to give up their sinister game. The Great Backroom Election Robbery of '24 would be foiled by the sheer enormity of the self-evident reality on the ground and everywhere around that the Republican nominee got himself prodigiously, incontestably crushed.
There's something in play, however, that could upend this defense-cum-counteroffensive, and its quintessence came stealthily yet strikingly in one, careless NY Times piece on the Afghanistan evacuation. The story's unthinking characterizations, plus those of hundreds of predictably thoughtless pieces over the next three years on many other issues, could grind away at the national, indeed world necessity of a massive Democratic turnout in 2024.
It's not that the story's meat-and-potatoes reporting in itself was inaccurate. It's that the reporting was seasoned with unwarranted, not-so-subtle Biden-scolding, and worse, the story was written in the near total absence of context in relationship to the president's intrinsic responsibilities and powers. Doubtless, this reportorial failing and gross unfairness left many Democratic readers rethinking their confidence in Biden's presidential leadership. And that's ominous, for 2024.
The Times' most glaring scold: "Biden and his aides have insisted that the evacuation of Kabul after the Taliban seized the city on Aug. 15 was done as efficiently as possible. But State Department emails and documents from the Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Defense Departments, as well as interviews with officials and refugee advocates, suggest otherwise."
Note: The email and documents reveal huge problems. They do not refute an efficient-as-possible evacuation. In fact, the problems encountered appeared to be unavoidable.
The scolding and context-vacancies continued …
"Within hours of Mr. Biden’s speech on Tuesday at the White House marking the end of America’s two-decade war, a private charter plane [from Afghanistan] … arrived at the air base in Doha [Qatar] … with no notice, carrying no American citizens but hundreds of Afghans."
Note: Biden possessed no authority over the chartering of private planes, their unscheduled landings, or who occupied their seats.
"'There are multiple other "rogue" flights that are seeking the same permissions' to land, emails from State Department officials sent that day said."
Note: What … Should President Biden have ordered the planes back to Afghanistan?
"Two days later, officials in Doha reported even more grim news: A 19-month-old child, who arrived from Kabul with 'pre-existing conditions,' died at the air base amid concerns about dehydration, norovirus and cholera among the refugees."
Note: Sad as it is, some children have pre-existing conditions, some children die, refugee camps are notoriously diseased, and President Biden could not change any one of those three hard facts.
"Two hundred and twenty-nine unaccompanied children were being held near the base, including many teenage boys who repeatedly bullied younger children. There were a 'large number of pregnant women,' some of whom needed medical attention, and increasing reports of 'gastrointestinal issues' among the refugees."
Note: Some teenage boys still bully, some women still get pregnant, some will need medical attention, and some refugees will suffer from gastrointestinal issues. Once more — hard, unalterable facts.
"Almost 15,000 Afghan refugees were packed into airplane hangars and wedding-style tents at Al Udeid Air Base, home to the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing."
Note: The world was screaming for Afghan refugees to be packed anywhere but in Afghanistan.
The story's criticisms go on, as would my critical notations, were I to go on. But I'll stop here.
The point, again, is that the story was almost entirely void of characterizing presidential power and its realistic capabilities in context. Its heavy implication was that Biden had somehow created the evacuation's chaos and consequent human pain, when the elimination or even alleviation of the delineated hardships was altogether out of his hands.
That, from the New York Times' "objective" reporting, as well as many others', recklessly disaffecting millions of centrist-to-liberal minds. And there's more to come, a lot more, about a lot of issues, just like in 2016.
If I were Trump, there'd be no question in my mind: Damn right I'd run, for I'd have this and another three years' worth of straight, context-free journalism on my side — cutting up my opponent with magnificent obliviousness every day, igniting disgruntlement and depressing turnout.