Don't be fooled by David Frum's rather reserved academic mien. The CNN regular is as rabid a Trump/JD Vance hater as anyone on the liberal media's Team Kamala.
In recent times, we have caught Frum calling Vance a "racist, corrupt" Trump with better hair and a law degree. And comparing Trump to psychopathic mass murderer Charles Manson.
Frum was back at his incendiary attacks on today's CNN This Morning. The topic was the appropriateness of Trump calling Kamala Harris mentally impaired and disabled.
Frum suggested that instead of making personal insults about Harris, Trump should speak about his plans, but America has too many racists: "the issues are not going to work for him, that's why -- the genius of Donald Trump was to understand, look, the Paul Ryan message doesn't sell. What does sell in America is racialized contempt."
Frum's suggestion was made in utmost bad faith. He mischaracterized Trump's plans in the worst, most misleading ways. Thus, he suggested that Trump should say:
"I want to talk about my plan to build a network of concentration camps to hold 10 million people, and then dump them all in Mexico, wherever they came from before and without regard to what the Mexicans think. "
It's a commonplace for the liberal media to analogize Trump to Hitler. But for my co-religionist Frum to accuse Trump of planning to build "concentration camps" plumbs the depths of the despicable.
Frum's "concentration camp" accusation was far worse than the insults Trump aimed at Harris. But that irony was obviously lost on Frum, who certainly knows better and should be ashamed of himself. But surely isn't.
Republican Scott Jennings soundly refuted Frum's claim that the issues aren't working for Trump, pointing out that polling shows people trust Trump more than Harris on the key issues of immigration, the economy, and foreign policy. Jennings did diplomatically question whether insulting Harris' mental ability is the "correct vector" for the Trump campaign, given that the issues are working so well for him.
Frum claimed that Trump calling Kamala mentally impaired and disabled reflects his supposedly core message of "racialized contempt." In fact, Trump is an equal opportunity insulter of his opponents' intelligence.
As the the Washington Post has documented, among the people of pallor whose intelligence Trump has mocked are: Karl Rove, Tim O'Brien, Glenn Beck, Robert DeNiro—and the Mika Brzezinski.
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
9/30/24
6:43 am EDTDONALD TRUMP: Kamala is mentally impaired. Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. If you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.
. . .
MANU RAJU: What should he say?
DAVID FRUM: He should say, look, I want to talk about the issues. I want to talk about my plan to allow health insurance companies to deny coverage again to people with preexisting conditions.
I want to talk about my plan to build a network of concentration camps to hold 10 million people, and then dump them all in Mexico, wherever they came from before, and without regard to what the Mexicans think.
I have a plan to make Social Security finances less stable.
I mean, because the issues are not going to work for him, that's why -- the genius of Donald Trump was to understand, look, the Paul Ryan message doesn't sell. What does sell in America is racialized contempt. So that is what I'm going to offer. I mean, plus Paul Ryan, but racialized contempt.
And that has always been the core of the message. That is the message. So when he, he's not off message, he's on it. And he's always understood television better than any of the other people in the Republican party. Say what does galvanize the people who support Trump, who rejected better, cleaner, more decent, more intelligent Republicans in the past who rejected Mitt Romney, although Mitt Romney got more of the vote?
What is Trump's special sauce? Racialized contempt. So of course he's going with that as his closing argument.
. . .
SCOTT JENNINGS: I disagree with you that the issues aren't working for Trump. And the fact is, in all of the polling we've done, the Gallup poll, everything that's come out in the last few days, they trust him more on the economy. They trust more on immigration. They trust him more on foreign policy.
So, the issues actually are working for him. To what extent this is the correct vector right now, when you have this issue set that is quite clearly working for you? I think that's a debating point for a campaign strategy.
But I just disagree. I think the issues are setting up quite nicely for him.
