NPR media reporter David Folkenflik appeared on their “news” show Weekend Edition Saturday to discuss Team Trump-Vance and the eating-pets thing from Springfield, Ohio. Host Scott Simon marveled at how “even after being debunked, fringe ideas and lies can still become major campaign themes.”
“Fringe ideas and lies” are only Republican campaign themes. They are never Democrat campaign themes. This is your tax dollars at work in the last weeks of a campaign.
Folkenflik suggested Trump's complaints about Jewish voters suggest something "Jews have experienced over the decades and centuries, certain kinds of targeting and pogroms."
This segment took a turn when Simon mentioned J.D. Vance was being interviewed by Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted a Holocaust revisionist. Then they aired audio of Donald Trump complaining about Jewish voters still pulling a lever for the Democrats, even as Israel is under attack from two sides. Trump said “If I don't win this election -- and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because at 40%, that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.”
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think about political rhetoric a lot. If you look at this, he's calling the Democratic ticket not his opponent, but the enemy. That's a pretty intense and fraught phrase. Not the first time he's done it -- but he's also singling out a specific ethnic group to blame. He's saying they would have a lot to do with my losing if that happens. This is the sort of thing that, in other countries, Jews have experienced over the decades and centuries, certain kinds of targeting and pogroms. That's kind of a scary overtone for a lot of folks.
And for the press, there's something of a challenge, as well because you've got to figure out, do we simply report what he's saying, or do we present the context in which he's done? No, Trump didn't explicitly say there should be violence of any kind. But he is scapegoating Jewish voters who may not agree with him and should have every right not to do so.
POGROMS? Trump is talking up an "organized massacre"? Folkenflik is basically spreading the Vanity Fair take on these remarks. Their headline was Donald “America’s Hitler” Trump Gives Supporters the Green Light to Blame Jews If He Loses in November.
No one inside the NPR bubble will point out that Trump has been strongly supportive of Israel, which is not exactly suggestive of Hitler. Trump is complaining that Jews would rather stick to voting for Democrats who are currently seeking to curry favor with Hamas supporters. Those voters can sound like the "pogrom" people.
Between this, the eating-pets commentary, and the Mark Robinson gloating, Simon nudged Folkenflik to sum up that the conservative media is a blight on the journalism landscape.
SIMON: David, do you see anything in this moment that ties all this stuff together?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think there's been sort of an absorption into the mainstream -- particularly in the Republican Party, but in political life -- of things that we would have thought were utterly extremist and would be disqualifying. And I think that you've seen, through certain elements of the conservative far-right press - figures like Tucker Carlson, who himself has been exiled from Fox News, but at times, Fox News itself and Newsmax and others but also the former president and his ticket -- an affirming of the idea that these are figures and thoughts that are not verboten but that are at least something that could be entertained. And I think that's a tough moment for America to find its in and a real challenge for the press to report on.
For Folkenflik, this doesn't really represent a "challenge." Excoriating and demonizing the conservative media is his bread and butter. Meanwhile, Folkenflik didn't see anything "extremist" or "far-left" in a media-ethics debate piece over leaks to the fiercely anti-Israel website The Intercept, which casually "reports" Israel is committing "genocide" in Gaza. He can "entertain" that idea.
