Let’s take a look at some of the more egregious passages, starting with the very first paragraph:
The president of the United States spent four minutes on Tuesday talking to the American public about the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence. No, not that president. The one who actually occupies the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is the president of the United States and it is insulting to begin an article with the premise that when people read “the president of the United States,” their minds go to anyone else. And seriously, even among people who consider Donald Trump to be “my president” more than two years after he left office, does anyone read that a person spent four minutes talking and think, “Ah, that’s Trump. Always so disciplined in the amount of time he speaks”? Does anybody think that Trump would talk in any kind of sustained way about “the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence”? At most what you’d get would be “in a rambling speech most focused on Mr. Trump’s grievances but at times touching on [topic, unrelated topic, and] the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence …”
Americans could be forgiven if they momentarily forgot the most powerful person in the country. As helicopters and cameras followed every step of the Donald J. Trump legal drama in New York more than 200 miles to the north with white Ford Bronco-level intensity, President Biden faded into the background, ceding the stage to his defendant-predecessor.
There’s a pretty solid argument that one of the things people like about Biden is that they don’t have to think about him all the time, that exhaustion after the four years of being jerked around by Trump’s narcissism was one of the things that made Biden’s promise of mild-mannered competence so appealing in 2020.
Let’s jump ahead a bit:
The tale of two presidents on this spring afternoon, one quietly focused on technology policy, the other having his fingerprints taken, underscored the unique challenge that has confronted Mr. Biden since taking office more than two years ago. No commander in chief in more than a century has been eclipsed in the public eye by the leader he succeeded the way Mr. Biden has at times. Now with the first criminal prosecution of a former president in American history, it will be that much harder to command the national conversation.
Excuse me? One of these two men just became the first former president to face criminal charges, and it’s a challenge for the other guy, the one in the White House decidedly not being fingerprinted? Did a Trump adviser provide talking points for this article?
Still, anti-chaos may be appealing to voters exhausted by Trumpian turmoil, but it has not historically been a big ratings draw.
The assumption throughout is that Trump is right: Attention is the only currency that matters, and Biden’s team must on some level be delusional to think that projecting calm and competence could ever pay off. Take the fact that while Biden went to Minnesota to focus on manufacturing there, cable news was fixated on Trump’s flight from Florida to New York, and:
The White House was left to make the best of the situation. Jeffrey D. Zients, the new chief of staff, posted an image of the front page of The Star Tribune of Minneapolis featuring the headline “Biden touts investment in Minn.”
It may not be a pretense from the White House in preferring good local coverage with strong local hooks over blanket coverage of criminal charges on cable news. “How great is it to come to a political rally where we talk about solutions and the future,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said at that event.
The Times would claim to be analyzing the political environment, but context like this is backburnered or absent: “The political arithmetic here is that Donald Trump cannot get elected without getting people who didn’t vote for him in 2020 to vote for him in 2024,” as Democratic pollster Geoff Garin told The Washington Post. “The fact that he is being indicted on one crime and is facing multiple other criminal investigations will make it much harder for him to find new voters.”
There’s very valid media criticism to be written about the fact that Trump’s every word gets blanket coverage on the cable news networks while the good work the Biden administration is doing is often ignored. Decisions by news executives to air Trump’s post-arraignment speech in full or in part are seriously questionable—as during the 2016 presidential campaign, it’s bad editorial practice to give Trump what amounts to free campaign ads by airing his every word. But while it’s true that the Republican base seems to be rallying behind Trump, at least temporarily, as he came under the possibility of indictment and the possibility was then realized, it’s equally problematic to run with the idea that this in some way puts him in a position of strength just because he’s in the headlines.
Sign if you agree: Media circus on Trump trial is dangerous
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