At a Turning Point rally Donald Trump held in West Palm Beach on Friday
“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it any more,” the Republican former president said on Friday night at a rally hosted in West Palm Beach, Florida, by the far-right Christian advocacy group Turning Point Action.
“You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians,” he said with a slight shake of his head and his right hand pressed against the left side of his chest.
He added: “I love you. Get out – you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
Her teeth pulled, ABC's Martha Raddatz on This Week on Sunday asked New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, chief surrogate for Nikki Haley's failed presidential run, a question she could not avoid posing
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 28, 2024:
The transcript shows that Aaron Rupar did not take the quote out of context:
Well, I think -- I think that was a classic Trump-ism, if you will. I think he’s just trying to make the point that this stuff can be fixed. You know, obviously, it’s -- we want everybody to vote in all elections. But I think he was just trying to make a hyperbolic point that -- that it can be fixed as long as he gets back into office and all that. But, you know, classic Trump right there.
And the first word from Raddatz was "O.K.," followed by a question about the impact of Vice-President Kamala Harris' impending nomination on the race.
We all remember January 6, 2021, the fake electors scheme, and the repeated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. However, Trump biographer Tim O'Brien reminds us
“He’s now president for life. President for life,” Trump
said of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2018. “And look, he was able to do
that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” In
2019, he fantasized about remaining president “at least for 10 or 14 years.”
That same year he also took to Twitter to share that his supporters “would
demand that I stay longer” than two terms in office. He floated the idea of
three terms again when he was campaigning in 2020.
Raddatz could have asked Sununu what a "Trump-ism" is. She might have asked him what "stuff" Trump wants to have "fixed." The governor could have asked about the proposal in Project 2025 which would eliminate the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, which enforces civil provisions of he federal laws that safeguard the right to vote. And what is "all that?"
As Hasan observed, that is how it's done all too often on broadcast news. Any politician can, and will, effectively answer a question by batting it away, diverting to talking points or, as in this case, chalking it all up to a joke or as Sununu did, attributing it to a person just being himself ("classic Trump right there"). Whatever you call it, it is not journalism.
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