A new word has exploded onto the political stage over the past two weeks:
Sanewashing.
It means exactly what it looks like: Taking rambling, incoherent rants by Donald Trump and “washing” them so he looks “sane.”
Aaron Rupar, a journalist who is very active on X, has been credited with coining “sanewashing” in this specific context. Multiple stories have been written about it since, including Parker Molloy in The New Republic, who started with this:
Four years ago, in an article for Media Matters for America, I warned that journalists were sanitizing Donald Trump’s incoherent ramblings to make them more palatable for the average voter. The general practice went like this: The press would take something Trump said or did — for instance, using a visit to the Centers for Disease Control to ask about Fox News’s ratings, insult then–Washington Governor Jay Inslee, rant about his attempt to extort Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden, and downplay the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. — and write them up as The New York Times did: “Trump Says ‘People Have to Remain Calm’ Amid Coronavirus Outbreak.” This had the effect of making it seem like Trump’s words and actions seemed cogent and sensible for the vast majority of Americans who didn’t happen to watch his rant live.
Flash-forward to today, and it’s clear this problem has only worsened.
Trump’s cognitive decline is obvious to any observer. But the media continues to sanewash everything the man says. As I said in the title, if Trump were your father, you would take away his car keys ... and begin thinking about what facility you’re going to move him into.
Now, you may be saying to yourself “Oh, it can’t be that bad. Bruce is just exaggerating for effect.”
Okay, let’s take a look.
How bad is Trump’s cognitive decline, anyway?
From a tweet by Ron Filipkowski:
In the last 24 hours, Trump wished the Virgin Mary Happy Birthday; pitched Hulk Hogan’s beer; talked about Hannibal Lecter; said he will imprison people he thinks are cheating; called Musk ‘Leon’; forgot Burgum’s name [the ND governor, who was on Trump’s short list for VP]; called Brian ‘Briar,’ Keystone ‘Keystown,’ & Tampon ‘Tampom’; said if he loses Israel will cease to exist, nuclear war will begin, this will be our last election, and the CO Gov will flee the state; posted an ad for his digital NFTs; ranted about Kamala standing on a box at the debate; and wrapped it up by saying schools are performing trans surgeries on students.
“Well, that’s not so bad,” you may be thinking. “Some of it is sort of looney-tunes, but okay.”
Okay, how about this from a rally in Potterville, Michigan? He starts out talking about Kamala Harris, but then ...
“She destroyed the city of San Francisco. It’s — and I own a big building there. It’s — no — I shouldn’t talk about this. But that’s OK. I don’t give a damn because that’s what I’m doing. [cheers from crowd] I should say it’s the finest city in the world — telling ‘Get the hell out of there’ — right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care. You know. I lost billions . . . billions of dollars. You know? Somebody here . . . ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two-three billion.’ They said, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nooobody [pause] . . . They always say . . . I don’t know if you know . . . [inaudible] Lincoln was horribly treated . . . Uhhh . . . Jefferson was pretty horribly . . . Andrew Jackson, they say, was the worst of all . . . that he was treated worse than any other president. And, I said, ‘do that study again,’ because I think there’s nobody close [laughter from crowd] to Trump. I even got shot. And who the hell knows where that came from, right?”
And this classic, a response to this question posed at the Economic Club of New York on September 5, 2024: “If you win in November, do you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable and, if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down here . . . . I was, uh, was Senator Marco . . . Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so . . . impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue . . . but, when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about . . . that . . . because . . . the child care . . . is child care. Couldn’t . . . uhh . . . it’s something . . . You have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.”
“But, when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by . . . taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly, and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when the send product into our country, and those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have . . . I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about, on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care.”
“I want to stay with child care. But those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth. . . . But growth also headed up by ‘what’s the plan’ is . . . uhh . . . that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars and, uh, as much as child care, uh, as talked about, is, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.”
“We’re gonna make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. And then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re gonna take care of our country first. This is about America first. This is about ‘Make America Great Again.’ We have to do it. Because right now we’re a failing nation. [weak applause]”
And finally, these examples from Heather Cox Richardson:
- Trump told the audience that when he took office in 2017, military officers told him the U.S. had given all the military’s ammunition away to allies.
- He reiterated the MAGA claim that mothers are executing their babies after birth—this is completely bonkers—and again echoed Russian talking points when he said these executions are happening—they are not—but “nobody talks about it.”
- He reiterated the complete fantasy that schools are performing gender-affirming surgery on children. “Can you imagine you're a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school, and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump’s suggestion that schools are performing surgery on students is bananas. This is simply not a thing that happens.
Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is mentally unwell, and unfit to be president. His cognitive decline is accelerating, and putting him back in charge of our government and military would be a grave threat to our nation and the world.
And it’s time for the media to stop the “sanewashing” and tell the American people the truth about the Republican candidate for president.
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