Dem
47
GOP
53
In yesterday's posting, we made a couple of references to the fact that Truth Social was not working properly on Monday night. For most of that time, if you went to Donald Trump's feed, this is what you saw:
So, there are no truths to be found in Donald Trump's Truth Social feed. If that's not hitting it on the nose, we don't know what is.
As we allude to in the previous item, it sometimes gets very dispiriting to have to write item after item about the undemocratic and/or harmful and/or mean-spirited actions of Donald Trump and his administration. However, the only thing worse is... not writing those items. The Washington Post may be compromised these days, but there is much truth to the slogan the paper has had in place since 2017: "Democracy dies in darkness."
Yesterday, we got a question from reader D.S. in Davis, CA:
Are there any news sources that just don't talk about Donald Trump? I'm OK with outlets that talk about the impact of policy, or refer to Trump with the same frequency as say the chancellor of Germany. But it seems he has simply and completely monopolized every news feed I can find—including Political Wire and Electoral-Vote.com. The political discourse is completely broken. I don't care what he says any more, he'll just say something else tomorrow. And if he isn't saying something, it's people talking about him. I want to get back to talking about the real impact of actions rather than humanizing every single attention-grabbing headline. I want to talk about immigration with data, not anecdotes, and school funding policy and impact, not attention-grabbing headlines. What is in the bill, not how it was made. Don't get me wrong, the real impact of actions on people are important. I just need to opt out of the echo chamber for a while. Does anyone have any suggestions?
We read a lot of news, and... we don't have any suggestions. We can certainly come up with sites where Donald Trump is a minor player, but that would be because those sites are focused on India, or Japan, or some other non-American concern. For example, L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of Vatican City, has only mentioned Trump twice all year. But unless you really want to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in Roman Catholicism, it's not the paper for you. In any event, if readers have suggestions, presumably of outlets that cover world/American news without talking about Trump, please send them to [email protected], ideally with subject line "Trump-free Zones."
For our part, we think very carefully about every story we write up, and we try hard to cover only those things we think are essential, or that readers will need to know if they want to stay on top of the political discussion. Not talking about Trump, or talking about him much less, just is not possible, given both our focus and the "democracy dies in darkness" problem. We have pondered the possibility of declaring one day every week to be Trump-free, but that just does not work either. What if, say, Tuesday is the Trump-free day, and on Monday afternoon, he authorizes a military strike against Iran?
That said, the Saturday and Sunday posts play by different rules, since they are not as news-driven. This week, the Saturday post was nearly Trump-free, but for the "reader question of the week" responses that had been set in motion a week earlier. And the Sunday post was entirely Trump-free. These got a good response from a lot of readers, who appreciated the breather. So, we're going to do what we've previously hinted at, and declare that, henceforth, the last weekend of the month will be dedicated to non-politics questions and letters. Further, barring some major development (like Trump ordering the arrest of Joe Biden), his name will not appear on those days. We think that's a good choice for us, and a good choice for the readers. (Z)