I’m not saying the Times wants to inure liberals to Trump becoming president again, implementing a nationwide campaign of terror against immigrants and enemies, and deal the death blow to democracy.
I’m just saying that if they wanted those things, this is the kind of framing they would choose.
“Contrasting goals”: Trump wants to violently round up 18 million people, herd them into concentration camps, and push them onto planes and helicopters at gunpoint.
Biden wants to cut social service costs in major cities and quiet his nativist critics.
“Bolsters strategy”: Voters are unlikely to see Trump face any legal consequences for trying to overthrow the government and install himself as a dictator for life before the election thanks to the
corrupt, unqualified gaggle of sex pests and theocrats he installed on the Supreme Court
One thing I think that (perhaps justifiably) gets lost as we examine this horrific, worsening normalization in the media, and particularly in the NYT: the writing is getting worse and worse. Cliches, vagaries, euphemisms. It's like they read "Politics and the English Language" as a how-to.
