WORST OF THE DECADE: Trump Derangement Syndrome
By Geoffrey Dickens | December 25, 2019
his week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of the decade. On Monday, we presented some of the most outrageous examples of journalists fawning over liberal or left-wing icons, and yesterday we showcased the decades’s nastiest attacks on conservatives.
Today, it’s a look at the media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome as we present the most hateful attacks on President Donald Trump.
From CNN’s Van Jones declaring Trump’s win a “white-lash” against the first black president to MSNBC’ers Keith Olbermann, Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch constantly comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler, the following are some of the most obnoxious examples of the media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome:
[LANGUAGE WARNING]
TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME
Welcome to the “White-Lash”
“It’s hard to be a parent, tonight, for a lot of us. You tell your kids, don’t be a bully. You tell your kids, don’t be a bigot….And then, you have this outcome….how do I explain this to my children?…This was a ‘white-lash.’ This was a ‘white-lash’ against a changing country. It was a ‘white-lash’ against a black president.”
— CNN’s political analyst Van Jones during live election night coverage 12:44 am ET, November 9, 2016.
Trump’s Election Is Another 9/11
“This is a moral 9/11. Only 9/11 was done to us from the outside and we did this to ourselves.”
— New York Times columnist Tom Friedman on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, November 11, 2016.
Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler and Now Trump!
“These are not words of sanity! These are the rages and the boasts and the madness that we have seen throughout history: Saddam Hussein, Mussolini, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse Dung, Stalin, Pol Pot, bin Laden, Hitler.”
— Ex-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann talking about Donald Trump in a video message for The Resistance on GQ.com, November 29, 2016.
“Let me be clear here, I believe that what we’re seeing with Trump has whiffs of how Hitler rose to power, because of the popularizing of all of these things.”
— Founder of The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill, on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, May 13, 2016.
Psychoanalyzing “Crazy” “Sociopath” “Basket Case” Trump
“He’s unhinged, it’s embarrassing and I don’t mean for us, the media because he went after us, but for the country. This is who we elected President of the United States….There was no gravitas. There was no sanity….If you watch that speech as an American, you had to be thinking what in the world is going on? This is the person we elected as President of the United States? This petty, this small, a person who who’s supposed to pull the country together?”
— Host Don Lemon reacting to Trump speech in Arizona, on CNN Tonight, August 22, 2017.
“Sociopathic” Trump is “Stain” that Needs Removing, “Unfit to Be Human”
“Donald Trump is a deeply damaged human being. He is a sociopathic, malignant narcissist, and he happens to be the – you know, the electoral system, not the American people, but the Electoral College has sort of vomited this thing up and it landed in the Oval Office and it needs to be removed. It’s a stain. It’s a big glob on the carpet there. It needs to be removed and that means impeachment or the 25th Amendment. This man is a danger to the world.”
— Former MSNBC host Ron Reagan Jr. on MSNBC’s Hardball, October 25, 2017.
“He [Donald Trump] was a coward. He didn’t have the spine to stand-up as leader of the United States and I feel that to be shameful. I’m glad Republicans are calling him out on it. I’m glad elected leaders in the Republican Party are finally, finally stopping looking the other way and confronting the fact that he’s not only not fit to be president. In my book, his lack of empathy, his lack of leadership, his lack of courage, he’s unfit to be human.”
— Political commentator Ana Navarro, in response to Trump’s Charlottesville, VA speech as aired on CNN Newsroom with John Berman and Poppy Harlow, August 14, 2017.
“This piece of shit is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”
— June 3, 2017 tweet by former CNN host Reza Aslan about Donald Trump’s post-London attack tweet.
Trump’s Awfulness Justifies Our Bias
“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?…It is journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.”
— Jim Rutenberg in an August 8 New York Times front-page story, “The Challenge Trump Poses to Objectivity.”
“It doesn’t matter who you are — a journalist, a politician or a voter — we’ll all be judged by how we responded to Donald Trump. Like it or not, this election is a plebiscite on the most divisive, polarizing and disrupting figure in American politics in decades. And neutrality is not an option.”
— Univision and Fusion news anchor Jorge Ramos in an August 23 article posted at Time.com.
Stunned by Trump’s Anti-Semitic “Neo-Nazi” Ways
Anchor George Stephanopoulos: “Students of history will take note of that slogan, America first.”
Correspondent Terry Moran: “It’s a loaded term in American history. Now, he defined it here as total allegiance to the United States of America, and it is something, as Cecilia said, this is why he was sent here by people who want to hear that message of America first. However, it carries with it overtones from the 1930s when an anti-Semitic movement saying, ‘We don’t want to get involved in Europe’s war. It’s the Jews’ fault in Germany!’ Charles Lindbergh led them. It is a term, as he defined it his way, but the words themselves carry very ugly echos in our history.”
— ABC News live coverage of Trump inauguration, January 20, 2017.
Trump Turning U.S. into Nazi Germany
“Children are being marched away to showers, just like the Nazis said they were taking people to the showers, and then they never came back. You’d think they would use another trick.”
— Co-host Joe Scarborough talking about Trump’s immigration policies on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, June 15, 2018.
Dyson’s Ugly Excretion of Words
“We got a guy [Donald Trump] who gets up every morning and excretes the feces of his moral depravity into a nation he has turned into a psychic commode. That’s what he’s done. And he’s a bigot-in-chief and a racist in residence…Look at this mendacious, relentlessly lying, bigoted, ill-informed person that we have. He has the fleshly thesaurus of white supremacy reduced to one body.”
— New York Times Opinion contributing editor Michael Eric Dyson on ABC’s The View, June 4, 2018.
“Hate Is on the Ballot”
“Killing black people is an old American tradition, but it is experiencing a revival in the Trump era….The fact is that one side of the political spectrum is peddling hatred, while the other isn’t. And refusing to point that out for fear of sounding partisan is, in effect, lending aid and comfort to the people poisoning our politics. Yes, hate is on the ballot next week.”
— Columnist Paul Krugman in October 29, 2018 New York Times column “Hate Is on the Ballot Next Week”
Jesus Would Have Never Survived Trump
“If Jesus were today or Trump was back then, he would have been separated from his parents. Joseph and Mary would have been put in a separate detention center – he would have been put in a separate detention center, and he might likely have died in custody like another child did over the holidays.”
— SiriusXM radio talk show host Mark Thompson on MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle, January 2, 2019.
The Real “Crisis” is the “Cancer” That Is Trump
“He’s [Donald Trump] gone from malignant to benign….He was always a cancer and he’s gone from a malignant cancer to a benign cancer. The cancer’s still there, but he does not have the toxic effect, he does not have the ability to impact, he does not have the ability to force his will on anything.”
— Advertising executive and political analyst Donny Deutsch on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, December 13, 2018.
“Many have noted, that despite Mr. Trump’s many self-inflicted wounds, his presidency benefitted from not having to face a financial or international crisis. But perhaps now we need to face this uncomfortable question: What if the president is the crisis?”
— Host Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, December 23, 2018.
Trump Wants Wall to “Keep America White”
“It ain’t a dog whistle, it is a racist P.A. announcement that all of Trump supporters in America can listen to: ‘I know the facts aren’t on our side, I know we’re not gonna win in the courts, but let me just tell you I’m trying to keep brown people….from Latin America out of the United States. Because when I say….let’s make America great again, I’m really just saying, as Donald Trump your president, let’s keep America white, majority white.’…Put that on your bumper sticker if you’re supporting Donald Trump in 2020 because that, he has proven at last, is all his presidency is about.”
— Host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 18, 2019.
Triggered By a Hat
“That hat has become symbolic of a lot of things in this country. To some, it is merely a hat that dons a political slogan that the president popularized. For others, it has become an invitation for confrontation. Some people referred to the hat as a modern day version of the Confederate battle flag.”
— Host Craig Melvin on MSNBC Live, January 23, 2019.
Blaming Trump for Anti-Semitic Attacks
“The blood, the blood that is spilled, is on your hands. From white nationalists, from people who listen to that sort of rhetoric, any violence to journalists. ‘Enemy of the people,’ the kill lists….No, we are so past dog whistles now, Donald. You are just inciting violence. It’s just obvious….You are unfit to the be President of the United States.”
— Co-host Joe Scarborough discussing Poway, California synagogue shooting as aired on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, April 29, 2019.
“Sociopath” Trump Will Never Leave Office
“If you look throughout history and you become a student of history and the worst of what humans have done throughout history, Trump is using that play book….I believe this man is capable of horrific, horrific deeds….If he gets voted out of office, he will say it was fake. He will say the polls were rigged. He will tell his people to take to the streets. People have to understand this is not a man who is playing with any boundaries on what a normal civilization and normal democracy has. I use the word sociopath.”
— MSNBC Saturday Night Politics host Donny Deutsch on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, May 17, 2019.
Trump Is Killing Kids with His Words
“If you refer to immigrants as an infestation as the President has, if you promote bigoted stereotypes about their unique depravity and talk about them as a nefarious band of infiltrators you will promote the conditions for cruelty as surely as affect follows cause. There is a body count to the President’s rhetoric now, and unless something changes, it is going to grow.”
— Host Chris Hayes discussing the death of a migrant child, as aired on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, May 22, 2019.
Trump’s “Racist” Rhetoric Inspired White Supremacists to Kill
“We’ve heard Beto O’Rourke say that the President’s rhetoric is fueling more hate in this country. The President has used, as you well know, words like invasion to talk about illegal immigrants….Isn’t this kind of rhetoric and especially in light of what we’ve just seen, isn’t it just dangerous?…What do you say to Americans who look at what happened in El Paso and say that the President’s rhetoric is in part to blame?”
— Substitute host Jonathan Karl’s questions to White House Chief of Staff Mike Mulvaney on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, August 4, 2019.
“You now have a President, as you said, talking about exterminating Latinos.”
— Host Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, August 5, 2019.
“If you’re a white supremacist, you find the President’s words possibly inspirational, possibly comforting.”
— Senior political reporter Nia Malika Henderson on CNN Newsroom, August 5, 2019.
This Is What Trump Wants
“Isn’t it okay to deduce that at this point this is what he wants?….I mean, this is a President who seems to want these things to happen. How else can this be explained?”
— Co-host Mika Brzezinski discussing mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio as aired on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 6, 2019.
“You have spent the last several years lying and covering up for this President and trying to pretend he’s not a white supremacist. And that goes for you, CEOs, who allow your companies to continue to write checks, to support the political rise of this white supremacist President.”
— Co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 5, 2019.
Donny Deutsch: “I’m Not Saying Trump is Going to Slaughter 6 Million Jews But…”
“There’s so many stunning parallels to what Hitler was doing in the early ’30s. Once again, I’m not saying Trump is going to slaughter 6 million Jews, but ranging from the fake news parallels to the seizing of new powers, the Reichstag [fire] of ’33 versus Trump’s nonexistent national emergencies and declarations to ignore Congress, the racial scapegoating, the rallies, the isolating of himself, the creating of false ‘other.’ He has the Justice Department in his pocket. He has one branch of the government marching blindly behind him.”
— Host Donny Deutsch on MSNBC’s Saturday Night Politics, July 27, 2019.
Headed for a Holocaust: Are “Jews Next?”
“We are heading to such a dangerous place. And guess what? You look at history, it can happen here. Maybe it’s the Jews next. Oh, oh, oh: I forgot, his daughter is married to a Jew. Who says? Who says? You know, I come from a place, I come from a group of people where it happened to, six million of them.”
— MSNBC analyst Donny Deutsch on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, July 17, 2019.
Trump Has Nazi “Tendencies”
“I want people to go back and look at Nazi Germany in the early ‘30s because the parallels are stunning….Oh, it can’t happen here, it can’t happen here. It can happen here….If you’re the person who votes for Donald Trump, you are no different than if you were watching on a subway five white nationalists berate an African-American woman saying, ‘Go back to where you came from,’ and then you hid and you put your head down….This is a man [Donald Trump] with Nazi tendencies.”
— Former advertising executive and current MSNBC analyst Donny Deutsch on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 19, 2019.
Joe Can’t Stop Making Nazi Comparisons
President Donald Trump: “Omar has a history of launching vicious, anti-Semitic screeds.” [Crowd chants, “send her back!”]
Co-host Joe Scarborough: “That’s the President, actually, from his Nuremberg rally from last night.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 18, 2019.
Host Joe Scarborough: “When is the time to sound the alarm? When is the time to start saying, well, does this look like Germany in 1932? Does this look like Germany in 1933? Is now the time to start asking that question?”
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson: “Well, the time to start sounding an alarm, a general alarm, was some time ago. And people should be screaming now. The alarm should be at full volume. You know, one thing you – most columnists wisely resolve, is don’t bring out the Hitler/Germany analogy, you know? That’s – you never use that. We’re getting close.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 23, 2019.
