One of the truly maddening aspects of covering the news in the Trump era is how predictable it all is. From the Iran debacle to the chips-for-crypto scandal to the peeling Reflecting Pool, the cause and effect are so simple, so in your face, that it’s hard to talk about the outcome.
Take Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The health secretary is currently in a fight with Gov. Josh Shapiro about two fatalities in Pennsylvania that the state’s health department attributes to unvaccinated people dying of measles. Shapiro is blaming the administration for stoking mistrust of vaccines. Kennedy, the country’s most prominent anti-vaxxer, said there’s no evidence that these measles deaths happened at all, which set off a 𝕏Twitter dispute between the two, in which RFK spent several paragraphs pushing the the debunked claim that the MMR vaccine contains fetal tissue, blamed the spike in measles cases on the Biden administration, and, nonsensically, posited that it was Covid lockdowns themselves that undermined public trust in vaccines. He repeated a lot of this at a 𝕏press event on Wednesday, claiming that the Trump administration is “actually restoring faith in the public health agencies,” even as he continued to suggest that Shapiro and his health chiefs were lying to everyone.
Just two weeks ago, Kennedy appeared in the Oval Office touting a new executive order chipping away at vaccine mandates. There’s also new reporting this morning, from the AP and The Guardian, that he misled skeptical Senators during his confirmation process, when he claimed that a trip to Samoa in 2019, during a high-profile measles vaccine scare, had “nothing to do with vaccines.” False. In a letter obtained by the news outlets, Kennedy, at the time the head of the antivax group Children’s Health Defense, wrote to the prime minister of Samoa, proposing a visit to investigate “what happened with your MMR vaccines.” The actual story was this: two babies died after getting doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine that nurses had mistakenly mixed with a muscle relaxant instead of water, touching off a panic about the vaccine that Kennedy’s visit helped to inflame. In the following months, more than 5,000 measles cases were reported in Samoa, and 83 people died. So you can understand why, when Kennedy conceded in his Wednesday press conference — after lots of talk of “gaslighting” and “manipulation” and Joe Biden — that the government recommends getting the MMR vaccine, it didn’t land with a lot of genuine conviction.
When we have our editorial meeting in a couple hours, I’m going to pitch covering this story. No slight to Jon and Dan, but I bet they’ll pass, saying something like: “Yeah, it’s bad — but what is there to say about it?” This happens all the time. There’s even a journalism cliche for it: “dog bites man.” A dog-bites-man story is something so obvious that the audience won’t be interested. This phenomenon is all the more relevant in an algorithmic news environment that rewards shock value.
The thing with the Trump administration is, there are an awful lot of dogs out there biting an awful lot of people, and doing it in broad daylight. It may not be surprising, but that doesn’t mean we can just ignore it. And if the customers tune it out? That’s a challenge that we, as news professionals, need to face.
I’m back in action this week after four days in the woods, and still struggling to get my head around everything. Luckily, everyone else is as dialed-in as ever, and we have lots to talk about. Dan wrote a great Message Box yesterday morning** **about what Trump’s efforts on behalf of Darline Graham in South Carolina might mean for promising Democratic candidate Annie Andrews; we’ll have Andrews on the show today to talk through her theory of the race now that Graham is officially her opponent. Trump has “signing time” in the Oval Office that will likely end with Q&A. We’ll be watching to see if that advances any of the storylines we’re watching for our news blocks:
**Me, Me, Me.Trump’s approval rating ishistorically underwateron nearly every issue. And yet, his new plan to help Republicans in the midterms is running ads about himself. So… the audience is booing, and he steps back onstage for an encore? He seems pretty certain he’s not the problem at all. Yesterday, here-posteda right-winger’s warning that Republicans don’t “fully grasp how badly they’re fucking up right now.”‘Trumpapalooza.’**Trump will also headline Republicans’ first-of-its-kind midterm convention on Sept. 9 and 10, despite GOP fears of a flop (according to CNN). After all, this event comes as everydaycostsremain high, Trump’sextremely unpopularwar with Iran drags on, and Trump-endorsed candidates keeplosing momentum. Trump and co. are hoping that a primetime event timed to the one-year anniversary of the Charlie Kirk assassination and the 25th anniversary of 9/11 will help sell their story that Democrats are too radical, violent, and dangerous to be trusted.Mail-in Voting. Trump’s plotting more than just a spectacle, though, of course: his efforts to restrict mail-in ballots continue. This week, he won, at least temporarily, in two legal skirmishes over the practice — leavinga lot of uncertaintyabout what’s next, with early voting to kick off next month. Can the courts sort this out in time? Will it matter?Open Tabs
Among this week’s half-consumed masterpieces: a profile of ascendant Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz, a look at what life is really like on an aircraft carrier, and the trendiest dog breed.
