Co-published with the Irish Examiner:

EA on BBC: Nigel Farage’s Foreign Interference in the US Election

EA on Monocle Radio and GB News: US Election 2024 — The Sane v. The Weird and Dangerous

The candidate for US President is a felon, convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up an affair with a porn star. He has been found guilty in civil court of defamation over his sexual assault, which a judge found tantamount to rape, of a New York City writer.

He claims to be a billionaire but has been bankrupt six times, his career saved by reality TV as a “You’re Fired!” boss and a star of the World Wrestling Federation. His organization has been convicted of fraud and ordered to pay one of the largest fines in New York State history. His foundation was forced to close because of deception and diversion of funds.

This Is Not Normal.

His Secretary of State called him a “moron”. His Defense Secretary said he had the understanding of a 11-year-old. The head of the US military during his Presidential term says he is “fascist to the core”. His former White House Chief of Staff says he is an “idiot”, “unhinged”, and “falls into the general definition of a fascist”.

This Is Not Normal.

He effectively attempted a coup in January 2021, calling on his supporters to stop the orderly transition to President Joe Biden. He says that he returns to the White House in January 2025, he will be a “dictator on Day 1” and pursue retribution against his opponents. He has said he may use the military against “enemies within”.

This Is Not Normal.

Any responsible journalist or commentator would pin this declaration at the top of US election coverage. There would be a focus on actions rather than on polls, on facts rather than on what people supposedly “feel”, on past record and future intentions rather than ondistracting soundbites. There would be no false “both sides” equivalence, always balancing the candidate’s outrageous behavior with a minor transgression by his opponent.

But because many US journalists and commentators do not dare say, “This Is Not Normal”, Donald Trump may take his abnormal, dangerous behavior back into the Oval Office.

The Perverse Spectacle

In the past two weeks, Trump has had a 38-minute dance-off at a campaign rally, to tunes from the Village People’s YMCA to Ave Maria. In a 13-minute ramble, he marvelled at the genitalia of famous golfer Arnold Palmer. At the Economic Club of Chicago, he met questions with rambling nonsense while telling business executives and economists that “they don’t know what they’re talking about”. He called Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for President, “retarded”.

This should be confirmation that at the least, Trump does not have a grasp of basic, essential information. When called out, his ego responds with vitriol.

Instead, it becomes a perverse spectacle. It ensures that Trump and his allies, including US media outlets such as Fox TV, control the news cycle. Doing so, they can push aside a thoughtful consideration of the issues.

So rather than fundamentals such as US inflation falling from more than 8.0% in 2022 to 2.4% in September 2024 and steady GDP growth of 3%, Trump’s declaration of economic downturn and how voters fell about it becomes the default. Instead of noting this year’s 77% decrease in crossings from Mexico by undocumented migrants, Trump’s disinformation of “millions” of criminals and terrorists invading the US is recycled.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s address of the issues is often on the margins. Rather than being considered, her economic or social proposals are often ignored or relegated behind superficial declarations about her candidacy and the polls.

When Harris set out those proposals in August and September at rallies and in discussions with podcasters, broadcasters, and channels such as the Spanish-language Univision, she was criticized for not taking one-on-one interviews with national US outlets.

But when she sat down with CNN and Fox, consideration of her approach to issues was often fleeting. CNN portrayed her campaign as “jittery” and MSNBC declared Democratic “panic”. A commentary in an Irish newspaper, setting aside substance except for one wayward Harris statement, pronounced that she was “not a strong candidate”, “poor on her feet”, and “struggles to answer probing questions”.

Getting Away With It

Meanwhile, Trump uses his spectacle to escape scrutiny. He has rarely been challenged about his sabotage in early 2024 of the bipartisan agreement on border security. Significantly, the toughest questions he faced on immigration came not from journalists but from Latino voters in Miami.

His incoherence on the economy gets a pass. Some experts, as in the Economic Club of Chicago interview, try to pin him down on tariffs and the $15 trillion cost of his general proposals; however, follow-up is rare amid the focus on feelings rather than facts.

There is his admiration of Vladimir Putin, alongside Russia’s interference since 2016 on his behalf, and other autocrats like China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. There is his denigration of allies and threats to leave NATO, and his likely halt of US assistance for Ukraine’s resistance of Russia’s 32-month invasion. But all of this evaporates when he says falsely that he could end a war within 24 hours, or when a commentator — with not-so-subtle misogyny — says Harris would be “weak” facing a Vladimir or a Xi.

And then there is his open threat to the US system. It is there from his refusal to accept the result of an election, to the 900-page Project 2025 blueprint to politicize and co-opt US agencies, to the promise to attack “enemies within”.

All of that goes away with one photo-op of Trump posing in an apron at a McDonald’s.

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, whose satire is now wearing the mantle of responsible journalism, summarized on Monday:

We are left with this surreal idea that somehow Trump’s absurdity renders him benign. We dismiss his threats because of how much fun he has expounding on the length, width, girth of Arnold Palmer’s ****.

This Is Not Normal.