You Can’t Beat Donald Trump at His Own Game

(I Skipped the Live Broadcast for a Violent Femmes Concert)

I went to a sold out concert last night at the Rady Shell to see the Violent Femmes, accompanied by the San Diego Symphony. I wasn’t sure how the arrangement would work. The folk/punk band’s stripped down sound seemed like an unlikely fit with a big orchestra.

Suffice it to say they made it work. It’s been 40 years since the release of the Violent Femmes self-titled first album, and the band celebrated by playing all the tracks from their debut effort.   The crowd and the performers loved the mix. So did I…

Isn’t that concert picture better than seeing Trump’s ugly mug?

Meanwhile, at a college far, far, away, former President Donald Trump took the stage in front of a hand-picked crowd in New Hampshire for a town hall. CNN rising star Kaitlan Collins was tasked with guiding the evening. It was an unfair match, as she tried in vain to corral the man with fact checking and truth bombs.

He wiped the floor with her. What the audience saw was a made-for-TV version of a Trump rally, complete with an adoring audience. He mocked reality, blustering through questions that were supposed to be hard hitting, but were no match for a man with no shame.

Here are the Washington Post headlines, which serve as good as a thumbnail sketch as I found this morning.

Trump’s CNN town hall: Defending rioters, mocking sexual assault, threatening default

The former president used his highly anticipated return to mainstream cable television news to give a broader swath of Americans an unvarnished view of what he has been saying at rallies and in right-wing media

NYU’s Media master, Jay Rosen, encapsulated what went horribly wrong:

• The failure was earlier. In the delusion that by bringing him into your space, you could force him into your world: where there are such things as facts, where verification matters, and the public record speaks. It was a failure to accept how far gone this is, though you knew

The lesson for the future to be learned from the CNN town hall is that Donald Trump can’t be fact checked fast enough to counter his torrent of lies. And when he doesn’t have another falsehood to offer, an insult serves his purpose.

The American media is, I think, incapable of portraying the truth about this man, in part because no truth exists in his universe.

There’s only one way to portray him, and it’s not by asking him to say the 2020 election was fair.

He needs to be mocked. Any moderator should feel free to mirror his behavior. Instead of asking him to affirm the 2020 election, ask him about the fact that most Americans think he is a liar. Instead of giving him another opportunity to defame Jean Carroll, ask why the only two women who’ve publicly acknowledged having sex with him say they never felt penetration. 

Nobody should care if he runs off the stage. Call it for what it is: cowardice. Let the post-event talking heads discuss his lack of a backbone when the bullying part of his act is pushed back on him. No moderator should care about his insults; there are legions of people who’ve interacted with Trump and paid the price.

When Trump tried to insult the CNN moderator as “hateful,” she should have said “Yes, I’m sure you think so. Now answer the question.”

Yes, it’s rotten. Yes, it’s not the American Way. But the former President is unbeatable on his own terms, and there is no road high enough to escape the tsunami of untruths coming from his mouth. His cult of followers will not be moved. 

So it’s time to fire up the rest of the nation’s electorate to make that extra effort to vote for him and bring their neighbors.

President Joe Biden is right, folks. This election is about freedom. The man has made his intentions clear

Other News Morsels

Climate misinformation is becoming law Via the HEATED  newsletter.

• Despite all this, the fossil fuel industry has been marketing gas as a climate solution for decades. This marketing has only intensified as the public has gotten more serious about tackling climate change.

• But industry-created climate misinformation is no longer just infiltrating podcasts and social media feeds. It’s also infiltrating the law. The phenomenon started in Europe last year, when the European Parliament voted to label certain uses of natural gas as “green.” That meant billions of dollars that were intended to fund climate-friendly projects could legally be used for methane power plants and terminals. 

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People of color get so used to discrimination in stores they don’t always notice bad customer service  Via the Conversation.

• Research has shown that discrimination in customer-worker interactions in the service sector is often difficult to detect and fix. This is particularly challenging when the biases are subtle and less obvious in slights often referred to as microaggressions.

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FDA panel backs over-the-counter sales of birth control pill Via the Union-Tribune

• FDA’s decision won’t apply to other birth control pills although advocates hope that an approval decision might push other drugmakers to seek over-the-counter sales. Birth control pills are available without a prescription across much of South America, Asia and Africa.

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Deaths from firearms keep climbing in Texas, decades after lawmakers began weakening gun regulations Via the Texas Tribune

• Prior to the late 1990s, Texas law had traditionally prohibited carrying handguns in many public places. Texas’ first concealed weapons law was passed in 1995, allowing people to carry concealed handguns after obtaining a license.

• That law, research suggests, increased violent crime rates. In a 2017 working paper, researchers with Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University found that concealed carry laws — sometimes called right to carry laws — were associated with a 13% to 15% higher violent crime rate 10 years after adoption. Such analyses are constructed by complex models that estimate how firearm death rates would have progressed in the state absent the change.

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Morning Report: All Eyes on the Border Via Voice of San Diego

• The city of San Diego put together a “toolkit” for shelter providers to distribute, which includes a list of service providers, but is otherwise looking to the county to take the lead. 

• The county said it’s coordinating with state, federal and local agencies and organizations while advocating for more funding. 

• Strain on emergency services: UC San Diego Health is preparing for a possible influx of patients, according to an email sent to staff. The hospital system is under a “Code Orange” alert, which is to say hospital management expects an increase in patients that could put a strain on resources.

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