The top of the Wednesday New York Times offers quite a contrast in headlines: a whiny piece on how Donald Trump may be gaining because of America’s “collective amnesia,” next to a puff piece “White House Memo” on “Campaign Shifts Strategy to Let Biden Be Himself.” As if he isn’t authentically fumbling and bumbling?
Reporter Jennifer Medina and Reid Epstein began their story “Passing Years Cloud Memory of Trump Term” as if Trump has completely vanished from public consciousness, as if the media haven’t obsessed over Trump daily, even hourly while Biden was president:
Not all that long ago, many Americans committed hours a day to tracking then-President Donald J. Trump’s every move. And then, sometime after the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and before his first indictment, they largely stopped.
They are having trouble remembering it all again.
More than three years of distance from the daily onslaught has faded, changed — and in some cases, warped — Americans’ memories of events that at the time felt searing. Polling suggests voters’ views on Mr. Trump’s policies and his presidency have improved in the rearview mirror...
A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted late last month found 10 percent of Mr. Biden’s 2020 voters now say they support Mr. Trump, while virtually none of Mr. Trump’s voters had flipped to Mr. Biden. The poll found Mr. Trump’s policies were viewed far more favorably than Mr. Biden’s.
When Trump's polling improves, Americans have a "warped" memory!
The media just can NOT understand how all of the scandal-manufacturing and indicting isn't having an impact -- or is helping Trump. Some voters have grasped that all these legal problems are designed for maximum political damage.
That environment created a kind of numbness that not even 91 felony counts or enormous civil penalties for defamation and fraud can break through, said Andrew Franks, a professor of political psychology at the University of Washington.
“Negative information about Trump is no longer distinctive, it is just the air that we breathe,” Dr. Franks said.
The story ends with "Professional Democrats" refusing to believe the poll numbers (just like Biden does). The complaining about the public's "collective amnesia" came from Lori Lodes, executive director of "Climate Power, a liberal advocacy group whose polling found 52 percent of likely voters now approve of Mr. Trump's time in office."
The funniest part of the Biden story by Katie Rogers and Lisa Lerer came on the front page, that Robert Hur's report on how Biden would come across as an "well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory" meant Biden "quickly became a favorite punchline of late-night talk show hosts, enraging his allies..." Earth to media: the late-night talk show hosts ARE Biden's allies.
Take, for example, "Colbert Contrasts ‘Well Meaning, Elderly’ Biden With ‘Malicious, Elderly Rapist’ Trump After Special Counsel Report."
Or you can be amused that the Biden story's subhead is "Amid Age Worries, He is Out and About to Face Voters and the Media." If you're counting Seth Meyers as "the media," maybe that works. What's amusing but all this protective copy about his media outreach is this: Biden hasn't granted a single interview to The New York Times since he became president.
