Always alarmed that I’ve always seen Donald Trump as a cruel fraud. Even in his younger slimmer days Trump’s unattractive way he vocalized, his crude pronouncements about women. Central Park Five.
What I don’t understand is, do his ardent followers really see a muscular chiseled face superhero? Brilliant? I see the ppl who frequent Mar a Lago as a Star Wars bar. What on earth happened to Kimberly Guilfoyle?
There is almost a deep psychological divide that I don’t think can be explained by just different values??
Sadly, alarmingly, infuriating and yes, prescient. You could have written this today and every insight still spot on. One difference today— a developing diverse independent media ecosystem, including many Substack voices reporting and calling out the betrayal of professional ethics and responsibility to the public by MSM.
The mainstream media still has the upper edge, which is why we have to keep at them. They're dangerous because they hold so much power. Nobody in the online community is there yet.
Exactly. The NYT and WaPo especially have ruined our country by not reporting his decline into dementia. Or at the very least not summarizing his ravings but printing them in full and asking if this is someone who can be trusted in the WH. Instead, we have idiotic press reports saying that the debate tonight is about Harris's competence.
That mindset about Democrats is so ingrained now, where Democrats are held to a much higher standard than Republicans ever are--or ever have been.
Even with obvious dangers ahead because of the recklessness of the press, they won't stop. They can't stop. And we don't have a clue about how to stop them from doing any more damage.
So much has been written about this and still it goes on. The only hope is a growing independent press devoted to ethics and truth and a swing toward a real democracy dedicated to equity and social justice--if such a thing can even exist anymore.
This is why I cancelled my subscriptions to the NYT and WaPo and read The Guardian, The New Republic, Salon, Politico et al. because they don't lie about Trump and the GOP even by omission. the truth *is* out there.
Not either/or but building communities. Powerful institutions won’t disappear but it’s unending task to stay vigilant. Just suggesting that there are hopeful shifts in progress!
Ramona, thanks so much for sharing your original article. Whenever I think about the run-up to the 2016 election, I can’t help but marvel at how innocent and naive Americans were, and how much we believed the propaganda that the press was feeding us.
I remember waking up on the morning of November 9, 2016 to my husband telling me that “trump won.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, right.”
I woke up in the middle of the night on election night, 2016, and knew it was all over for Hillary. I spent the rest of the night crying and trying not to be horrified. I never did say at any point that it wouldn't be so bad. I knew it would be, beyond anything we could imagine.
Yes, Ramona, I spent that night the same way and walked around in a fog for days. Then just like you and many others, I put my head down, educated myself with facts, and bit by bit got to work. Thank you for your writing and for creating a space for those that love this country and our freedoms to gather. Vote 💙🇺🇸💙
There are so many of us who have seen the light and all agree, yet, even as a super-collective, we don’t have the clout or the power. Ordinary citizens never do.
So far our democracy has functioned mainly via a political courtesy system and not by strict laws, something we never realized until Trump came along and shattered everything to pieces. For someone as ignorant as he is, he did manage to surround himself with equally evil yet much savvier anarchists.
I literally tried to run away from Trump's win. There was an ice storm here in Washington State, and I took my eight month old puppy into the woods to run off my grief and horror. I slipped on the ice, broke my right wrist in two places, and spent ten weeks in a cast unable to write. It's so healing now to read on Substacks that others felt as i did, not just then but for the years that followed with the image of Trump still lurking behind Hillary like a monster predator.
😭🤮😢🤔 what I wondered at that time, and in present time, who gives tRump the words that appear to be somewhat intelligent, albeit crazy and harmful? I don't see him coming up with it all on his own.... i e. He doesn't understand why we don't stand on the graves of heros! My brain and soul want to burst with agony over "how and why" is he still in consideration... In the minds of so many people?.... Again!!!
Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon wrote his speeches for him and both of them are antisocial monsters, so Trump mouthed their words, turning into them because he literally has no real thoughts of his own, beyond self-aggrandizement and self-preservation.
What was true for me long ago with Trump, perceiving him as a scammer and fraud, rang true in 2016, and rings true now. It like that movie, Groundhog Day- the same day over and over again. We have Donald Trump, over and over again. I'm tired of him and if we all vote, we can put this to bed and elect Kamala and stop hearing Trump and about him. I hope I can tolerate him in the debate tonight. Beautiful job writing Mona, you captured so much.
Thanks, Lisa. I can only hope we'll see the end of Trump at some point, but then I never thought he'd last for these eight years. We have to win big this time and we have to brag about it.
What worries me is that even if Harris wins in a landslide, he will become even more crazed about so-called election fraud. He's already claiming 20% of the mail-in votes in PA were bogus and makes claims in that vein daily.
Me too. You know they’re already plotting ways to stop any legitimate election. They have power behind them, along with crooked courts and a hold on congress, and all we have are lawyers who can tell us what they’re doing to us without being able to stop them.
We keep saying winning by a landslide will put an end to it, but I’m not convinced. They have powers behind them we don’t even know about yet.
That may be the most terrifying—a rogue court making rules and laws as they go and they’re unstoppable. We’ve given them so much power they can do anything now.
The Founders wanted to avoid a monarchy and unknowingly gave us something worse. Their system, revised over time, has failed to protect us against true evil. I'm recording the debate but my not watch it because exposure to him has become so toxic.
The founders thought their words should be vague enough to span time. Instead, they opened doors to interpretations that help the rich and powerful while leaving the masses to fend for ourselves.
Why have a constitutional convention to interpret or add amendments when all they have to do now is pretend they know what the founders meant? And then order the Supreme Court to back them up.
You are an amazing writer, Ramona, and I’m glad to be part of your fan club. My recent thought on the subject relates to the definition of tabloid. Trump is the tabloid president. And our media, even the serious media have turned tabloid. I posted elsewhere of a fantasy that when Fox News Peter Doocy asks one of his typical gotcha questions in the White House press conference, Karine Jean Pierre will respond with, “That’s a tabloid question Peter, and we are moving on because this is a serious event. “
Tabloid newspapers are addictive, and on some level, a guilty pleasure, because they give people permission to project their insecurities onto the more powerful and fantasize about their destruction. The definition of tabloid is “sensationalized and vulgar,” which sums up the entire 10 years that we have gotten caught in Trump’s icky, sad worldview.
So that’s my rationale for why we have fallen into such a cesspit— even our supposedly serious media, and supposedly serious politicians have turned Tabloid.
Thank you, Rondi! Yes, Karine should say exactly that to Doocy, dismissing him in a way where he'll finally get the message. Even a 'Don't be silly' would be good. 😏
They have become tabloids, and at the worst possible time--when our very democracy is in jeopardy. So reckless...
I’m so delighted you agree! Wish there was a way to get it in Kamala’s ear. She did make the comment that he was not a serious man, which is also an important label to share.
Although I see your point, I find it interesting how the press has made itself an enemy to both parties. On the right the press is aligned with the woke left and dedicated to spreading incomplete information about their beloved champion, Donald Trump and on the left the press has indulged the lunacy of DT, proving itself incapable of doing the job its mean to.
I agree that the press is the enemy to both parties, but I don't see them aligned with the 'woke left'. They seem to be Trump all the way now, not because they think he's right but because they know he's a money-maker for them as long as they keep it up.
Kamala is too boring for them. She is never going to deliberately make waves.
I see your point. I also believe that a part of the reason why media reliability and trustworthiness has been uprooted so deeply is because it's easy to get rid of, silence, and censor an institution people don't trust anyway.
I think the problem is right in the middle. Journalists of all stripes who simply won't shut him the hell up when he blathers and raves and rants and rambles. His torrent of lies stuns and hypnotizes them.
The MSM has been suborning democracy for years by hopping on the clickbait express when it comes to Trump. I'm surprised it took so long for any media at al to report about "sane-washing," but it's really too late for articles like the on in The New Republic.
I grew up in New York where he had a terrible reputation, and listening to him in 2016 reminded me of a vicious drunk at the end of the bar, late, inveighing against everyone and everything because it was all unfair, everyone was against him blahblahblah.
I remember during 2016 feeling constantly like the thing Trump said this time was going to be the thing that would kill his chances. Finally! And it never happened. If anything, he grew more popular with every crazy thing he uttered, no matter how damaging it would have been to any other politician.
I’m shocked that we’re still being shocked by things he says. I thought we would have taken to ignoring him long ago, no matter how much the press pushed it. But nope.
He is exhausting, a whirling dervish of rage and shame and venom. I don't think we will ever be rid of him or his influence. Our country has never dealt with such a monster before.
No, never. I can’t even imagine what the future holds for all of us. This has unnerved us to such a degree we often have to pretend we know what we’re doing when it comes to Trump and the Republicans. We don’t. They’re deliberately unpredictable, and they’re deliberately mean. And it works for them.
Chalmers Johnson wrote three books predicting the decline of the American Empire dating as far back as the 90s, but he never saw anything like T possible.
Wow. Thanks for sharing this. I did not follow politics in 2016, so I did not understand what the hell happened when that guy won, but I was determined to find out. The 2016 version of me, would not recognize the more aware, informed, and engaged (Woke) 2024 woman I am today. We aren't going to let them do this to us again. Most of us have learned our lessons. I am aware of what the Press is trying to do again, but this time they will go down with the Trump Tower.
Wow, Ramona, once again a piece you wrote years ago is prescient in every way. I felt the same way you did at the time, couldn't believe how the media was trashing Clinton and salivating over this awful man and his family. Even the New Yorker joined in - I would "joke" with my husband that the NYT and New Yorker had to append "Deeply Flawed Candidate" to her name every time they mentioned it. Later, data came out about how much front page "above the fold" coverage Trump got compared to Clinton. I totally agree you could have written this today or any time in the past eight years. Thanks for re-posting.
And by chance just pulled this up from an email I sent November 20, 2016: "Our Dem chair here in Jefferson County, where Hillary had 68% of the vote, which means 5,000 voted for Trump..... anyway the Dem chair had to talk about Hillary with the usual in my mind bullshit qualifier 'flawed candidate' or whatever. Tell me how the most qualified candidate, ever, for president isn't going to have some flaws - such as not being a man, for starters. Anyway, in local high schools here kids were bullying our few black and Latino students and they had to call for an all-school assembly. And this is a liberal county."
Always alarmed that I’ve always seen Donald Trump as a cruel fraud. Even in his younger slimmer days Trump’s unattractive way he vocalized, his crude pronouncements about women. Central Park Five.
What I don’t understand is, do his ardent followers really see a muscular chiseled face superhero? Brilliant? I see the ppl who frequent Mar a Lago as a Star Wars bar. What on earth happened to Kimberly Guilfoyle?
There is almost a deep psychological divide that I don’t think can be explained by just different values??
So much depressing stuff here. Trump's "genius" is that he spouts so much BS that it becomes impossible for anyone to keep up with it all.
And, year, the media. I'd forgotten all about the Clinton Foundation BS.
Trump would be nothing without the media. They made him and now they refuse to break him.
Sadly, alarmingly, infuriating and yes, prescient. You could have written this today and every insight still spot on. One difference today— a developing diverse independent media ecosystem, including many Substack voices reporting and calling out the betrayal of professional ethics and responsibility to the public by MSM.
The mainstream media still has the upper edge, which is why we have to keep at them. They're dangerous because they hold so much power. Nobody in the online community is there yet.
Exactly. The NYT and WaPo especially have ruined our country by not reporting his decline into dementia. Or at the very least not summarizing his ravings but printing them in full and asking if this is someone who can be trusted in the WH. Instead, we have idiotic press reports saying that the debate tonight is about Harris's competence.
That mindset about Democrats is so ingrained now, where Democrats are held to a much higher standard than Republicans ever are--or ever have been.
Even with obvious dangers ahead because of the recklessness of the press, they won't stop. They can't stop. And we don't have a clue about how to stop them from doing any more damage.
So much has been written about this and still it goes on. The only hope is a growing independent press devoted to ethics and truth and a swing toward a real democracy dedicated to equity and social justice--if such a thing can even exist anymore.
This is why I cancelled my subscriptions to the NYT and WaPo and read The Guardian, The New Republic, Salon, Politico et al. because they don't lie about Trump and the GOP even by omission. the truth *is* out there.
Not either/or but building communities. Powerful institutions won’t disappear but it’s unending task to stay vigilant. Just suggesting that there are hopeful shifts in progress!
Yes, I agree.
Ramona, thanks so much for sharing your original article. Whenever I think about the run-up to the 2016 election, I can’t help but marvel at how innocent and naive Americans were, and how much we believed the propaganda that the press was feeding us.
I remember waking up on the morning of November 9, 2016 to my husband telling me that “trump won.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, right.”
I woke up in the middle of the night on election night, 2016, and knew it was all over for Hillary. I spent the rest of the night crying and trying not to be horrified. I never did say at any point that it wouldn't be so bad. I knew it would be, beyond anything we could imagine.
And it was.
And it still is.
Yes, Ramona, I spent that night the same way and walked around in a fog for days. Then just like you and many others, I put my head down, educated myself with facts, and bit by bit got to work. Thank you for your writing and for creating a space for those that love this country and our freedoms to gather. Vote 💙🇺🇸💙
There are so many of us who have seen the light and all agree, yet, even as a super-collective, we don’t have the clout or the power. Ordinary citizens never do.
So far our democracy has functioned mainly via a political courtesy system and not by strict laws, something we never realized until Trump came along and shattered everything to pieces. For someone as ignorant as he is, he did manage to surround himself with equally evil yet much savvier anarchists.
And right wing billionaires.
And radical ‘Christians’.
And Russian assets.
All aided by a reckless American press.
All so true. Sadly.
I literally tried to run away from Trump's win. There was an ice storm here in Washington State, and I took my eight month old puppy into the woods to run off my grief and horror. I slipped on the ice, broke my right wrist in two places, and spent ten weeks in a cast unable to write. It's so healing now to read on Substacks that others felt as i did, not just then but for the years that followed with the image of Trump still lurking behind Hillary like a monster predator.
😭🤮😢🤔 what I wondered at that time, and in present time, who gives tRump the words that appear to be somewhat intelligent, albeit crazy and harmful? I don't see him coming up with it all on his own.... i e. He doesn't understand why we don't stand on the graves of heros! My brain and soul want to burst with agony over "how and why" is he still in consideration... In the minds of so many people?.... Again!!!
Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon wrote his speeches for him and both of them are antisocial monsters, so Trump mouthed their words, turning into them because he literally has no real thoughts of his own, beyond self-aggrandizement and self-preservation.
Stephen Miller still writes for him and it shows.
The only thing that has changed are the words that we are using to describe the monster
What was true for me long ago with Trump, perceiving him as a scammer and fraud, rang true in 2016, and rings true now. It like that movie, Groundhog Day- the same day over and over again. We have Donald Trump, over and over again. I'm tired of him and if we all vote, we can put this to bed and elect Kamala and stop hearing Trump and about him. I hope I can tolerate him in the debate tonight. Beautiful job writing Mona, you captured so much.
Thanks, Lisa. I can only hope we'll see the end of Trump at some point, but then I never thought he'd last for these eight years. We have to win big this time and we have to brag about it.
What worries me is that even if Harris wins in a landslide, he will become even more crazed about so-called election fraud. He's already claiming 20% of the mail-in votes in PA were bogus and makes claims in that vein daily.
Me too. You know they’re already plotting ways to stop any legitimate election. They have power behind them, along with crooked courts and a hold on congress, and all we have are lawyers who can tell us what they’re doing to us without being able to stop them.
We keep saying winning by a landslide will put an end to it, but I’m not convinced. They have powers behind them we don’t even know about yet.
He's got SCOTUS n his pocket. A different court gave Bush the presidency; this one is even more right-wing.
That may be the most terrifying—a rogue court making rules and laws as they go and they’re unstoppable. We’ve given them so much power they can do anything now.
The Founders wanted to avoid a monarchy and unknowingly gave us something worse. Their system, revised over time, has failed to protect us against true evil. I'm recording the debate but my not watch it because exposure to him has become so toxic.
The founders thought their words should be vague enough to span time. Instead, they opened doors to interpretations that help the rich and powerful while leaving the masses to fend for ourselves.
Why have a constitutional convention to interpret or add amendments when all they have to do now is pretend they know what the founders meant? And then order the Supreme Court to back them up.
You are an amazing writer, Ramona, and I’m glad to be part of your fan club. My recent thought on the subject relates to the definition of tabloid. Trump is the tabloid president. And our media, even the serious media have turned tabloid. I posted elsewhere of a fantasy that when Fox News Peter Doocy asks one of his typical gotcha questions in the White House press conference, Karine Jean Pierre will respond with, “That’s a tabloid question Peter, and we are moving on because this is a serious event. “
Tabloid newspapers are addictive, and on some level, a guilty pleasure, because they give people permission to project their insecurities onto the more powerful and fantasize about their destruction. The definition of tabloid is “sensationalized and vulgar,” which sums up the entire 10 years that we have gotten caught in Trump’s icky, sad worldview.
So that’s my rationale for why we have fallen into such a cesspit— even our supposedly serious media, and supposedly serious politicians have turned Tabloid.
Thank you, Rondi! Yes, Karine should say exactly that to Doocy, dismissing him in a way where he'll finally get the message. Even a 'Don't be silly' would be good. 😏
They have become tabloids, and at the worst possible time--when our very democracy is in jeopardy. So reckless...
I’m so delighted you agree! Wish there was a way to get it in Kamala’s ear. She did make the comment that he was not a serious man, which is also an important label to share.
The sainted NYT was revealed in the past year by Vanity Fair as basically focused on clickbait and growing their subscriber base va puzzles and games.
Although I see your point, I find it interesting how the press has made itself an enemy to both parties. On the right the press is aligned with the woke left and dedicated to spreading incomplete information about their beloved champion, Donald Trump and on the left the press has indulged the lunacy of DT, proving itself incapable of doing the job its mean to.
I agree that the press is the enemy to both parties, but I don't see them aligned with the 'woke left'. They seem to be Trump all the way now, not because they think he's right but because they know he's a money-maker for them as long as they keep it up.
Kamala is too boring for them. She is never going to deliberately make waves.
That's unforgivable to me.
I see your point. I also believe that a part of the reason why media reliability and trustworthiness has been uprooted so deeply is because it's easy to get rid of, silence, and censor an institution people don't trust anyway.
I think the problem is right in the middle. Journalists of all stripes who simply won't shut him the hell up when he blathers and raves and rants and rambles. His torrent of lies stuns and hypnotizes them.
Then they need to stop calling themselves 'journalists'. And so does everyone else. They're not.
They're frauds, yes, and too many of them are hobnobbing with the political/financial elite and have become lazy and dishonest.
The MSM has been suborning democracy for years by hopping on the clickbait express when it comes to Trump. I'm surprised it took so long for any media at al to report about "sane-washing," but it's really too late for articles like the on in The New Republic.
I grew up in New York where he had a terrible reputation, and listening to him in 2016 reminded me of a vicious drunk at the end of the bar, late, inveighing against everyone and everything because it was all unfair, everyone was against him blahblahblah.
I remember during 2016 feeling constantly like the thing Trump said this time was going to be the thing that would kill his chances. Finally! And it never happened. If anything, he grew more popular with every crazy thing he uttered, no matter how damaging it would have been to any other politician.
I’m shocked that we’re still being shocked by things he says. I thought we would have taken to ignoring him long ago, no matter how much the press pushed it. But nope.
He is exhausting, a whirling dervish of rage and shame and venom. I don't think we will ever be rid of him or his influence. Our country has never dealt with such a monster before.
No, never. I can’t even imagine what the future holds for all of us. This has unnerved us to such a degree we often have to pretend we know what we’re doing when it comes to Trump and the Republicans. We don’t. They’re deliberately unpredictable, and they’re deliberately mean. And it works for them.
Chalmers Johnson wrote three books predicting the decline of the American Empire dating as far back as the 90s, but he never saw anything like T possible.
After we win big, I want to ignore him. I want all of us to just ignore him. Let's put out that evil fire.
Sad and/but true
I have nothing to add, it's all been said. Thank you for this discussion.
Wow. Thanks for sharing this. I did not follow politics in 2016, so I did not understand what the hell happened when that guy won, but I was determined to find out. The 2016 version of me, would not recognize the more aware, informed, and engaged (Woke) 2024 woman I am today. We aren't going to let them do this to us again. Most of us have learned our lessons. I am aware of what the Press is trying to do again, but this time they will go down with the Trump Tower.
Wow, Ramona, once again a piece you wrote years ago is prescient in every way. I felt the same way you did at the time, couldn't believe how the media was trashing Clinton and salivating over this awful man and his family. Even the New Yorker joined in - I would "joke" with my husband that the NYT and New Yorker had to append "Deeply Flawed Candidate" to her name every time they mentioned it. Later, data came out about how much front page "above the fold" coverage Trump got compared to Clinton. I totally agree you could have written this today or any time in the past eight years. Thanks for re-posting.
And by chance just pulled this up from an email I sent November 20, 2016: "Our Dem chair here in Jefferson County, where Hillary had 68% of the vote, which means 5,000 voted for Trump..... anyway the Dem chair had to talk about Hillary with the usual in my mind bullshit qualifier 'flawed candidate' or whatever. Tell me how the most qualified candidate, ever, for president isn't going to have some flaws - such as not being a man, for starters. Anyway, in local high schools here kids were bullying our few black and Latino students and they had to call for an all-school assembly. And this is a liberal county."
SO maddening!