Here’s a tip: The real news from Trump's rallies is how he's losing his grip on reality
In his Nevada word salad, Trump spent more time talking nonsense about boats, batteries & sharks than tipping policy but there are no headlines about his steady mental decline.
News headlines about Donald Trump’s recent Nevada rally were a mix. Some focused on the extreme heat or his broken teleprompter. But most of the news coverage highlighted his very brief comment about ending taxes on tips for hospitality workers. It’s that last one that caught my attention because it is such a good example of reporters missing the real story and making Mr. Trump sounds like the normal candidate he surely is not. Instead, the news headlines and stories should focus on the increasing amount of gibberish he spews and what that tells us about his mental fitness.
Trump has a predictable list of campaign rally topics from raging against immigrants to promising revenge against his enemies combined with a concerning dose of mumbles, mistakes & glitches. But recently, he’d added very brief but targeted policy comments to these diatribes. In Michigan, it was a promise to upend President Biden’s electric vehicle policies. In New Jersey, Trump vowed to stop wind farms. This past weekend in Nevada, his second rally since he became a convicted felon, Trump talked about eliminating taxes on tips for about 45-seconds. Within hours, the headlines were all the Trump campaign could have wished for:
-Former President Donald Trump proposes at Nevada rally ending taxes on tips
-Trump wants IRS to stop taxing workers’ tips
-Trump proposes eliminating taxes on tips at Las Vegas campaign rally
-Trump Floats Tax-Free Tips in Pitch to Win Las Vegas Workers
There are two big things wrong with this. First, telling an audience what he thinks they want to hear cannot be confused with serious policy making by any serious news organization. If you really think tips should not be counted as income, then what part of the tax code needs to change? How much revenue is lost to the state? What are the implications for state governments? Will other professions move away from salary schemes towards a gratuity base to avoid taxes? Will tips continue to be voluntary or will they be included as “service” but just not taxed?
None of these kinds of questions has ever been raised when Mr. Trump promises something he thinks his audience wants to hear, because everyone knows he is not serious. As Forbes noted “Trump did not elaborate on the proposal at the rally and representatives for his campaign did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment Sunday.” It's also no surprise that there’s nothing about this latest policy blip on Trump’s website or the RNC website.
Second, while some news outlets are hyping Trump comments as if it’s legitimate policy they completely ignore what actually is the major news he makes during these speeches. Watch one for yourself. You will see a rambling, angry, man, who often gets lost in his own stories. In his Nevada word salad, Trump spent more time talking about boats, batteries & sharks than tipping policy. It was more unintelligible nonsense but there are no headlines about that concerning gobbledegook. Surely, if Joe Biden’s mental acuity is an issue, Donald Trump’s must be as well, and yet in speech after speech that all cry out for a psych exam, reporters ignore the crazy and pretend there’s policy. This is many things- inaccurate, unfair, misleading and dangerous. The thing it is not is journalism.
The Trump campaign knows the press will continue to be his dupes. That’s why these crowd pleasing musings about tips and windmills are tossed into his blather. They know this pretend policy will generate positive media coverage. Arizona Republic columnist EJ Monitini is exactly right when he calls out the media malpractice:
“Too many respectable journalists and respectable journalistic institutions have allowed the fear of appearing biased to prevent them from being honest. From pointing out serious areas of concern about Trump’s grasp of reality, as evidenced by an off-the-rails diatribe involving sharks and water and a “tremendously powerful battery.”
I’m not talking about gaffes. I’m not overly troubled when Trump mispronounces a word or bungles the name of a foreign leader or mixes up the dates of events in the past. Joe Biden does the same thing, with about the same regularity. But there are rambling screeds that Trump goes on during his speeches that should be genuinely concerning.”
I am honestly stunned at how the rules continue to be so different for Trump. Week after week, he spews a concerning mix of unintelligible rants together with authoritarian threats but the resulting news stories rarely capture the true nature of any of it. Instead, reporters grab hold of the little nuggets he throws their way. Voters deserve the real story about the former president’s truly dangerous plans for the country and the declining mental state on display every time he steps in front of a microphone. Journalists are running out of time to get this right. Will they?
Jennifer Schulze is a former Chicago journalist talking about journalism. You can read her columns here and at Heartland Signal. Follow Jennifer on Threads @jenniferschulzechi or Twitter/X @NewsJennifer.