Political reporters are actively covering up Trump’s racism

The traditional media is once again failing a basic test of its competence

Even as bodies were still being fished out of the Potomac River, Donald Trump went on a racist, partisan, and dishonest rant on Thursday, blaming diversity hires and Democrats for Wednesday’s calamitous nighttime collision between a passenger jet and a military aircraft outside Washington’s Reagan National Airport.

Then the traditional media covered up for his racism.

They even made excuses for him.

“His instant focus on diversity reflected his instinct to immediately frame major events through his political or ideological lens, whether the facts fit or not,” wrote the New York Times’s David E. Sanger.

The Washington Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf wrote that Trump had “made himself the face of the tragedy and the center of the story, as he did in his first term with daily briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, an impulse some advisers said did not always help him politically — but that he could not always resist.”

Neither of them – nor the AP, nor Reuters, nor USA Today -- mentioned anything about racism. They simply said he "lacked evidence".

Trump said at his Thursday news conference that his conclusion that diversity had something to do with the crash was “common sense”.

But common sense tells us he was being racist.

“ ‘It’s probably a black person’s fault this bad thing happened’ as a reflexive explanation is just a racist statement, there’s not a level of substantiation that makes it not racist,” Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer posted on Bluesky.

“He's not blaming DEI, he's blaming women and non white people,” wrote MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

“These people are segregationists and their position is that no one who isn’t a white man is qualified to do skilled work of any kind,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote on Bluesky. He then added: "i think it is important to say that the open and explicit racism of the president and the vice president isn’t just uncouth or ‘controversial’ but a direct attack on tens of millions of americans and a dereliction of their duty to represent the entire country."

There was lots of advice on social media for political reporters – which they didn’t take.

Former journalist Dan Murphy offered this suggestion: “Do not write ‘Trump blamed DEI.’ Spell out what he's saying. ‘Trump blamed women, black people, and other minorities for the mid-air collision.’ Follow that up with: ‘He did not specify which black people or women.’”

“The major media is utterly failing to simply state that Trump is a vicious racist, who blames everything on presumed racial or ethnic minorities,” wrote UConn history professor Brad Simpson. “How hard can it be to just say ’In shockingly racist remarks Trump refuses to accept responsibility and blames deadly plane crash on minorities’”?

Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah had another suggestion: “I actually wish the media would stop using ‘DEI’ and ‘diversity hiring’ and just get to the essence of the thing and ask: ‘Are you saying that this crash was caused by desegregating the races?’ And see what happens.”

Slate writer David Mack wrote: “the headline is not ‘trump blames deadly plane crash on DEI’ but ‘trump seizes on deadly plane crash to attack minorities’.”

(Washington Post headline: “Trump blames predecessors, diversity programs for fatal air collision.”)

Another thing: None of the article I saw included an explanation of why diversity initiatives existed in the first place – something I think should be mandatory in every article about DEI.

By contrast, the Center for Progressive Reform took to social media to remind people that “DEI programs do not devalue merit – they rescue it from racism, misogyny, and other oppressions that smother it.”

Slate writer Ben Mathis-Lilley noted: “Should go without saying but the point of diversity in hiring is to find _better_-qualified candidates outside of stagnant social networks that don't reward merit, like the kind of network that would put an MTV personality with a marketing degree in charge of the Department of Transportation.” (He was referring to Sean Duffy.)

And for the record, what Trump is saying about DEI and air safety is not just racist, it’s a total lie. As William J. McGee, an aviation expert at the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote for Frommer’s one day before the crash:

[S]afety-critical jobs in aviation require passing many hurdles: verifiable experience, along with written, oral, and practical exams. No one gets hired without meeting or exceeding these criteria, and the bar isn't lowered for anyone based on DEI.

If there's any proof suggesting a single hire failed to meet established qualifications, the White House hasn't provided any.

I suppose it’s still possible that some of the major news organizations will come around later today or in the next few days, and address Trump’s racism head-on.

I’m reminded of how, five years ago, the Washington press corps was so stenographic and deferential that it took them several hours to realize that Trump's comments about injecting bleach to cure Covid were nuts, stupid, and dangerous. But they eventually did. (See my 2020 column: “Washington press corps covers up Trump’s profound stupidity.”)

And yet, for now, the traditional media is once again failing a basic test of its competence. They’re just telling us what Trump said. They’re not explaining what it means. They’re not telling us who he is.

[Listen to Jeff Jarvis, David Rothkopf and me talk about feeble Trump coverage on “The DSR Podcast.”]