There’s nobody’s name in the byline so I don’t know who writes it; but from the tone of the current “Media City” the writer is, or might as well be, a VDARE.com fan.
The Economist?
This week, it’s rapping further on Trump’s rise in America, likening it to the anti-immigrant “dirty right” in France. Getting down to brass tacks, the Lexington column says Trump is “making promises to his supporters that are both nasty and impossible to keep,” a trick of old hucksters like Jean-Marie Le Pen, it argues. “Dismayingly, attacks on Muslims and Mexicans do not set Republican nerves a-jangle.” Wagging its finger over Trump’s fascist flavors, however, the paper fails to address the awkward fact that his rise has also been fueled by voter frustration over the domestic job-killing, free-trade policies tirelessly promoted by, above all, The Economist.National Review?
There’s a head-scratching column by Reihan Salam that argues technology will ease the pain of globalization for Americans by allowing, for example, their children to be taught by low-wage teachers in India without those teachers having to actually move to America (no mention of the problem of US teaching jobs).New Republic?
A column by Brian Beutler is determined, for example, to prove that “anti-immigration sentiment is not driven by economic anxiety,” but instead by racism. “Trump is wealthy, many of his most influential supporters are also wealthy,” and thus not worried about keeping a job at Home Depot, the argument seems to be. Correct us if the stats recently shifted, but we had thought the ranks of wealthy GOP aligned against Trump seriously outnumber his wealthy supporters.Rolling Stone?
Nobody shrieks quite like Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, and his conclusion on the Trump phenomenon is that “big media” is to blame. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes, failing to address the wider implications of this florid metaphor.New York?
New York this week has the usual snotty, feckless droning on the Trump conversation. Jonathan Chait decries his exploitation of “the atavistic fears of the white working class,” as if this group has nothing to legitimately fear about its economic future.New Yorker?
Editor David Remnick makes note of Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin. “Pull the camera back, and Trump can be viewed as part of a deadly serious wave of authoritarians and xenophobes who have come to power in Russia, Poland, and Hungary,” Remnick writes. Interesting, but he quickly reverts to the usual argument about Trump being a big chicken coming home to roost for a secretly racist GOP.Time?
Time takes a ride in Trump Force One, the tricked-out 757 used by the tycoon to crisscross the country in his campaign. “It’s not the polls. It’s the ratings,” Trump tells reporter David Von Drehle. When news networks cover him, “the ratings double. They triple,” Trump says. “And that gives you power.” Indeed, this insightful, yet otherwise frothy and favorable, profile was placed ahead of a far more critical piece that accuses Trump of being a “tribal warrior” with a record of race-baiting to defeat competing casino projects by Indian tribes, for example.Someone should tell Rupert Murdoch there's an immigration-patriot mole working in one of his newspapers.
