Wrapping Up The Week

"Seldom if ever has a political party spent so much time during a convention insisting in explicit terms that its nominee was not a racist or a sexist." via @maggieNYT @alexburnsNYT https://t.co/YcmZnSnKAn

— Emily Badger (@emilymbadger) August 28, 2020

There's still something to be said for "objective journalism":

 Seldom if ever has a political party spent so much time during a convention insisting in explicit terms that its nominee was not a racist or a sexist, and that its standard-bearer was, perhaps despite public appearances, a person of empathy and good character. Ben Carson, the lone Black member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, argued that people who call the president a racist “could not be more wrong.”

And as long as we're being asked to ignore the obvious:

It was not only on matters of character that voters were asked to trust the assertions of Mr. Trump’s family members and political allies over their own perceptions of reality. On no subject was that dynamic more dominant than the coronavirus pandemic: With a few exceptions, nearly every speaker who mentioned the virus sidestepped the scale of its devastation and what is likely to be a slow and painful recovery.

Several speakers, including Vice President Mike Pence, hailed Mr. Trump as a Churchillian leader in the most trying of times. It was an attempt —  not through the deft deployment of facts but through sheer force of assertion — to persuade the majority of voters who believe Mr. Trump mismanaged the coronavirus crisis that, in fact, the opposite is true. 

I mean, when you gotta state the obvious, you gotta state the obvious:

And extending a tension that defined much of the week, Mr. Trump again drove an inconsistent message on criminal justice, bragging of his own efforts to make the system more merciful while claiming that Democrats’ support for more lenient policies would result in hordes of criminals pouring “onto your streets and into your neighborhoods.” 

Especially when the obvious is so obviously stated:

Kellyanne Conway, the outgoing White House aide who spoke at the convention on Wednesday night, suggested in unusually plain terms on Fox News on Thursday morning that she regarded scenes of public disorder as politically useful.

“The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns,” Ms. Conway said, “the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”

NYT reports, you decide.