I have been reading David Brooks since as long as he's been writing in the NYT (2003 says Wikipedia). I have not often agreed with him. But I agree with this column. The courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, are frankly powerless to stop him. If they find Trump's underlings in contempt, why, he'll just pardon them. Congress isn't going to stop him, because individual Republicans are either wildly in favor of him (or pretend to be), or are terrified of him (see Lisa Murkowski), and there aren't enough Democrats. So who is going to stop him, before he completely destroys the country? We, the American people, are all that's left. If a popular uprising could rid the nation of an actual king, it can do the same to a wannabe king. Only if a unified mass of potential voters--assuming Trump doesn't "executive order" the 2026 vote out of existence--has the potential to scare the Republicans more than Trump, to the point of doing the right thing: impeaching him into powerlessness.
Keep reminding people that there are no guarantees we will ever have an election free of electronic interference as well as the more typical Republican efforts to suppress the Democratic vote by making it more difficult for various classes of voters to make it to the polls or cast their votes by mail, etc. I hope that as the elections draw closer we see some rallies to protect them springing up.
Thanks so much for the gift link. The Atlantic isn’t in my current budget, and this essay has been widely discussed. In general I found myself agreeing with Brooks, as I have with Bill Kristol and other traditional conservatives. I would say the center left and right have much in common—we should focus on those shared values. As far as the msm goes, I’m afraid the Right has already destroyed their credibility. I hope they meet the moment, but I’m not sure it matters.
The law is separate from the executive and legislative. Trump can pardon all he wants. The GOP can legislate all they want. Doesn't change the law, which will prevent abuses.
Brooks is a day late and a dollar short. He snd Bret Stephens and Ross Douthat and far too many to name, bent themselves into Gold Medal worthy gymnasts to justify Trump’s existence in politics.
The original sin in the media was never calling him a liar, crook, fraudster, etc. and now the enormous and ignorant cohort that think he is s “genius” businessman has become almost immovable.
I am grateful for people protesting and all the grassroots that are happening, but no credit to the people who rode the money train until “their money” was at stake.
The “old media” is broken, we have to save ourselves.
Many media outlets have been calling him a crook for decades. The lowest common denominator are the ones who propagated him as a 'genius' for political reasons. 'Old media' is broken only if your mode of consumption is one source and one opinion, you barely read beyond or between a headline, and you don't care about the facts.
Unfortunately, a section of society are always going to fall prey to this: the media illiterate. Blaming the blanket 'media' in some ways makes it worse because it pushes those people further to one side. I doubt they can save themselves passively because social media is even worse and pushes one opinion towards you with increasing frequency. New media claims it is different, when it isn't. In some ways it's worse.
The solution, as almost always, is diversity in thought, education and critical thinking. Sadly, that is not what the Trump represents. He's about lying bigly. And the media illiterate and poorly read fall for it, as always.
Media could have saved us in 2024 and they could be helping us now. It's what they exist to do. But they are the boiling frogs, unwilling or unable to look any deeper than the surface facts. And trading on centuries of reputation so it's harder for us to get the truth out.
Those journalists and news execs who taught me in school are spinning at 10000 rpm. The fourth estate has been dismantled brick by brick over 40 years…coincident with democracy.
Absolutely. When we talk about law firms and universities capitulating....we never mention the first capitulation-- the idiotic reduction news to 'both sides'. How did students even accept this, never mind take it as doctrine?
As a retired journalist, I can say that newspapers have a near pathological aversion to proclaiming that the emperor has no clothes — even when it’s obvious that he’s walking down the street stark raving naked. As you’ve pointed out many times, their habitual bothsidesism makes it difficult for them to come to grips with a phenomenon like Trump, who lies with every breath he takes and has nothing but disdain for the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy itself. The news media still haven’t quite figured out that he calls for a different kind of coverage than has been the norm for the last few centuries.
David Brooks is a disingenuous whiner who never fails to disappoint me with his "having it both ways" arguments. He is substantively responsible for getting the fascist felon elected by acting as a MAGA apologist time and time and time again.
He continues to lecture sane, rational people about the need for coddling and kissing up to those who believe that the 2020 election was stolen, the insurrectionists are patriotic martyrs, and vaccines cause autism.
Yours is a clarion call. Not only is the legacy media soft-pedaling and thereby significantly distorting the heinous facts about Trump's naked power grabs but failing to give sufficient coverage to the mass demonstrations peppering this country, as well as the huge rallies by Progressive politicians. That most if not all of these news outlets are partly or wholly owned by billionaires with questionable loyalty to our Constitution (as they often adhere to the type of thinking long held by previous forms of aristocracy in human history). And as for David Brooks, he's better late than never. Here's hoping others who've had their heads in the sand wake up before it's too late.
Trump's "executive orders" are in fact the equivalent of British and other European royal decrees over the centuries, aimed at bypassing parliament and keeping the monarch in power.
So follow your own advice! Don't headline with "credulous media"; headline with "cynical media" or "opportunistic media" or "greedy media" to thereby be more in conformity with the main claim you (finally) articulate clearly in your closing paragraph: "...Or maybe it’s not credulity but the media’s insatiable appetite for getting clicks and “engagement.” You don’t do that by introducing nuance into a news alert. So when you see this media overstatement happening, readers, call it out. Demand better." So here I am demanding better. C. Jon Delogu, Univ Jean Moulin - Lyon 3; author Fascism, Vulnerability, and the Escape from Freedom: Readings to Repair Democracy
One of the most ridiculous parts of all this is that Trump himself doesn't know what an executive order is. He is terminally stupid as well as vicious and cruel.
David Brooks can't help himself- he's addicted to "both-sides-ism." In this Atlantic piece about his come to Jesus moment, he includes this paragraph- The left really did purge conservatives from universities and other cultural power centers. The left really did valorize a “meritocratic” caste system that privileged the children of the affluent and screwed the working class. The left really did pontificate to their unenlightened moral inferiors on everything from gender to the environment. The left really did create a stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent. If you tell half the country that their voices don’t matter, then the voiceless are going to flip over the table." I'm pretty sure NOBODY ON THE LEFT EVER REFUSED TO ACCEPT THE OUTCOME OF AN ELECTION, AND FOMENTED AN INSURRECTION.
And AI is amplifying and solidifying the problematic reporting through their “summaries” of the content. I’ve complained (old man yells at clouds) to the editors and reporters at Bloomberg that screen placement of AI summaries *ahead* of the actual reporters words crushes the reporter’s ability to interject nuance into pieces and educate readers
about complex subjects. It seems that journalists have already adapted and are subordinating the challenging content so that only those who dig deep can get at it…and they can get more clicks.
I appreciate your point about executive orders not being the law, but we see Trump enacting consequences for those who defy them. The issue with transgender athletes and what’s happening in Maine is the perfect example. Maine will hopefully have their funding restored, but undoubtedly this is causing chaos and consternation as well as requiring legal time and resources.
Maine is deciding trans athletic issues on a case by case basis and good for the govenor for standing up. I hope more will follow. He will back off as more stand up!
That’s his plan! Here’s a question though. Is it better for Maine to get a lot of coverage about how to fight this guy or does that just make him more angry and he lowers or larger boom? I think I answered my question: daily headlines on the Resistance!
Trump not “pretending.” He is proceeding and acting as a dictator. The media is normalizing this by failing to emphasize this departure from normal democratic “ business as usual”. Government under siege by right wing takeover.
Thank you! This became so clear this weekend when the press seemingly ignored the thousands who went out to protest (yeah David Brooks). I even went online to search for the reason. There was speculation that the press didn’t want to appear biased since the only people who came out were the liberals. The NYT did interview many of his still-supporters. Their comments were fascinating.
The NY Times has run dozens and dozens of articles about Trump voters. Right before Biden dropped out,they ran one article about people who they described as reluctant to admit Biden voters. Maybe they had on or two stories about Harris voters or Clinton voters. Never ever anything about Bernie voters, even now with his sold old crowds.The paper is obsessed with Trump voters, as if they’re all that mattered. Their questions rarely go in any depth. They still also have stories about how we need to understand those people, and rarely a story about the people who marched two weeks ago in NYV in the rain. This skewed coverage is one reason I’m ready to unsubscribe from the paper
I has also noticed how much the Times talks about the typical Maga person. I think the NYT is obsessed with Trump voters because they got us into this God forsaken mess. When Europe looks at us they don't see just Trump as the bad guy, they see the American people who put him in office.
Most of the commenters on Heather Cox Richarson's newsletter have long ago given up their subscriptions to The NY Times and WAPO. Most of the media owners are oligarchs and happy with Trump's economic agenda. But the disastrous tariffs are wreaking havoc with their assets.
I have been reading David Brooks since as long as he's been writing in the NYT (2003 says Wikipedia). I have not often agreed with him. But I agree with this column. The courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, are frankly powerless to stop him. If they find Trump's underlings in contempt, why, he'll just pardon them. Congress isn't going to stop him, because individual Republicans are either wildly in favor of him (or pretend to be), or are terrified of him (see Lisa Murkowski), and there aren't enough Democrats. So who is going to stop him, before he completely destroys the country? We, the American people, are all that's left. If a popular uprising could rid the nation of an actual king, it can do the same to a wannabe king. Only if a unified mass of potential voters--assuming Trump doesn't "executive order" the 2026 vote out of existence--has the potential to scare the Republicans more than Trump, to the point of doing the right thing: impeaching him into powerlessness.
Keep reminding people that there are no guarantees we will ever have an election free of electronic interference as well as the more typical Republican efforts to suppress the Democratic vote by making it more difficult for various classes of voters to make it to the polls or cast their votes by mail, etc. I hope that as the elections draw closer we see some rallies to protect them springing up.
Brooks seems to have been jarred into a broader reality. I was struck, in his Atlantic cover story <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trumpism-maga-populism-power-pursuit/682116/?gift=9LVTa0YPWxWaKFLjKx2d8GframI-beKhP3SUqWmU5Tc&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share> (gift), what a good job he did in bringing forward the past moments of democratic stress and failure in our history. Never much respected his writings, until this one.
Thanks so much for the gift link. The Atlantic isn’t in my current budget, and this essay has been widely discussed. In general I found myself agreeing with Brooks, as I have with Bill Kristol and other traditional conservatives. I would say the center left and right have much in common—we should focus on those shared values. As far as the msm goes, I’m afraid the Right has already destroyed their credibility. I hope they meet the moment, but I’m not sure it matters.
The law is separate from the executive and legislative. Trump can pardon all he wants. The GOP can legislate all they want. Doesn't change the law, which will prevent abuses.
Brooks is a day late and a dollar short. He snd Bret Stephens and Ross Douthat and far too many to name, bent themselves into Gold Medal worthy gymnasts to justify Trump’s existence in politics.
The original sin in the media was never calling him a liar, crook, fraudster, etc. and now the enormous and ignorant cohort that think he is s “genius” businessman has become almost immovable.
I am grateful for people protesting and all the grassroots that are happening, but no credit to the people who rode the money train until “their money” was at stake.
The “old media” is broken, we have to save ourselves.
Amen
Yes, Mary. My trump neighbors 🙄 believe the "made-for-tv-business man" nonsense! Ah, life in a ruby red Tennessee 🥺
Many media outlets have been calling him a crook for decades. The lowest common denominator are the ones who propagated him as a 'genius' for political reasons. 'Old media' is broken only if your mode of consumption is one source and one opinion, you barely read beyond or between a headline, and you don't care about the facts.
Unfortunately, a section of society are always going to fall prey to this: the media illiterate. Blaming the blanket 'media' in some ways makes it worse because it pushes those people further to one side. I doubt they can save themselves passively because social media is even worse and pushes one opinion towards you with increasing frequency. New media claims it is different, when it isn't. In some ways it's worse.
The solution, as almost always, is diversity in thought, education and critical thinking. Sadly, that is not what the Trump represents. He's about lying bigly. And the media illiterate and poorly read fall for it, as always.
The failure of the US media to “speak truth to power” is nearly as criminal as the administration.
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” - George Orwell
It's incredible to see. They fail to report the story of the century (The US capitulation to fascism) while dully repeating the White House publicity.
To me it is as disheartening as any aspect of this whole rolling disaster.
Media could have saved us in 2024 and they could be helping us now. It's what they exist to do. But they are the boiling frogs, unwilling or unable to look any deeper than the surface facts. And trading on centuries of reputation so it's harder for us to get the truth out.
Those journalists and news execs who taught me in school are spinning at 10000 rpm. The fourth estate has been dismantled brick by brick over 40 years…coincident with democracy.
Absolutely. When we talk about law firms and universities capitulating....we never mention the first capitulation-- the idiotic reduction news to 'both sides'. How did students even accept this, never mind take it as doctrine?
Good stuff! It is surprising how many Americans do not understand that executive orders do not supplant legislation.
As a retired journalist, I can say that newspapers have a near pathological aversion to proclaiming that the emperor has no clothes — even when it’s obvious that he’s walking down the street stark raving naked. As you’ve pointed out many times, their habitual bothsidesism makes it difficult for them to come to grips with a phenomenon like Trump, who lies with every breath he takes and has nothing but disdain for the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy itself. The news media still haven’t quite figured out that he calls for a different kind of coverage than has been the norm for the last few centuries.
David Brooks is a disingenuous whiner who never fails to disappoint me with his "having it both ways" arguments. He is substantively responsible for getting the fascist felon elected by acting as a MAGA apologist time and time and time again.
He continues to lecture sane, rational people about the need for coddling and kissing up to those who believe that the 2020 election was stolen, the insurrectionists are patriotic martyrs, and vaccines cause autism.
NO.
Yours is a clarion call. Not only is the legacy media soft-pedaling and thereby significantly distorting the heinous facts about Trump's naked power grabs but failing to give sufficient coverage to the mass demonstrations peppering this country, as well as the huge rallies by Progressive politicians. That most if not all of these news outlets are partly or wholly owned by billionaires with questionable loyalty to our Constitution (as they often adhere to the type of thinking long held by previous forms of aristocracy in human history). And as for David Brooks, he's better late than never. Here's hoping others who've had their heads in the sand wake up before it's too late.
Many of us can't afford subscriptions. We only have access to the headlines and the first few sentences.
Archive.today is your friend for many paywalled stories. Not the WSJ nor the Financial Times.
Trump's "executive orders" are in fact the equivalent of British and other European royal decrees over the centuries, aimed at bypassing parliament and keeping the monarch in power.
Many of these kings had their heads chopped off.....
One can dream, right? 😉
So follow your own advice! Don't headline with "credulous media"; headline with "cynical media" or "opportunistic media" or "greedy media" to thereby be more in conformity with the main claim you (finally) articulate clearly in your closing paragraph: "...Or maybe it’s not credulity but the media’s insatiable appetite for getting clicks and “engagement.” You don’t do that by introducing nuance into a news alert. So when you see this media overstatement happening, readers, call it out. Demand better." So here I am demanding better. C. Jon Delogu, Univ Jean Moulin - Lyon 3; author Fascism, Vulnerability, and the Escape from Freedom: Readings to Repair Democracy
Its the editors who are playing this game. The writers being reigned in and not encouraging accurate headlines
Or edited and censored—which is why Krugman left the Times for his arguably more successful venture in Substack.
One of the most ridiculous parts of all this is that Trump himself doesn't know what an executive order is. He is terminally stupid as well as vicious and cruel.
David Brooks can't help himself- he's addicted to "both-sides-ism." In this Atlantic piece about his come to Jesus moment, he includes this paragraph- The left really did purge conservatives from universities and other cultural power centers. The left really did valorize a “meritocratic” caste system that privileged the children of the affluent and screwed the working class. The left really did pontificate to their unenlightened moral inferiors on everything from gender to the environment. The left really did create a stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent. If you tell half the country that their voices don’t matter, then the voiceless are going to flip over the table." I'm pretty sure NOBODY ON THE LEFT EVER REFUSED TO ACCEPT THE OUTCOME OF AN ELECTION, AND FOMENTED AN INSURRECTION.
Go Bills!
Amen! and Go Bills!
And AI is amplifying and solidifying the problematic reporting through their “summaries” of the content. I’ve complained (old man yells at clouds) to the editors and reporters at Bloomberg that screen placement of AI summaries *ahead* of the actual reporters words crushes the reporter’s ability to interject nuance into pieces and educate readers
about complex subjects. It seems that journalists have already adapted and are subordinating the challenging content so that only those who dig deep can get at it…and they can get more clicks.
I appreciate your point about executive orders not being the law, but we see Trump enacting consequences for those who defy them. The issue with transgender athletes and what’s happening in Maine is the perfect example. Maine will hopefully have their funding restored, but undoubtedly this is causing chaos and consternation as well as requiring legal time and resources.
Maine is deciding trans athletic issues on a case by case basis and good for the govenor for standing up. I hope more will follow. He will back off as more stand up!
That’s his plan! Here’s a question though. Is it better for Maine to get a lot of coverage about how to fight this guy or does that just make him more angry and he lowers or larger boom? I think I answered my question: daily headlines on the Resistance!
Trump not “pretending.” He is proceeding and acting as a dictator. The media is normalizing this by failing to emphasize this departure from normal democratic “ business as usual”. Government under siege by right wing takeover.
Thank you! This became so clear this weekend when the press seemingly ignored the thousands who went out to protest (yeah David Brooks). I even went online to search for the reason. There was speculation that the press didn’t want to appear biased since the only people who came out were the liberals. The NYT did interview many of his still-supporters. Their comments were fascinating.
The NY Times has run dozens and dozens of articles about Trump voters. Right before Biden dropped out,they ran one article about people who they described as reluctant to admit Biden voters. Maybe they had on or two stories about Harris voters or Clinton voters. Never ever anything about Bernie voters, even now with his sold old crowds.The paper is obsessed with Trump voters, as if they’re all that mattered. Their questions rarely go in any depth. They still also have stories about how we need to understand those people, and rarely a story about the people who marched two weeks ago in NYV in the rain. This skewed coverage is one reason I’m ready to unsubscribe from the paper
I has also noticed how much the Times talks about the typical Maga person. I think the NYT is obsessed with Trump voters because they got us into this God forsaken mess. When Europe looks at us they don't see just Trump as the bad guy, they see the American people who put him in office.
Most of the commenters on Heather Cox Richarson's newsletter have long ago given up their subscriptions to The NY Times and WAPO. Most of the media owners are oligarchs and happy with Trump's economic agenda. But the disastrous tariffs are wreaking havoc with their assets.
Fascinating??! Disheartening.
All major news organizations reported the protests. Rachel Maddow shared them on Bluesky.