What Was the Point of Watching Donald Trump's Phoenix Rally?

Beyond that, there was no need to continue to watch because nearly every reporter was transcribing the speech in real time, repeating his casual racism and attacks on the media verbatim. Sometimes there was added commentary, maybe a “wow,” or some added context or even a correction to assertions the president presented a fact. By now, that too is part of the script of the Trump speech: Trump attacks the media, the media, in turn, defends themselves (this time by asserting their patriotism after Trump accused the media of being unpatriotic). Part of the script, too, if for a television anchor to push back, to offer up a viral response to the president. This time, the honor belonged to CNN’s Don Lemon, whose short response quickly went viral.

The cable news viral clip is generally followed by a kind of write-up that David Bromwich has described as a standard in the “age of detesting Trump.” At the New York Times, Trump’s speech was quoted liberally, but peppered with resistance-esque language that described Trump’s address as glib, sardonic, “angry, unbridled and unscripted,” but ultimately focused on Trump’s continued combative relationship with the press. The Washington Post’s was similarly framed though more mournful in its tone (it included a vignette of a young girl wearing a homemade press pass).

What’s increasingly clear, witnessing this repetitive cycle of Trump attacking the media and the media responding in turn, is that it doesn’t really amount to much. What’s the point of continuing to respond to Trump’s speeches, particularly a campaign rally, or even to cover such events? Sure, cable news anchors can continue to point out that the president is lying, but at the end, the grounds with which to contend are increasingly small, reduced now to assuring readers or viewers of the press’s rationality in opposition to the president’s irrationality, to contend that they are neither lying nor failing, and to assuring audiences members of the media is indeed very patriotic. And yet, in doing so, such treatment of the president’s speeches fundamentally assert that what he is saying is inherently newsworthy and important; it must grant the centrality of the argument in order to assert narrative resistance.

Watching the constant back-and-forth between media and White House, I’m left wondering where the line between reporting and disseminating the president’s ideology is drawn. Where exactly is the line between simply quoting from the president’s speech and naturalizing his authoritarianism by granting it validity by deeming it continually newsworthy? I’m not certain that such a line exists (if it ever did) or even that the contemporary approach to news making (neutral, rational) is prepared to cover its own unmaking.

Lost too in this artificial tension is the president’s regular racism, a fundamental element of a Trump speech, that is practically treated as natural. There are moments when it is astounding, as it was after the deadly attack in Charlottesville (something he spoke about extensively on Tuesday night), but his more common racism, the kind that engages old stereotypes of animality, goes practically unnoticed, downgraded as far less important than Trump’s attack on the media’s patriotism. If it is covered, it’s generally as a straight news report that simply quotes the president, turning his particular racist rhetoric into a kind of repetitive litany.

Again these lines are blurred and, perhaps, even erased. But as I switched off Trump’s speech it was increasingly clear that little of what he was saying was of note. There was no point in watching Trump improvise yet again on his tired script. I’m not certain that such a routine requires a response, that it demands a viral cable news soliloquy or takeaways or even detailed observation. I’m not even sure that it rises to the level of newsworthiness