Mary Trump has accused legacy media organizations of normalizing former President Donald Trump and injecting meaning into his increasingly incoherent statements, and warned of its “dangerous” effects.
The Republican nominee has fumbled through speech after speech on the campaign trail, delivering a stream of gaffes and word salad rants. Some in the media have vigorously sounded the alarm about his mental acuity, while others, such as The New York Times, have been accused of “sane-washing” the former president’s ramblings.
“The push to normalize Donald is breathtaking,” his niece Mary Trump, an author and psychologist, said on PBS’s “Amanpour and Company” Tuesday.
“It’s as if the legacy media has decided that its job is not to report what he’s saying, but to translate it for us,” she added. “The problem is twofold. One, they’re not telling us that’s what they’re doing. They’re reporting it as if these are the things Donald is saying coherently.”
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“And secondly, they’re not really translating him at all, because his gibberish, really, is untranslatable. What they’re doing is they’re imbuing meaning upon his words that actually doesn’t exist in those words, which is much more dangerous.”
She said it’s “shocking” to see this treatment of her uncle, considering the “laser focus” that was placed on President Joe Biden’s age and mental acuity before he dropped out of the 2024 race. At 78, Donald Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in U.S. history.
Mary Trump went on the program to discuss her latest book, “Who Could Ever Love You,” which unpacks her family trauma and its lasting consequences on her well-being, Donald Trump’s character and the country.