(DCNF)—Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast told the co-hosts of “Morning Joe” Wednesday that the media needs to quit heavily covering President-elect Donald Trump’s alleged “offensive” language during his second administration.
Jong-Fast wrote in a Vanity Fair column Monday that expressing outrage over Trump’s remarks about women and “wokeness” only satisfies his supporters and is less dangerous than what he may do during his administration. The “Morning Joe” guest argued the media focused too heavily on Trump’s rhetoric throughout his first administration, and stated they should instead focus on Trump’s alleged threat to democracy and American institutions.
“We are in it for 4 years, this is gonna be a marathon, not a sprint. We need to protect norms and institutions and not focus on the aesthetic problem of Trumpism,” Jong-Fast said. “The first time there was a lot of ‘he used vulgar language,’ you know, offended by things and more focus on the norms and institutions. So, the war on woke is vague. You saw reporting that had these people, Trump voters, saying Trump had defeated woke. So that’s vague. But the structural things that Trump might do to try and fight woke could end up undermining democracy. So I feel like, more focused on democracy, democratic values, norms and institutions, the structures that keep America, America, and less focused on the aesthetic problems of Trumpism.”
Jong-Fast wrote in her piece that Trump’s tweets during his first administration distracted from the “actually terrifying things” the then-president did. She argued that his possible “outrageous” remarks that will be made in the upcoming 4 years should not get the same reactions.
“Will I be outraged? Obviously, Trump will do outrageous things. But in entering likely one of the most perilous moments for our democracy, we must focus on the assault on essential norms and institutions, because without them, we are lost,” she wrote.
The media, including “Morning Joe,” spent the entirety of the 2024 election season warning that Trump is a “threat to democracy” and will govern as a dictator, even likening him to former Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Scarborough accused Trump of being the single biggest “threat to democracy since the Civil War” and compared him to Hitler during a Sept. 23 segment, while one of their guests Claire McCaskill claimed he is “more dangerous than Hitler” during a November 2023 segment on the program.
Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago on Friday to discuss their concerns regarding policy issues, including abortion and illegal immigration.
