Summary
Secretary of State Marco Rubio grew visibly frustrated during an ABC News interview when questioned about the Trump administration’s approach to Russia.
Defending Trump’s push for peace talks with Putin, Rubio insisted negotiations were necessary but admitted the administration didn’t know Russia’s demands.
He clashed with host George Stephanopoulos over Trump’s refusal to call Putin a dictator and the U.S. siding with Russia in a recent UN vote.
Rubio also compared Trump’s handling of Ukraine to Biden’s approach to Israel, further escalating tensions.
Why on earth would you want to normalize Trump’s motivations? The whole point of talking about things based on those previous frameworks is to make the current events look shocking. If you reframe it according to Trump’s new center, then you get quotes like “this was expected” or “this was better than expected” for things that should still shock the audience. That’s exactly the framing Republicans want this to have so they don’t have to answer questions about Trump breaking from our (and their) previous norms.
Holding the Overton window steady despite Trump obviously not wanting past precedent to mean anything may not be perfectly candid with the audience, but we sure as shit don’t want to just take it as given that America is an ally with Russia or antidemocratic moves are to be expected and then feel good when he only does 75% of what we thought he was going to do.
Ah. So reporting “Trump is a lying sack of shit who claims to be dismantling agencies in order to cut spending but is actually methodically eliminating every part of the government that serves to limit the abuses the 1% can heap on the rest of the country” is somehow “normalizing” his actions and reporting “Trump’s spending cuts are failing to accomplish as much actual reduction in spending as he promised” somehow is not.
Got it.