Source: Yascha Mounk
by Yascha Mounk
“Back in 2016, Salena Zito, a conservative writer and faithful chronicler of Trump — she later stood a few feet from him when a gunman attempted to assassinate him in Butler, Pennsylvania — argued that ‘the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.’ This idea quickly went viral, entering the bloodstream of how many commentators thought about Trump, and it retains a certain plausibility even today. … If you take everything that Trump says literally, you really do fall into his trap. But the events of the last week show that it is just as big a mistake to dismiss Trump’s most outlandish statements as pure trolling.” (04/10/25)