Joe Biden, An American Autocrat (According To The New York Times)
The left seems increasingly resigned to the fact that Donald Trump could defeat Joe Biden in a rematch this November. So much so that it is busy speculating about the hellscape Trump II will unleash.
He will destroy democracy. He will rule as an authoritarian. And so forth.
The New York Times took another stab at it Thursday in its daily email newsletter, The Morning.
David Leonhardt, who runs the newsletter, says that a good way to understand how Trump might govern in a second term is to look at his “affinity” for Viktor Orban, the conservative prime minister of Hungary, who has become the bête noire of the left.
So, Leonhardt does what journalists always do when they are trying to understand something: they talk to other journalists. In this case, the Times’ Central and Eastern Europe bureau chief Andrew Higgins.
Leonhardt’s first question to Higgins sets the tone for the rest of the newsletter: People often describe Orban as autocratic. But he’s not a ruler who jails or kills his opponents. Can you describe how he suppresses dissent?
The point is to scare readers about what Trump will do if he wins in November.
We can’t say whether Higgins’ portrayal of Orban is accurate — we doubt it’s even close to the mark. But we noticed something in Higgins’ answers. All his attempts to define Orban as an autocratic ruler apply to President Joe Biden, not Trump.
So, as an experiment, we swapped the names from Orban to Biden and replaced other references. We were struck by the results.
But judge for yourselves. Here is Thursday’s The Morning newsletter, updated. (All of our changes to the original are indicated in bold.)
" - yeah, **** you people. NOBODY has suffered more death threats and threats of violence in this country than Donald Trump and the people who support him.
