'Open the floodgates': Analyst argues media avoids 'bigger story' on Trump — but no longer

Donald Trump's latest speeches are causing further questions about the former president's mental fitness.

Writing for The New Republic, Greg Sargent referred to a recent rant by MSNBC's Mike Barnicle, who called Trump a "damaged, delusional, old man who again might get re-elected to the presidency of the United States."

Sargent complained that Barnicle's "throw-down Wednesday should open the floodgates" when it comes to the press reporting on Trump's worsening confusion.

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"If Biden’s age merited extensive, focused coverage because his fitness for the job was naturally of interest to voters, goes this critique, then surely Trump’s visible incoherence, cognitive impairment, inability to cogently discuss the simplest public matters, and increasingly strange flights of fantasy deserve equivalent treatment," Sargent wrote.

But, he complained, that argument is not getting serious consideration from newsroom leaders and "big media." Now, however, he thinks the story may have become difficult for the media to ignore.

“How did we get here?” Barnicle asked his "Morning Joe" colleagues earlier this week. His finger of blame was pointed at them.

"Donald Trump can say whatever crazy things he wants to say, about submarines, and sharks, and electric batteries,” Barnicle said, complaining that the real cause of these bizarre statements isn't "really discussed.

Sargent complained that while there are occasional stories, like a New York Times piece looking at Trump's vulgarity in his language, "many" of "Trump's whacked-out statements" don't get coverage.

"Try comparing what little there is of it to coverage of President Biden’s age before his exit from the race," he wrote.

"Then why don’t things like Trump’s obvious cognitive impairment, his frequent inability to speak and think coherently, his resolute refusal to acquire minimal baseline knowledge on many consequential issues, his tendency to invent things on the fly that are wildly disconnected from reality, his intense narcissism, his deliberate lying and bigotry and misogyny — to name just a few traits — also go to his core mental and characterological capacity to do the job as president?" he asked.

Sargent suggested an experiment — to switch Trump's name into some of the reports about Biden.

"Reading these, you can see how journalists might spend much more time talking to associates of Trump who privately witness his unbalanced behavior, or questioning Trump himself directly about his mental lapses, or analyzing polls showing that majorities see Trump’s pathological lying as concerning in a president, or looking at specific rants as symptomatic of Trump’s much larger infirmities," he wrote.

Sargent called the information "the much bigger story that’s unfolding right at the end of all of our noses."

See the full list here.