Former President Donald Trump greets the crowd at a campaign rally Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, in Claremont, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

Did you know that Donald Trump quoted Adolf Hitler and likened liberals to vermin, promising to “root out” the threat within in his Veterans Day rant this past weekend? If the answer is no, it’s probably because not nearly enough news media outlets reported the disgusting comments. Some media actually glossed over the Nazi-inspired tirade, including The New York Times which published this sorry headline: “Trump takes Veterans Day speech in a very different direction.”

Yes, it was certainly a different direction, but are you kidding me? Donald Trump running for president on a Nazi platform belonged in the headline and at the top of the story. The Times later updated its headline, but the damage was done. In the newspaper of record, this promise of political revenge was minimized and normalized. If you were only skimming the headlines, you might think Trump was engaged in a routine political campaign event instead of a vile political revenge plot.

Forbes got it right with this headline: “Trump compared political foes to ‘vermin’ on Veterans Day—echoing Nazi propaganda.”  One day later, the Washington Post did, too: “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini” It’s worth noting that this Post story is impossible to find on its website, and other major newspapers have yet to cover it at all.

Broadcast news is no better. So far, there has been scant coverage so far of this escalation by Trump on broadcast and cable news networks. As Media Matters found:

“…if you rely on the news divisions of the Big Three broadcast networks, you haven’t seen the chilling footage of Trump’s remarks. CBS News and ABC News have not mentioned Trump’s remarks at all on their morning news, evening news, or Sunday morning political talk shows.

“NBC News also did not discuss them on its morning and evening news broadcasts, and Meet The Press’ sole coverage consisted of host Kristen Welker reading the comment to Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and asking her, “Are you comfortable with this language coming from the GOP front-runner?” (McDaniel declined to comment).”

Trump first posted the repugnant vermin garbage on social media, then repeated it at a New Hampshire rally last Saturday. USA Today columnist Rex Huppke is completely correct when he says it should be the top story everywhere:

Good, old-fashioned journalism is about reporting facts, not sugar coating or ignoring them. The embarrassing coverage of this incident is just the latest reason why leading journalism critics are calling for dramatic improvements in news coverage of Trump. Many strongly believe our democracy itself is under threat and the news coverage must reflect that fact. Here’s what Margaret Sullivan recently wrote in The Guardian:

“The press must get across to American citizens the crucial importance of this election and the dangers of a Trump win. They don’t need to surrender their journalistic independence to do so or be “in the tank” for Biden or anyone else.

“It’s now clearer than ever that Trump, if elected, will use the federal government to go after his political rivals and critics, even deploying the military toward that end. His allies are hatching plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one.

“The US then ‘would resemble a banana republic’, a University of Virginia law professor told the Washington Post when it revealed these schemes. Almost as troubling, two New York Times stories outlined Trump’s autocratic plans to put loyal lawyers in key posts and limit the independence of federal agencies.

“The press generally is not doing an adequate job of communicating those realities.”

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch acknowledges that there are plenty of talented reporters out there but warns that the overall approach to Trump and other authoritarians is too meek:

“We are at war, dammit, literally and figuratively, and we can’t win this fight by hiding in the corner and absorbing the punches. There is a higher truth that doesn’t repeat lies but calls them out, doesn’t hide from accountability when there is blame to be assigned, and uses the keyboard as a weapon to fight for democracy instead of dispassionately reporting, evenhandedly, on its slow death.”

Mark Jacob of Courier Newsroom says supercharged fact-checking is key:

“We need fact-crusading, not just fact-checking. Yes, fact-crusading. News media must hold the facts in such high regard that the enemies of truth become their adversaries – to be called out and confronted, not just corrected.”

There are a few encouraging signs that the mainstream media is heeding the warnings from these spot-on critiques. Some five-alarm fire style stories with damning facts about Trump’s 2025 plans have started to surface. His constant gaffes are getting some attention. But, again, it’s not enough. The fake moral equivalency of what journalists call “both sides reporting” pretends Joe Biden’s occasional stumbles are somehow equal to Trump’s authoritarianism.

Nonsense. Sullivan is completely correct when she says, “The reality-based press must grab Americans by the lapels to communicate the dangers of a second Trump presidency.” She’s not wrong. Maybe the press could start today by reporting that the Republican’s leading candidate for president is threatening to lock up his perceived enemies, open sprawling concentration like camps and spewing Hitler inspired rhetoric.

Some have argued that the rise of Trumpism stems from social and economic conditions across America. If we are being honest, American journalism bears much of the responsibility. Now that democracy itself is on the line, we are left to wonder whether the nation’s journalists will rise above their fascination with outrage, their moral laziness, their inability to report lies as lies and their cowardice. For all our sakes, let’s hope they do.

Jennifer Schulze is a former Chicago journalist who talks media every month on WCPT 820AM on “Live, Local & Progressive with Joan Esposito” with former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob. You can follow her on Twitter/X @NewsJennifer or Threads @jenniferschulzechi.