Good morning. It is October 24th. The heat and humidity have left New York City, replaced by high winds and dry air. It's supposed to be so dry and so windy that the National Weather Service has issued a severe weather alert for an elevated risk of fire spread in Manhattan. Don't throw your cigarette butts out your car window and think about rescheduling any bonfires you're going to have. I'm not really sure what else you can do to tamp down on your wildfire risk on this island, but definitely go ahead and put on some lotion. Don't wait until you start getting chapped. 

And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told the right-wing podcaster Hugh Hewitt this morning that if he's elected, he will resolve the federal charges against himself for stealing classified material and for conspiring to cause the January 6th attack on the Capitol, by immediately firing special counsel Jack Smith. The Washington Post reports, “Trump was asked what he would do if he had to choose between firing Smith or pardoning himself at the start of a second term, ‘oh it's so easy. It's so easy. I would fire him within two seconds, Trump said.”

Bloomberg is reporting that the onion producer Taylor Farms is recalling yellow onions produced in Colorado in response to an E. coli outbreak among people eating McDonald's quarter pounders. Bloomberg reports that the company said it hasn't found traces of E. coli yet, but decided to pull the products out of an abundance of caution. So far, the story says the outbreak has led to dozens of illnesses, one death and 10 hospitalizations across 10 states. McDonald’s, the story says, has pulled the quarter pounders from 20 % of its more than 13,000 US restaurants in an effort to contain the outbreak.

In the morning New York Times, notice I'm not saying on the front page of the morning New York Times today, because on this particular story the New York Times couldn't muster anything more than a front-page referral. The referral reads “comparing Trump to dictator. John Kelly, the Trump White House's longest-serving chief of staff, said that he believed that Donald J. Trump met the definition of a fascist.” Page A12. Not page A1. Not page A2 or A3 or A4, A5. Not A6. Not A7. Not A8. Not A9. Not A10. Not A11, but A12, front of the national section. “Ex-Chief of Staff says Trump would rule like dictator. A warning from Kelly describes the former president as the definition of a fascist.” This is the Times' own story. Michael S. Schmidt writes, “with Election Day looming, Mr. Kelly, deeply bothered by Mr. Trump's recent comments about employing the military against his domestic opponents, agreed to three on the record recorded discussions with a reporter from the New York Times about the former president, providing some of his most wide ranging comments yet about Mr. Trump's fitness and character.” The story goes on to say, he said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law. He discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as losers and suckers, comments first reported in 2020 by the Atlantic. That confirmation that Donald Trump, again, the current Republican presidential nominee, praised Adolf Hitler, the Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, architect of the Holocaust, is in the sixth paragraph of the story inside the paper. Further down on the page, where the Times published various sections of Kelly's remarks. The Hitler stuff comes in the sixth excerpt. “He commented more than once that, know, Hitler did some good things too,” Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump told him. “Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Trump had little appreciation for history” the Times continues. “I think he's lacking in that, he said, but said that he would still try to explain to Mr. Trump why those comments about Hitler were problematic.” Sorry, but you don't need a deep background in history to know about Hitler. Hitler's whole deal is probably the second item on the family feud board if you ask everyone in America to say something they know about history. I'm guessing “survey says” American Revolution would come in first, but Donald Trump did not praise Hitler out of some confusion about exactly who Hitler was. But it's not on page one because to report accurately on Donald Trump with the appropriate emphasis, would look partisan, and the New York Times would rather sit back and watch a Hitler fan approach the presidency than be accused of being too tough on a Republican. 

What is on page one? The lead column is news analysis. “Voters strain under deluge of untruths. Disinformation climbs to a sordid new peak.” The story quickly blames Russia's propaganda apparatus and Elon Musk for spreading lies, and it notes that Elon Musk has not only leaned all in for the Republican nominee, former President Donald J. Trump, but he also “used his platform to reanimate discredited claims about the validity of the election's outcome.” And yet, when it pulls back to describe the problem, it says, “two weeks before this year's vote, the torrent of half-truths, lies, and fabrications, both foreign and homegrown, has exceeded anything that came before” and that it “has already debased what passes for political debate about the two major party candidates, Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It has also,” the Times continues, “corroded the foundations of the country's democracy, undermining what was once a shared confidence that the country's elections, regardless of who won, have been free and fair.” Okay, but the problem is not that the political debate about the two major party candidates has been debased. The problem is that one of the two major party candidates has integrated disinformation into the core of his election strategy. You have to get to the 12th paragraph, well after the jump, before the story gets around to reporting, to reporting that among the direct purveyors of lies to the public, are Trump and his running mate, JD Vance. Is an upside down story about Trump's barrage of lies or deluge of untruths, which I don't think is something you can strain under, a deluge, is that more important and newsworthy than one of the officials who worked most closely with Trump saying he praised Hitler? 

Next to that is a story about what an effective campaign Trump is running. “GOP's drive for early vote gains traction. Stark turnabout, even as misgivings linger.” There are, the Times reports, “initial indications that Republicans are showing up to the polls or returning absentee ballots with more gusto than in recent years.” It then notes, “in many cases, Republican officials and canvassers on the ground are spurring their voters on with the same debunked conspiracy theories about fraud that Mr. Trump has used to sow doubt about the integrity of the count.” It's deceitful, but you got to respect how it's working. Is this story, though, which projects strength and popularity onto the Trump campaign more relevant than Trump praising Hitler? 

Down below those two, the story is the quiet, stubborn aversion to putting a woman in power. A look at the question of whether men are going to vote against Kamala Harris because they don't want a woman to be president. An important piece of analysis of what's going on this election season. But is it more urgent on October 24th than the news that Donald Trump praised Hitler? 

And then, there's Dr., Fearing Outrage, Slows a Gender Study, a report that a researcher has not published a paper on research underway since 2015 on the use of puberty blockers in treating children who identify as transgender. Reportedly because the researcher is concerned the findings, which supposedly showed no improvement or decline in the patient's emotional conditions, might be weaponized against trans health care. This, for reference, is what it looks like when the Times believes that someone is in the wrong and needs to be challenged in public view. Puberty blockers, in the Times assessment, are worse than Hitler. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. Your paid subscriptions to Indignity are what sustain our work. So if you've subscribed, thank you very much. If you haven't yet, please do. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.