Good morning. It is October 28th. It's a chilly morning in New York City as the cold spell or seasonable spell bottoms out on the way into a warmer week. And this is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Donald Trump came to Madison Square Garden yesterday with a bill of speakers seemingly focused on recapturing the energy of the notorious 1939 American Bund pro-Hitler rally in the previous Madison Square Garden Stephen Miller shouted about how America is for Americans, Tucker Carlson delivered some incredibly convoluted remark disparaging Kamala Harris's ethnic and racial background and calling her low IQ. Trump himself delivered his usual message of an impending racial apocalypse and Hinted broadly about his plans to try to steal the election, but the breakout star of the show was Tony Hinchcliffe, a bigoted shock comedian who made a watermelon joke about Black people, complained about Latino immigrants' fertility, said Jews were money-grubbing, and called Puerto Rico an island of garbage. The Trump campaign, belatedly peeking out of its sealed discursive bubble, to notice that Puerto Ricans are a meaningful demographic in multiple battleground states tried to disavow the prepared remarks of its scheduled speaker, at least on the subject of Puerto Rico. But only after Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, and Ricky Martin had broadcast the insult to their nine figures worth of social media followers. The Sunday afternoon rally happened too late to make it into the morning New York Times. But that's just their usual complacency about what home delivery subscribers will put up with, and not complacency about Trump.

Online, the home page is going with “Trump at the Garden, a closing carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.” The Washington Post has “Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico island of garbage” as the number two story below “Some billionaires CEOs hedge bets as Trump vows retribution.” Apparently putting a coded swipe at owner Jeff Bezos's decision to refuse to endorse Kamala Harris ahead of the rally news. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, still lower down the page, goes with, “Keys to a 2024 Trump Rally, Dark Rhetoric, Spectacle, and The Weave.” The LA Times homepage has, “Trump Rally at Madison Square Garden, marked by bombastic, incendiary racist commentary” as one of its second tier stories on the website. The New York Daily News, on its final front page, went with, “Racist Rally” as the wood. “Speakers supporting Trump at MSG event insult Puerto Ricans, blacks, Jews, and Harris.” The New York Post went with “MAGA Square Garden. NYC shows Trump heart symbol at jam-packed rally.” The Post website goes with a screaming red all caps “INCITEMENT.” Is the paper acknowledging that its preferred candidate insulted a huge swath of New York City's population? Not at all. They've gone with pushing the story that Trump is the victim. “Shameful MSNBC blasted for splicing Nazi rally clips into coverage of Trump's MSG rally.” That falls somewhere in the magical lunette of the Venn diagram, where Sartre’s observation about the Nazis using absurdity and insincerity as a weapon overlaps with “hit dogs holler.” If I didn't want my xenophobic rally at Madison Square Garden to be compared to the famous American Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, I would simply refrain from copying the venue and the content of the Nazi rally. But the whole point was to copy it and then to complain when people made the straightforward identification. and CNN went with, “Trump unveils the most extreme closing argument in modern presidential history.” 

On the front of the morning New York Times, in the absence of rally news, the lead story is “Trump offering promises as he woos big business.” Another bizarrely anodyne headline from the numbing agents of the Times' headline writing desk. The subhead only marginally improves things with “Candidates' stances reverse as he chases money he denied needing in 2016.” The actual story is about how Trump is simply out there selling policy positions in straight quid pro quos with whoever he wants to support him, be it the vape industry or the crypto guys, or his explicit pitch to the fossil fuel industry that they should give him a billion dollars of support because he'll undo the green energy transition. That last one isn't a reversal like on crypto, but it is him telling people they should pay him for what he used to do for free. 

Below that is a piece of news analysis from the Middle East. “Strikes could corner Iran, hastening nuclear push,” as Israel continues to discover basic principles of international relations and warfare through trial and error. In this case, working on figuring out that attacking a country is not the best way to get it to disarm. 

That fits together nicely with the story on page A6. “Israel calls the shots in the Mideast as the US moves to the background.” Another piece of news analysis. “As the dust settled from Israel's latest military strikes against Iran,” the Times writes, “analysts and former diplomats say one thing is clear. Israel, for better or worse, is dictating events in the Middle East. The United States has been relegated to the role of wingman as its ally wages war on multiple fronts." The piece notes that the U.S. has been unable to restrain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from launching military campaigns in every available direction at once. The Times writes, “Mr. Netanyahu's aim, experts said, is to use the impetus of the Hamas attacks to vanquish Israel's enemies across the board. Israel's defenders cast it as a once in a generation opportunity to reshape the region's perilous landscape. Critics say Israel is escalating the conflict without any plan for what comes after the conflict.” That's right 21 years after the fact we have The Onions point counterpoint “this war will destabilize the entire Mideast region and set off a global shockwave of anti-americanism versus no, it won’t” out in the wild as actual geopolitics coverage.

On the facing page, A7. The Times has managed to sell one of its signature incredibly baffling full page ads. This one, a celebration of Korean food under the headline, “K-Food, a driver of the strong Korea-US alliance and more than a passing trend, courtesy of the Patriots Culture and Arts Committee.” As a reader of the Times, I guess this is supposed to be meant for me. At least someone paid a lot of money to put it in front of my eyes. But there is no detectable reason in the lengthy text for them to have done so. 

But, that is the advertising, and the rest 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. Our podcasting is supported by your paid subscriptions to Indignity. So please click that button if you've not already.

The end of the week is very far away, but we will get there. If you have the opportunity to vote early, go ahead and do it. I think it helps a little bit. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.