Coined in 2020, “Sanewashing” has recently become a popular term among media critics who believe reporting of some of Donald Trump’s speeches ignores his more outlandish comments.
The term came back into the spotlight last month after the former president gave a particularly incoherent response to the Economic Club of New York. After a member asked Trump a very specific question about the rising costs of child care, the Republican presidential candidate responded with a two-minute tirade about tariffs, the budget deficit and fraud.
Yet The New York Times chose to cover Trump’s comments this way, headlined their piece on the event: “Trump Calls for an Efficiency Commission, an Idea Pushed by Elon Musk.” The Times’s conscious decision to start with this detail and only briefly mention the former president’s incoherence in the article led to sharp criticism from media experts.
On Tuesday, Vance took the same sanewashing approach on the debate stage in New York. When the moderators pressed Trump to call climate change a “hoax,” for example, Vance deflected. Instead of answering yes or no, Vance tried to “interpret” for Trump.
The fact is that Trump has said that rising sea levels mean “a little more real estate on the beach,” and suggested that the sound of wind energy “causes cancer.” Vance can’t wash away those comments.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
