Dear Press, Trump Is Not Okay

The frog is set to boil

The English language, and I suspect many others, is filled with wonderful apologues—short allegorical stories (often featuring animals) that convey a moral message.

Perhaps none has been more prevalent in our current age of deep dismay than the tale of the boiling frog.

As many of you no doubt know, the idea is that a frog placed in tepid water that is slowly heated will boil to death before it thinks to jump out because it doesn’t feel the rising danger until it’s too late. More on the actual science behind this claim later, but the analogy to what we’re witnessing with Trump and his escalating attacks on American democracy seems obvious. I say “seems” because, to be fair, didn’t millions of Americans see that the water was already simmering from the beginning?

Well, if Trump is re-elected, America certainly will boil—and at an even higher temperature than we might have predicted. This makes sense because physics tells us that the higher the pressure, the higher the temperature needed for water to boil.

Without stretching this analogy too far, another way to look at it is that we’re all living in a pressure cooker.

What we’ve seen in recent days is deeply frightening. Trump’s rhetoric has grown even darker and more fascist. He’s railed against “radical left lunatics” and “the enemy from within.” He’s suggested deploying the U.S. military to deal with, essentially, anyone who opposes his grip on power. He has threatened the free press, saying he wants the FCC to take away CBS’s license. He and his despicable allies have ramped up the false narrative about undocumented immigrants overrunning the country. The lies fueling the MAGA movement—about crime, the economy, immigration, his political opponents, disaster relief—have become even more prevalent, more dangerous, and more detached from any discernible reality.

We even had FEMA aid workers forced to pause their relief work in North Carolina and relocate after being threatened with violence. A man was later arrested, undoubtedly motivated by Trump’s lies. Just like the hundreds of insurrectionists, election officials, and fake electors who have been arrested for believing another big lie. 

It’s not only Trump’s rhetoric that has gotten worse. So, too, has his apparent cognitive decline. He rambles incessantly, loses his train of thought, and makes statements that defy any semblance of coherence. And just last night, at what was billed as a town hall, he abruptly ended questions from what The Washington Post notes were “preselected attendees” after a few people fainted and required medical attention. 

But I don’t think they were the only ones who could have used help from a doctor because Trump then proceeded to stand on stage for nearly 40 minutes as his soundtrack of songs played on without taking another question or really talking at all. The headline in The Post read: “Trump sways and bops to music for 39 minutes in bizarre town hall episode.” What is going on? Can you imagine if Biden had done that?

The others on stage, who had likely lied about Biden’s mental state in the past, just swayed around as well and acted like everything was normal. As if the emperor had clothes. That included South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who was serving as moderator at the event. Perhaps you remember her as the one who boasted in her book about shooting one of her dogs. Nothing weird about any of this, to quote Tim Walz. 

When you see this it makes sense that this is a guy who is afraid to talk to 60 Minutes, debate Harris again, and is certainly freaked out about releasing his medical records. Aren’t we still waiting for his tax returns?

We also learned this week from Bob Woodward’s new book that General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, said the former president is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.” This is a sober-minded military leader essentially waving his hands and shouting at the top of his lungs about the dire situation we’re in. You don’t get a more ominous warning than that. It’s a five-alarm fire.

There’s a reason why Liz Cheney, Karl Rove, and countless other Republicans are out there stumping for Kamala Harris. There’s a reason why our allies fear his ascension to the presidency, and our enemies are eager to exploit the chaos he would cause—especially Putin, who Trump gifted with precious COVID tests in the early days of the pandemic. Trump would rather sell out to a dictator than protect his fellow Americans. Even a mainstay of right-wing television and a former friend of Trump, Geraldo Rivera, just endorsed Harris and called the former president “a sore loser who cannot be trusted to honor the Constitution.” 

We can go on and on and on with examples. 

A blip of a non-issue recently occurred where a Republican operative accused Harris of plagiarism in an old book. Meanwhile, we have one of the two major presidential candidates explicitly and intentionally copying the language of white supremacy and fascism. 

When Trump talks about immigrants as “vermin” and the need to “root out” the radical left, he’s literally plagiarizing from Hitler. This quote could easily come from a Trump speech: “For never in our history have we been conquered by the strength of our outside enemies but only through our own failings and the enemy in our own camp.” That’s a direct quote from Mein Kampf. Trump’s talk about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America? Or this recent gem, “We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now?” More textbook Hitler. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that at a Trump boat parade in Palm Beach, Florida, not far from Mar-a-Lago, a crew showed up on a craft adorned with swastikas. 

We all saw what happened on January 6. We all can hear his embrace of violence, racism, and fascism. We can all see his desire to rule as a despot who would attack his political enemies (legally and maybe even literally). We can all see his declining hold on reality. 

The water is boiling, and it is essential that the press cover it as such. In large part, they are failing to do so. They may report on parts of this story, but they too often do not share the big picture with their audiences. This is all part of one very simple and very scary narrative: The United States could elect an authoritarian despot who is showing all the hallmarks of a steep physical and mental descent. That should lead the coverage every single day.

I think we can find hope in the real story about frogs and boiling water. The fable we hear is apparently based on faulty old science experiments from centuries ago. The truth is that if you drop a frog in boiling water, it doesn’t jump out; it dies. But if you put a frog in warm water and raise the heat, it will leap out long before it boils. 

And that’s what happened when American voters protected our precious democracy in 2020 and 2022. I think it will happen again in 2024. 

To the press, to anyone with a platform, and to all of you sharing with friends and family, let’s spread the word that the water’s temperature is rising to a dangerous degree. Let’s all be the frogs and jump out of this mess before it’s too late.