Tuesday, May 06, 2025

Nom Nom Nom

This is an excellent example of sanewashing, which is repeated almost without exception in American media. The full video of Trump is here, in which he talks about being a movie maker and Alcatraz escapes and sharks. He is mixing reality with Escape from Alcatraz, which happened to be on TV on in South Florida right before he got this wonderful idea.

The writeup pulls the only sane-sounding bit of the quote. Here's the full one (I pulled this off the subtitles):
Well, I guess I was supposed to be a moviemaker. We're talking, we started with the movie making. It will end. I mean it it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say the ultimate, right? Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies, but uh it's right now a museum, believe it or not. A lot of people go there. It has the most violent criminals in the world. And nobody ever escaped.

One person almost got there, but they, as you know, the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up and uh it was a lot of shark bites, a lot of, a lot of problems. Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something uh strong having to do with law and order.

We need law and order in this country and so we're going to look at it, some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that and uh We had a little conversation.

I think it's going to be very interesting. We'll see if we can bring it back in large form, and a lot, but I think it represents something right now it's a big hulk that's sitting there rusting and rotting, uh, very, uh, you look at it, it's sort of you saw that picture that was put out sort of amazing, but it, it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable we. It's got a lot of, it's got a lot of qualities that are interesting, and I think they, they make a point.
This is what PBS quotes:
It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order.