For many months, media critics and liberal Democrats have insisted that Donald Trump’s mental unfitness for the presidency is—or should be treated as—a big and important news story in and of itself. If President Biden’s age merited extensive, focused coverage because his fitness for the job was naturally of interest to voters, goes this critique, then surely Trump’s visible incoherence, cognitive impairment, inability to cogently discuss the simplest public matters, and increasingly strange flights of fantasy deserve equivalent treatment.

This argument has never received an even remotely serious hearing from newsroom leaders at big media organizations. But it might have just become a bit harder to ignore, now that a well-respected veteran journalist has—in a moment of striking candor—called out his colleagues for failing to take Trump’s mental state seriously as a story in its own right.

“We have a damaged, delusional, old man who again might get reelected to the presidency of the United States,” Mike Barnicle, who served as a longtime columnist for The Boston Globe and other newspapers, said on Morning Joe early Wednesday. Barnicle continued that Trump frequently says “deranged” things in public that “you wouldn’t repeat” on “American television” or “in front of your children.”

“How did we get here?” Barnicle asked. Then he pointed a finger at his media colleagues. “Donald Trump can say whatever crazy things he wants to say, about submarines, and sharks, and electric batteries,” Barnicle said. He noted that such things are “not really covered” as a window into “who the man is” or a sign that he’s “out of his mind.” Watch the whole thing:

> "Today we have a damaged, delusional, old man who again might get re-elected to the presidency of the United States. How did this happen?... How did the Republican Party get here?"

https://newrepublic.com/article/185622/finally-top-journo-erupts-media-ignoring-trumps-mental-state