Good morning. It is October 29th. There are gray clouds in the sky over Manhattan for the first time in recent memory. Don't get complacent. Keep on moisturizing. 

And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. This morning's New York Times is stuffed with news, bursting at the seams with news, overloaded with news, to such an extent as to suggest that maybe some of the news could have been spaced out and covered earlier. 

For instance, the lead news column belongs to a news analysis piece. “Vote means stricter era for asylum, limits likely to last under Trump or Harris,” a true and accurate claim about a long-standing policy situation that doesn't seem appreciably or specifically more urgent one week before Election Day than it would have been several weeks ago especially since the point is that there's no candidate who really supports asylum in the race. It's just a choice between Donald Trump offering a bloody crackdown on people trying to enter the country and Kamala Harris politely and regretfully shutting the door. The decline of what the Times describes as “longstanding commitments that have made the United States a global leader in aid to refugees” is in the Times's formulation, “a response to the rising number of Americans who have grown concerned about migrants entering the country.” Is that really how to isolate cause and effect here? How exactly did Americans grow more concerned? Could it have been influenced at all by the New York Times, devoting multiple spreads on multiple days to what it deemed the migrant crisis? Who can say where the mood of the public really comes from? 

Speaking of moods, the next column over. Again, a single column. “At the garden, a vivid display of MAGA fury.” No room for a subhead, as the headline writer once again softens the most damning angle on the news. This time, perhaps without even realizing it, since within the assumed worldview of New York Times headlines, “fury” is a negative thing. This is the same outlook that on Saturday dressed up a front page package about how Donald Trump plans to comprehensively abuse his powers, if he's returned to office, under display text reading, “If Donald J. Trump wins, he is ready to radically reshape American government from the moment he regains the White House,” as if ordinary presidential candidates have not been promising to radically reshape American government since at least Bill Clinton. 

The lead of today's story about Trump's weekend New York rally also manages to be mealy-mouthed about something that it seemed impossible to be mealy-mouthed about. Under three bylines, the Times writes, “Donald J. Trump’s closing rally at Madison Square Garden on the second to last Sunday before the election was a release of rage at a political and legal system that impeached, indicted and convicted him, a vivid and at times racist display of the dark energy animating the MAGA movement.” But after that weird flinching caveat, it goes into a litany of the racism, citing three different speakers from the rally bill, since the times at which the rally was “at times racist” ran throughout the event. And then the Times writes, “by the time the former president himself took the stage, an event billed as delivering the closing message of his campaign with nine days left in a toss up race had instead become a carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.” What is the word instead doing in that sentence? That is the closing message of his campaign. It was the opening message of his campaign.

It was the opening message of his campaign in 2015 when he first showed up as an aspiring candidate. Trumpism didn't swerve off the road at the last minute, here. It just kept on driving in exactly the direction it was always going. But with a week to go, the reporters at least seemed like they were in the mood to unload, along with documenting the bigotry. The story notes that multiple speakers falsely claimed Trump “built the skyline in a city in which he was always seen as a B-list developer with a small portfolio of buildings that he acquired long after they were constructed.” Hit the man where it hurts. 

The jump of that story lands on a really remarkable two page spread. The bottom of the jump page, A22, is a political memo from Anne Carney delving into the moment at the rally in which Trump turned to House Speaker Mike Johnson and alluded to having some scheme to interfere with the election results. “I think with our little secret, we're going to do really well with the House, right?” Mr. Trump said, addressing Mr. Johnson directly, “our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret. We will tell you what it is when the race is over.” 

And that feeds into the top of A-23. Vows to punish rivals and subvert election grow louder on the right, describing how the conspiracy-obsessed former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his close associate, Ivan Raiklin, are still out pushing for state legislatures to appoint their own electors if the voting doesn't go the way that they want it to. 

Below that, on the bottom of page A23, “criminal cases give Trump personal incentive to win election, staying out of jail.” One more piece about an extremely long-standing fact about the election that could have been on page A1 long ago, say, in place of stories about the latest state-level glitch in the Times-Sienna poll. “Former President Donald J. Trump,” the Times writes, “has a uniquely personal interest in the outcome of the election. If he wins the White House, he could disrupt or even dispose of the various criminal cases he is facing. But if he loses, he could become the first former president to lose his liberty too.” Yes, that is the essential theme of the entire election. Whether we're going to have a criminal president operating the White House as a criminal enterprise to his own benefit. Good of the times to finally notice. And that's not even the most dire piece in that genre today. 

Flip back to page A21 and you get “Election will be pivotal for future of the climate.” Two columns wide. “The window is closing,” the Times writes, “for nations to reduce enough of the pollution that is heating the planet to avoid the most dangerous levels of climate change, according to scientists around the world. And the outcome of next week's presidential election could determine whether the United States and other countries meet that challenge. If he returns to the White House, the Times continues, former President Donald J. Trump, who last month called climate change one of the greatest scams of all time, plans to build on his first term attacks on the environment when he pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement and rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations.” Again, page A21, one week before election day. 

Back on page A1, the middle of the top of the page showcases a feature story about Nathan and Daniel Clark of Springfield, Ohio, whose six-year-old son, Aidan, died in a school bus crash caused by an unlicensed driver who was a Haitian migrant and who have now seen their personal tragedy hijacked by racists to fuel the Trump campaign. It's a viscerally upsetting story told at length and you can just drift straight across the page from it, across the rally article, back over to the first column and take another look at the Times' bloodless reference to Americans who have grown concerned about migrants entering the country. These people aren't concerned about migrants.

They aren't concerned about the agony of parents who've lost a six-year-old. Other human beings and events are just props in a story they tell themselves because hatred is the closest feeling they can find to righteousness anymore. 

Below the feature story, in another case study of what happens when hatred is married to cynical self-righteousness, there's a referral box to an inside story, “Gaza in ruins after a year of war.” The page one entry shows a before and after picture of the grand mosque in Citadel Square in Khan Younis and the pile of rubble where the mosque stood. Four full pages inside of maps and photos document some of the wanton destruction that the United States has written a blank check to Benjamin Netanyahu for. Not just mosques and center cities, but a shawarma restaurant and a toy store and, just a green open field of farmland, ripped into a wasteland by bulldozers. Maybe Hamas fighters were hiding among the crops. 

That 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. Your subscription dollars to Indignity make the podcast possible. So please add your financial support if you haven't already. And if all goes well, we'll talk again tomorrow.