sanewasher

Verb

sanewash (third-person singular simple present sanewashes, present participle sanewashing, simple past and past participle sanewashed)

1. (intransitive, transitive) To restate one’s perspective to seem more palatable or acceptable.
   • You can try to sanewash these claims as merely urging researchers to examine their own biases and try to include the perspectives of people outside the research community. But that would require a willful misreading of a document that all but declares research has to affirm a left-wing perspective.2021 September 22, Jonathan Chait, “What Jonathan Franzen and the Left Get Wrong About Free Speech”, in Intelligencer, retrieved 07 Sep 2024
2. (transitive) To present someone's apparently crazy rantings as sensible discourse by editing out the bizarre portions or summarizing them with a more coherent interpretation.
   • This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.2024 September 4, Parker Molloy, “How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity”, in The New Republic