I don’t usually like to repeat myself in these posts, but when it comes to the media getting suckered by Trump and serving as bots in his reelection campaign, I have to get shrill: no more headlines reporting on Trump’s tweets, taunts and tantrums! Just stop! Now!
The New York Times is one of the worst, and they would do well to read their own reportage on the matter. Today’s edition carries an article entitled Trump Aims Words at Working Class, but Policies at Its Bosses, and the body says exactly that—which should come as no surprise to anyone who has been remotely paying attention the past two and a half years. There is virtually no correspondence between what Trump says and what he does. (And the exceptions, like border repression and the Muslim travel ban, are in policy realms in which he [unfortunately] enjoys majority support.)
Trumpian blather and obscenity are not an accident. He has been doing this stuff for decades. He gets to make his background and true agenda invisible while he slums as a dude with 1950s white working class politics, at the same time reaping the benefit of being perceived as unscripted, honest-for-better-or-worse and the opposite of every politician who has ever tried to put one past you. But every word he utters is the opposite of what it claims to be: Trump’s themes are carefully scripted, cavalierly dishonest and political to the core. It is all about misdirection, and like a devious martial arts move, it turns his opposition’s disdain to his own use.
The solution is simple. The media should just stop megaphoning Trump’s mouth unless he is announcing a policy or personnel action he has actually taken. Make Trump’s true agenda visible by stuffing everything else into the asides or back pages or just deleting it altogether.
Peter:
I would add to your commentary, stop tweeting on Twitter. Don’t drop to his level of childish methods of communication.
Reporters should ask him some question that will change the subject.
Like, what have you done to get medical care for the children you are holding in cages in Texas?.
It should upset him enough that he will try to reply rather than just ignoring it.
Something pointed and concrete….I agree spencer.
would it were that easy.
if mainstream won’t report, Fox will. or the tweets will do the job themselves.
at least with msn we get to hear about the tweets and know there is something evil in the whitehouse. even if it’s comically evil, it’s still evil and has evil effects.
so what are WE going to do about it, besides ask “the media” to do it for us.
the media has ( i know about “have” but i just got though explaining to someone why i don’t speak latin) always been the tool of the rich to persuade us to accept or not know about things that we can’t do anything about .
i don’t think “demonstrating” has much effect anymore unless it is truly massive. but it might be a place to start. it may have at least given the rich an excuse to stop the Vietnam war which they could no longer do anything about anyway (on account of the VC having smarter generals).