Y’all can say what you want, but in my humble, but correct opinion, President Donald Trump is the very best I have seen in my lifetime at manipulating the media to get what he wants.
Our current president is absolutely brilliant in playing a mostly hostile media like a violin. Historians in the future will write about his stunning skills for many years.
The most recent evidence has been Trump’s uncanny ability to overcome the lack of his beloved campaign rallies by instead getting nearly the same goodies by having daily televised “press briefings” on the Coronavirus pandemic.
The President every day assembles a cadre of health officials, political toadies and corporate CEOs in the Rose Garden at the White House to present updates on a deadly virus as it spreads across the nation. However, the effect of these sessions is a daily political commercial to help Trump’s re-election campaign. The man is a genius much in the same way he got so much free advertising in his 2016 campaign.
It is no secret about historical evidence that there is a “rally ‘round the flag” public relations bump that accompanies a leader speaking directly to the public about a crisis. Jimmy Carter temporarily did well in the polls at the beginning of the Iran hostage situation in 1979 and George W. Bush was very popular in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Woodrow Wilson was elected as a Democrat in 1916, though he didn’t “keep us out of war.”
The effect wore off eventually, but the process says a lot about who we are as Americans. Trump seems to be keenly aware of the phenomenon while he skillfully choreographs the briefing sessions by presenting himself as an active “doer” in the midst of a challenging time. His toadies nearly always preface all actions with “The president has ordered” or “The president has been working on…”
This, instead of simply saying masks and ventilators are coming to needy communities soon.
It isn’t an entirely new tactic in the public arena. Edward Bernays, regarded as the “Father of Modern Marketing and Advertising” and star of the first installment of the must-see “The Century of the Self” documentary, introduced it by persuading young women to take up smoking cigarettes by linking it to the terrifically popular women’s suffrage movement.
Bernays scored many other huge public relations successes in his career, following the logic that the masses of people were easily persuaded to do something not in their best interests, using emotional push button issues. All that was needed was a very skillful and cunning carnival barker.
This is not to diss the President, who merely is taking what the conditions and his adversaries give him. You might call it a bizarre form of making lemonade out of lemons.
In the more than three years of his tenure, he has survived a Russia investigation, an impeachment, and given the latest poll numbers about his job performance, he may survive a killer virus crisis and an economic recession. Others in his place would have folded by now.
Don’t get me wrong. I consider Trump to be a pathological liar, a narcissist and morally and financially bankrupt, yet he is brilliant at what he does.
I hate like hell to conclude the same as Ranger Rick and Army Bob, but I won’t be surprised at all if he is elected to a second term Nov. 3.
Let us see- a pathological liar, a narcissist and morally bankrupt. Are you sure you are not talking about Bill Clinton?
Him too.