"The media are aware of the manipulation": Countering Trump's spectacle begins with a press strategy
As cultural critic and educator Neil Postman famously warned forty years ago, the American people were and are amusing themselves to death. The Age of Trump and the country’s rapid collapse into autocracy and authoritarianism are proof in the extreme of Postman’s hypothesis.
Last Saturday, Trump again confirmed his contempt for American democracy when he declared that "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." This is the statement of a president who believes that he is above the law and is a type of Caesar, king, emperor, Napoleon…. or worse. On Tuesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that states that he and his attorney general have the final say about the law in the United States. This is blatantly unconstitutional. The courts, and not the president and/or the executive branch, have the final say about the law in this country. Not to be outdone, on Wednesday, Trump posted an image of himself on his Truth Social site where he is depicted as a king wearing a crown and robes. Trump wrote the following caption, “LONG LIVE THE KING!” The New York Times reports that “The White House then reinforced the message, recirculating it on Instagram and X with an illustration of Mr. Trump wearing a crown on a magazine cover resembling Time, but called Trump.”
"Our nation’s survival depends on countering Trump’s entertaining politics of fear."
Donald Trump is a master propagandist and expert at being “Donald Trump,” the celebrity, character, reality TV personality, entertainer, showman, real estate tycoon, billionaire, professional wrestling heel, strongman leader, and public figure. In all, Trump is more than a man he is a symbol. Moreover, Trump knows what his MAGA people want (and their fears and yearnings) and gives it to them. As such, Trump is a perfect fit for an American culture and public that has been conditioned by the attention-distraction economy, possesses a limited attention span, and increasingly processes reality itself — and their lives — through the lens of the media, parasocial relationships online, social media microcelebrity and “followers”, the algorithm, and a larger culture of distraction and immature behavior more generally.
In an attempt to help the American people better navigate and make sense of Trump’s surreal and unprecedented first weeks back in power, the relationship between Trump’s ability to manipulate the media, the public’s mood and his rapidly escalating authoritarian behavior, and what must be done to resist the Age of Trump and its assaults on reality and democracy, I recently spoke with David Altheide. He is the Regents' Professor Emeritus on the faculty of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University and author of the book "Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump."
This is the second of a two-part conversation.
“Border Czar” Tom Homan and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have been participating in photo ops with the ICE agents and other law enforcement in their raids on "illegal aliens” and “securing the border”. This is much more than "MAGA cosplay," as some observers have incorrectly described it. What we are seeing with Trump’s mass deportations against nonwhite people is an attempt to numb the American people to the real harm such policies – mass deportations of non-violent people, often without due process under the law — are causing to real people’s lives.
The media are carrying the spectacle of a president overreaching as if he were a foreign despot but without their strong disapproval, with reporters accompanying ICE migrant raids, flying in patrol choppers, “being on the scene,” and sharing screen time with Dr. Phil. The major networks are providing live-action and drama of crime fighters, keeping us safe and making arrests of bad guys. Even one poor handcuffed soul, who recognized Dr. Phil with the arresting officers, understands the play. He has seen it on TV. The dramatization of migrant roundups incorporating actors and TV characters like Dr. Phil legitimizes the ICE raids and makes for good TV. I suspect that we will soon see the Incredible Hulk handcuffing someone. When media carry this real oppression and suffering as programming, it trivializes the social harm and human suffering. Responsible media coverage of these encounters must go beyond a Dr. Phil quip.
Major media outlets think that by factually showing instances of a president’s action and then providing sound bites of some officials disapproving — “we need to show both sides of the story”— that audiences will get the message. Of course, with exceptions, they are wrong: Audiences approach the news with a prior mindset, now manipulated by and processed through a maze of dozens if not hundreds of digital messages and memes through which they interpret events.
"When media carry this real oppression and suffering as programming, it trivializes the social harm and human suffering."
The ongoing saga of President Trump’s national takeover is a replay of an old show, "The Apprentice." The hallmark of that fictitious romp was the authoritative boss, Mr. Trump, playing himself, passing judgment on supplicants begging for approval: You’re Fired! His presidential spinoff is not building up anything or creating new approaches but is about firing things — people, programs, policies, and institutions. It is a child’s game of asserting will: He pretends that he can alter space and time, with a few twists of his child’s marker (AKA Sharpie), he ascribes a calendar day — Feb. 9 — as Gulf of America Day, and he pursues annexing and renaming Greenland and Canada.
Donald Trump has a compliant MAGA Republican-controlled Congress down on their individual and collective knees, nervously applauding and enjoying him and the havoc and harm he is engaging in.
Trump has cast himself as a type of prophet or God. Trump’s MAGA followers see him in that divine role. This is especially true for the White Christian nationalists. Trump is also a billionaire who is already enriching himself even more through his return to power. How should we understand this as a type of story? What are its characters and archetypes?
It is a classic story of good and evil. The story goes that the United States used to be good, but then evil (even anti-Christ(s)) liberals took over and created organizations, agencies, and policies run by deep-state conspirators who would protect the evil left-wing enterprise from the righteous billionaires, headed by Donald Trump, to purge the evil, reduce government, and punish the evil ones. The story is that most government is bad, corrupt, evil, and totally against the American people. Taxes and public spending on the public are wasteful and corrupt, especially PBS and NPR.
With this narrative, built on a perverse slanting of Christian theology, Donald Trump and his angelic minions have taken the warrant to attack the government and slay the many government and other programs promoting civil rights, equity, research, science, and support for citizens. These programs and policies are now defined as un-American and corrupt. Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels would approvingly squeal with news that even the “high culture” arenas, such as the Kennedy Center will be led by the self-appointed Chair Donald Trump, who promises a Golden Age in arts and culture.
Some have described Trump’s reign and the long Trumpocene as a real-life version of the movie “Idiocracy.” This version of reality is far worse. The president in “Idiocracy” was actually trying to help the American people and to do the right and best thing as he understood it. He was not malevolent.
The ongoing story of this fascist assault illustrates how irony abounds in this propaganda campaign of new words and slogans. Trump and his administration have been more destructive to federal and state governments than the most militant left-wing radicals ever imagined. The entertainment power and control of media logic that suffocated real journalism and public communication led to the digitally enhanced rise of Trumpism and hostility to government. This included the false claims that the agents and institutions of justice were being used to attack legitimate right-wing actors, like Trump, who, once in power began dismantling the FBI, disparaging courts, judges, and the legal system, and squashing liberal language, guidelines, programs and agencies. In a few weeks, Donald Trump has achieved what 1960s revolutionaries only imagined.
Donald Trump's shock and awe campaign has broken many people's sense of time, thus creating widespread feelings of disorientation. How can people ground themselves — if that is even possible — against this mass confusion and disorientation?
Political power rests on cultural foundations of meaning and taken-for-granted understandings about how things are supposed to operate. This includes what we label and name things, but this can all erode and change over time and with a lot of repetition. As gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson quipped in 1988, “Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.” We have had a decade of Trump’s rhythmic media march with the politics of fear and the refrain that America is in decline because of corrupt leaders and institutions that promote evil and use criminal migrants to debase our lives. Trump claimed on digital media, a mode of communication that is instantaneous, personal, and visual, that only he could save America. But this would require getting rid of corrupt social institutions, and democratic processes, and enacting other massive changes. Trump’s agents and enablers retooled slogans like “Make America Great Again” from the Reagan years and outlined the road to salvation with attacks on those who opposed his mystical reality, especially journalists (“fake news”), scientists, intellectuals, universities and legal institutions. This would usher in a new Trump MAGA Golden Age.
The disorientation continues in large part because Trump understands media logic and the premises of entertainment. With news, for example, he understands how to set the agenda and capture the discourse. Indeed, Trump has long been advised to “flood the zone” with so many off-the-cuff and preposterous ideas and promises that the opposition can barely adjust to establishment news formats to counter them. This includes the 24-hour cable news. And that is the key: The opposition can only “counter” these moves and messages by Trump but not effectively stop, oppose, or neutralize their meaning and power for the public.
Trump recently declared himself, again, a type of king of Caesar or worse. Trump's tsunami of aberrant and dangerous and unprecedented behavior continues and is speeding up. Will this ever stop?
President Trump’s recent comment attributed to Napoleon "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law," is part of the script in the play he and his handlers are producing. The statement is intended to shock and affirm his ongoing mastery of the media’s knee-jerk gasping condemnation. He has been playing this media game for over a decade: say something outrageous, even vicious and threatening; the press will react and say, along with their expert commentators, that it is far out, inappropriate and frightening; his supporters will say that it is no big deal, that he doesn’t really mean it, or, increasingly common, that after all, he is president. The media are aware of the manipulation, but they do not mind because fear and conflict generates audience interest, ratings, and therefore money. Then, on to the next gambit.
The media are complicit in this process. Take television news as an example. Donald Trump’s attack is working because he oversees setting the agenda. Journalists are constrained by network news formats of presenting reports in short, visual, dramatic, and often conflict-centered reports. Generally, the media deal with this onslaught one event at a time rather than giving viewers and readers a coherent big picture. Rarely—except with major catastrophes—do the networks break format. Ultimately, the strategy works to keep control of the narrative by getting others to react to the plan, rather than attacking it and changing the storyline altogether. The journalists committed to democracy must take back control of the narrative. One way to do this is to is to see what is happening as a massive natural disaster. Journalism and responsible media must state that the United States is under attack and that the Trump regime is destroying the American government and damaging citizens. This could be set forth in in a series of longer special reports on what is being damaged and what this means for U. S. citizens. Just a sample includes veterans’ health care, scientific and medical research, family and children’s health, well-being and education and the environment and climate change. And let’s not forget about the sledgehammer being taken to our foreign policy and alliances with allies.
Trump’s snuggling up to Russia’s dictator and other autocrats endangers American safety and leadership in the world. It is good drama for a disastrous future.
What can be done, if anything, to escape the surreal world that is the long Trumpocene and the MAGAverse that is rapidly drowning American society and reality itself?
The way out is rather straightforward: The opposition to the fascist takeover must set the agenda, the frame, the discourse. This starts by calling out what is going on by using the historically correct term — fascism. There must be clear rebuttals to the attacks on health care, life-saving research, law and order, children’s education and free school lunches, elderly abandonment by cutting funds and many more. This must be strong, unified and consistent. The average American, who does not pay much attention to politics and the news, must be made to understand what the Trump administration and his Republican Party and the MAGA movement and their forces are doing to their lives, happiness, health, and safety.
Trump and his administration and movement must be put on defense. The American news media will have to step up and realize that there is no bigger news story than the assault on the American people. We must stop the false equivalence that there are “two sides” to slashing funds, programs and agencies approved by Congress. Fascism is not a side in a democracy. Firing law enforcement officers without any due process is not a side. Reversing the gains of the civil rights movement and other attempts to have a more inclusive, fair and real pluralistic democracy and society is not just a side of an argument where both sides are morally or politically equivalent. Our nation’s survival depends on countering Trump’s entertaining politics of fear.
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