reflectivepundit

Publicity is the Oxygen of the Trumpian Propaganda Show; the Mainstream Media Can Deny It

Brigitte L. Nacos

During many years of terrorism research I found ample evidence that publicity is central to the terrorist scheme. Terrorism is a communicative act designed to get attention and dominate the media, elite, and public agenda. I am not suggesting here that President Trump is a terrorist comparable to those who carried out 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the recent attacks against innocents in a supermarket, synagogues, and churches--although his rhetorical twitter bombs are quite similar to those thrown by contemporary online jihadists and white supremacists that incite violence.

I suggest that just as publicity is the oxygen or lifeblood of terrorism, publicity is the oxygen or lifeblood of Mr. Trump’s destructive and disruptive propaganda show. During his 31 months in office Trump’s solo propaganda stream has been extremely successful. Even the best mainstream news organizations report on television, radio, in print or online instantly and seemingly breathlessly every crazy tweeted or spoken word this man utters.

Normally, when the president speaks, the press listens, and the public will be informed. But Donald Trump is not a normal president. In a rare moment of truthfulness, he said the other day that there was never a president like President Trump. Indeed! He and his cronies have cut normal routines between press and White House officials. There are no longer regular press briefings or new conferences. The transparency that Trump’s minions claim does not exist in this White House and Administration.

For Trump and his crew the news media serves conveniently as megaphone for the president’s mostly nonsensical and self-aggrandizing propaganda: insults, attacks, warnings, threats—with occasional assurances of love addressed to his truth-loving counterparts in North Korea and Russia and his friends at FOX News.

Nothing of this is newsworthy; nothing provides important public affairs information for the American people. Instead, this non-substantial news crowds out coverage of important news on immigration, health care, the environment, foreign affairs.

Most of the media unwittingly and some of the media wittingly magnify Donald Trump’s propaganda.

His unwitting accomplices in the mainstream media must stop this practice, must deny this president the oxygen that keeps his crazy rhetoric center stage 7/24.  

News organizations should declare a moratorium on covering non substantial Trump messages, whether tweeted or screamed at another campaign rally. It might not temper or cut down on Trump’s bully rhetoric, but it might reduce the frustrations and anxieties of many Americans who are exhausted from the never-ending coverage of this president’s unpresidential words.

Why not give it a try?

America’s Liberal Democracy under Attack

 

By Brigitte L. Nacos

With the news media already in weekend mode, the US Supreme Court announced on Friday its ruling that President Trump can use $2.5 billion to build his controversial Wall at the Southern border –although the Congress had earmarked this money for the Defense Department. Ignoring that the US Constitutions reserves the power of the purse to the legislative branch, the Court’s decision allows Trump to spend billions to fulfill his number one campaign promise in 2016. Not Mexico as he promised then but American taxpayers at the expense of the military will pay for the wall.

Reports about the ruling were momentarily “breaking news” on cable TV and mostly forgotten, when Trump threw another of his tweet bombs insulting Congressman Elijah Cummings and his Black constituents in Baltimore. Just as the President had early characterized countries with Black populations s-holes, his latest tweet insult called Cummings “a brutal bully” and his congressional district “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and “the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States.”  Cummings is one of the most soft-spoken members of the House. Given that Trump has a long history of attacking, insulting, and stereotyping African-Americans, Latinos, and other minorities of color, he added to the list of outrageously racist statements.

The attack on the African-American Congressman and African-Americans residing in his district, about half of his constituents, came shortly after similar content in his beloved Fox & Friends program on FOX News. This is typically how it works—the President sees and hears what he likes on FOX, tweets it as his own and thereby triggers massive mainstream news coverage.

In this case as in many similar tweet bombs before, his core supporters received another assurance from their Dear Leader that he is a White Nationalist defending their hateful, divisive ideology. Building the Wall, putting racial and religious minorities in their place along with Democrats and everyone else who does not support him is the Song of the King for the coming election campaign.

America’s liberal democracy is under attack and shows already some cracks. Just like power-hungry leaders abroad, such as Erdogan in Turkey or Viktor Orban in Hungary break institutions or hand them over to loyal supporters, Trump, too, has partners in Courts, the Department of Justice, and most of all in the Republican majority caucus in the US Senate.

When the Dear Leader is Said to Be Sent by God

By Brigitte L. Nacos

“Loved watching the crowd fill up for the 547th Rally in Green Bay. There has never been and probably never will be a movement like this again. Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation and only God could allow me to help. God bless America!”

The above tweet posted by Donald Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale on April 30, 2019 celebrated the U.S. President as savior sent to America by God. Parscale was and is not an exception among those who worship the Dear Leader in the White House as God-sent gift. Others in Trump’s orbit and many of his supporters among Evangelicals--ministers and rank and file supporters-- believe that he is the leader of a divine movement blessed by the Lord.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the recently departed White House press secretary, told the Christian Broadcast Network News when she was still in office,  

”I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president. And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

Earlier this week and following Trump’s racist tweets against four members of Congress, all women of color, Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the only black cabinet member, praised Trump during a cabinet meeting in the White House,

“You know," he said, "as I told you before, I think God is using you.”

This kind of worship is not unique among coteries surrounding divisive, racist, illiberal leaders. And it is not unique for hard-core rank-and-file supporters.

Comparisons to those surrounding Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany are instructive:  

Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, said in a speech, “With all our powers we will endeavor to be worthy of the Führer [Hitler] thou, O Lord, has sent us!”  

Hermann Goering, one of the most fanatical and most influential figures in the Nazi party and Hitler’s government, told the nation, “God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany.”

Joseph Goebbels, Secretary of Propaganda, who had grown up in a very religious family, stated, “We have a feeling that Germany has been transformed into a great house of God, including all classes, professions and creeds, where the Führer [Hitler] as our mediator stood before the throne of the Almighty."

There are valuable lessons to be learned from the past, But too often, as in today's America, those lessons and warnings are ignored by open worshipers and silent enablers of the occupant of the Oval Office.    

Media, Corporations, and Gender Bias in America’s Sports

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday, July 14) was not unusual for television’s treatment of male and female golf professionals: CBS aired the men’s John Deere Classic; NBC covered the Scottish Open; ABC showed the “American Century Championship” with golfing celebrities—when I looked for a moment, “Larry the Cable Guy” was hitting a ball; the Golf Channel covered the 2019 Bridgestone Senior Players Championship. Finally, at 6:00 p.m. the Golf Channel got to the LPGA Marathon Classic.

If you consulted the weekend’s Sports Calendar of TV highlights in the New York Times you did not even know that there was an LPGA tournament—merely the domestic professional men’s tournaments, John Deere Classic and the Senior Players Championship, were listed. Ignoring LPGA events in the calendar of the Times was not an unusual oversight but is quite common as I know since I am a frequent watcher of LPGA and PGA golf tournaments on TV.

For all the coverage surrounding the exceptional performance and win of America’s marvelous women’s national soccer team at the World Cup tournament in France, I doubt that this will result in more attention to the games of the women’s soccer league once the hype of the Cup victory has subsided. Nor will it improve the volume of reports about other female sports.

To be sure, some personalities like Michelle Wie in golf, Serena Williams in tennis, and, now, Megan Rapinoe get special media attention.

And when controversies or confrontations arise, reporters will be there to cover it. Think about the pay inequality between male and female members of the national soccer teams. When the spectators at the World Cup’s final in Lyon screamed “Equal Pay” after the U.S. team’s victory, there was massive coverage. When complains are expressed over the lack of females in coaching positions, whether concerning teams or individuals, the press is interested in reporting. But when it comes to day-to-day coverage, media organizations display their gender bias openly. Just one example: Have you ever seen two female broadcasters calling the plays of PGA tournaments? I have not. These roles are reserved exclusively for males. Women, yes, can report from one or the other hole or interview players after they have finished their rounds. At LPGA tournaments it is not unusual to see and hear two male broadcaster calling the plays or one female and one male.

God Help America!

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Instead of singing “God bless America” this July Fourth holiday, we must rather wish and sing, “God help America!”

We do not need blessings for the dismal state of affairs but rather help to prevent further damage to our democracy.

To be sure, the great ideals of America were never fully realized—but there has been progress, sometimes more rapidly and sometimes more slowly.

Since Donald Trump took the highest office in the land, the president himself, his advisers, his incompetent department heads, the blindly following GOP in Congress, and his media propagandists led by FOX news have violated or supported the violation of laws and democratic rules of the game. Instead of moving Americans forward to a more promising future, they united to usher in a reactionary regime presided over a demagogue in bed with despicable dictators around the world.

Trump’s role at the G-20 meeting in Japan and his self-organized unreal reality show meeting with North Korea’s supreme human rights violator Kim Jong-Un was another embarrassing horror show on the international stage. After sharply criticizing Japan and Germany just before the meeting began, Trump’s jovial get-togethers with Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman( MBS), bolstered the international standing of ruthless rulers that violate civil liberties, human rights, and international law.

Trump continues to believe Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election campaigns in order to help candidate Trump rather than believing his own intelligence agencies that found ample proof of Russian malfeasance.  He believes MSB’s implausible denials that he ordered brutal murder of a Saudi journalist and U.S. resident in spite of contrary findings by the CIA and the United Nations.

The Donald’s latest meeting with North Korea’s Kim, with whom he fell in love thanks to the North Korean’s lovely letters, was not only celebrated by the President but by the American mainstream media as “historical.” Obviously, the very press that Trump has labeled again and again “enemy of the American people,” is falling again for his pre-campaign antics as they did before and during his 2016 campaign.

While Trump assured Kim and the world that he was “honored” by the joined crossing of the border between the two Koreas and lauded the Chairman Kim’s “powerful voice,” North-Korean security guards and state press used physical force against American journalists in the official press pool who pushed for access—bruising the new White House press secretary in the process.

Trump and his crew, including daughter and son-in-law, ignored these signs of Kim Jong-un’s horror show—probably happy  to draw the attention of Americans away from potential Trump opponents in the 2020 electoral race.

That brings me to the second point why God needs to help America this July Fourth: Unless Democrats competing to challenge the President next week get their act together, they will hand Trump his reelection on a platter. While it is fine to point to Trump’s promises made and promised broken record, Democrats need to offer voters a precise program for a brighter future in both domestic and foreign affairs.