A guy I know and respect IRL posited: “The media shouldn’t be covering Trump pep rallies. It would drive him crazier not to be covered.” I understand this position.
Omorosa Manigault Newman, the former reality show villain turned White House adviser turned regime foe suggested as much: “There’s one way to shut Donald Trump down and that is to just don’t give him the oxygen,” she said on The Daily Show recently. “And the oxygen comes from the clicks, the likes, the shock, the discussions. If you ignore him, then you starve him of the thing he loves the most ― and that is controversy and attention.”
Yet I’m resistant to the idea.
1. He’ll still be covered by FOX, CBN, right-wing bloggers. Do we want to cede the analysis and the reporting of news to them?
2. He’ll tweet about it. I remember some folks early on suggested not covering those. But unfortunately, he makes pronouncements on the platform. He fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Twitter.
3. Failure to cover him will feed into his narrative that the news is biased. Some have suggested that point anyway after the “editorial collusion by dozens of newspapers,” in response to the regime’s “fake news” claims.
4. He announces things at his rallies that the public should be aware of. At the rally in Great Falls, MT on July 5, 2018, he announced, “I’ve directed the Pentagon to begin a process of creating a sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces called the space force.”
It’s also where QAnon, which is either a “a deranged conspiracy cult” or a faux movement, leapt from the Internet to the crowd at the Tampa MAGA tour on July 31.
There are, I imagine from reading enough right-wing literature, some people who DO believe the regime actually “installed Robert Mueller as part of an ongoing plan to capture the Muslim terrorist Barack Obama. At the climax of the consensus narrative, Trump supporters will have to unite for a mighty Good vs Evil fight in which Hillary will team up with George Soros in an attempt to overthrow the government, only to be cast down by Trump, who will then usher in a new age of Christian righteousness.”
(My head hurts.)
I’m pained by the cost of these rallies. While the core event expenses presumably comes from the campaign of the presumed 2020 Republican candidate for President, the taxpayers are on the hook for the Secret Service, which is already overextended, plus state and local law enforcement.
So I say cover the guy, and then read The Fact Checker’s ongoing database of the false or misleading claims he’s made since assuming office. It’s about 50 truth-bending comments per week, a goodly number of them at his rallies.
I dunno. Whether the mainstream media covers him and his campaign rallies and Tweets or not, the rightwing will claim dark conspiracies by Soros and the “enemies of the people”. There is literally nothing whatsoever that the mainstream media can do or say that will change that, and covering the current occupant of the White House won’t ever win them over—no way, no how.
My own feeling is that those campaign rallies should not be covered unless he says something that is objectively newsworthy, and even then it can be referred to—the person covering the story can read it, rather than showing his royal highness womble onstage.
Same with Tweets. The VAST majority are banal (and would be incredibly stupid for a 10-year-old), so they’re utterly unworthy of attention. Most people ONLY ever hear of his Tweets when the mainstream media mentions them.
So, if we stop giving him what he wants—attention—it will make him lash out all the more, and he’ll say batshit crazy things—cover THAT! Let people see the utter moron, the unhinged lunatic, that he is, not the stage managed show he wants shown.
Like I said, nothing will ever win over his Frothing Fervent Fans. What we need are the folks between them and the larger number who are intractable opponents, because they’ll make the difference. There is no evidence I’m aware of that those “in-betweeners” require extensive coverage of the current regime in order to realise what a disaster it is: They need reasons to oppose it.
naturally like your web-site but you have to check the spelling on quite a
few of your posts. Several of them are rife with spelling problems and I to find it very bothersome to inform the reality then again I
will definitely come again again.
Sorry. I’m a good speller. I’m a lousy typist, so if the spellcheck doesn’t catch it, I might not see it.