Do you think the media will catch on to Trump's deflection tactics?

vetinari · 23-01-2017 5:19pm #1

So this post might be giving Trump more credit than he deserves.

After the patenly absurd "alternative facts" comment about Spicer lying during a press conference, you have to wonder if there's more to it.

Personally I think this is a deliberate tactic to focus media attention away from something else. What something else is, is not quite clear. Is he trying to deflect coverage of the women's march, the candidate confirmation hearings?

MarkR · 23-01-2017 5:22pm

Everything he is doing is being greeted with skepticism by someone, somewhere. If he donated every penny at this stage, I'd still be looking for his angle. With the way he has been treating the media, they'll be like a dog with a bone. The only way that could help hide something, was if he was trying to deflect from something outside of his administration. Given that he doesn't seem to give a flying fornication about what goes on outside his own head, I doubt he's playing the long game.

First Up · 23-01-2017 5:22pm

I agree with your first theory - more credit than he deserves.

He has a very large and very fragile ego and it will be the undoing of him. (Only him if we are lucky.)

Overheal · 23-01-2017 5:26pm

The only thing you can hide in DC is what happens behind shut doors. The Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, can't flick an official booger though without it being documented in some way. The only thing he wants to do if anything is distract popular attention away from said hearings and conflicts of interest, and for anyone who may be partial to him can be swayed back in line with 'alternative facts' or cries of lies and crony journalism.

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command... and if all others accepted the lie, which the party imposed, if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth" 1984 - George Orwell

oscarBravo · 23-01-2017 5:26pm

vetinari wrote: »

So this post might be giving Trump more credit than he deserves.

After the patenly absurd "alternative facts" comment about Spicer lying during a press conference, you have to wonder if there's more to it.

Personally I think this is a deliberate tactic to focus media attention away from something else. What something else is, is not quite clear. Is he trying to deflect coverage of the women's march, the candidate confirmation hearings?

I don't think it's as simple as "look over there!" - "hang on, where doesn't he want us to look?"

As I said in another thread, it's gaslighting. It's promoting the idea that nothing is objectively true; that you get to decide for yourself what facts are. Hence the constant scatter-gun of non-stop lies about trivial things as well as important things.

All that said: I don't think Trump is that clever. I think he's really good at doing it instinctively - he is a narcissist after all - but I also think he's surrounded by people who have seen how well it works, and who are amplifying it from a personality defect to a governing strategy.

I don't know yet how best to deal with it. My current gut feeling is to call the administration on every lie, however trivial, but to focus the most attention on what's actually important. Trump may want to make as much noise about stupid stuff as he does about things that matter, but we don't have to play his game.

vetinari · 23-01-2017 5:58pm

A first step for the media will be to actually use the words lying and liar on a consistent basis.
Most of them are still far too timid to do this. They can bring themselves to say statements like falsehood or inaccurate.
That's about it though.

Richard Hillman · 23-01-2017 6:02pm

The media are also using these attendance figure complaints to deflect from their own failings.

The attendance was the second part of the press conference, the first part was to call out a Time Magazine Journalist for spreading Fake News about Trump removing Martin Luther King bust from the Oval Office.

The media are pulling together and not reporting this part of the press conference.

oscarBravo · 23-01-2017 6:06pm

Richard Hillman wrote: »

...the first part was to call out a Time Magazine Journalist for spreading Fake News about Trump removing Martin Luther King bust from the Oval Office.

He made a mistake, which he retracted and for which he apologised. That's not fake news. Fake news is deliberately manufactured lies - like, oh I dunno, the biggest audience of any inauguration, period?

Apropos, that's part of the gaslighting I was talking about: call everything fake news in an attempt to devalue the term and render it meaningless.

feargale · 23-01-2017 6:15pm

vetinari wrote: »

Do you think the media will catch on to Trump's deflection tactics?

Oh the media caught on to this long time ago. The question is: Will many of the deluded people who voted for him catch on? Maybe, after alot of damage has been done. The best you can hope for now, folks, is four years rather than eight.

Chips Lovell · 23-01-2017 6:22pm

feargale wrote: »

Will many of the deluded people who voted for him catch on?

I think a lot of them are well aware of it. Not only that, it's one of the reasons why they voted for him.

Earthhorse · 23-01-2017 7:38pm

The media are well aware of his tactics they just don't have a suitable response. They don't appear to be able to write about him in a way that convinces amongst us who aren't already convinced that he's full of it. To be honest, I'm not sure the veil will ever fall from their eyes. It's not as if Trump's lies aren't transparent.

Overheal · 23-01-2017 10:31pm

Buzzfeed has already put out "new rules" it proposes for media in the alternative-fact age

http://nation.foxnews.com/2017/01/23/buzzfeed-urges-media-adopt-new-rules-trump-coverage

Do you think the media will catch on to Trump's deflection tactics?

Comments