Trump's Lies Bamboozle Media Again And Lay Groundwork For Future

The Women’s March on Washington and its accompanying satellite marches around the country and the world could well have been the largest demonstration ever in US history. Close to 3.5 million Americans are estimated to have taken to the streets in over 500 US cities. Another quarter of a million people took part in protest in over 100 other cities around the world.

All this was just too much for President Trump to bear. Not only did he take to the usual twitter machine to lie about the fact that his inauguration was the most attended inauguration in history, he also decided that it was important to repeat these lies while standing in front of the CIA’s memorial wall with stars of fallen officers who have anonymously given their lives to protect this country. (The fact that some of these stars represent CIA officials who have died in less than noble causes does nothing to demean the ultimate sacrifice that they made. It does demean and belittle the politicians who asked for that sacrifice.) If you expected Trump to have any respect for those stars and not use them as a prop for his own personal vendettas, then you have quickly forgotten his never-ending attacks on Khizr Khan and his gold star family during the campaign. It is that kind of short memory that Trump will continue to count on going forward. In addition, he apparently brought his own cheerleading section, just as he did with his press conference. This personal sycophantic Greek chorus clapped and cheered at the appropriate moments of Trump’s speech, just as they did at his press conference. Those in the CIA were apparently appalled at Trump’s lack of respect (it is hard to believe that anyone can still be appalled by Trump at this point; it should be expected) and worried about some of his concrete ideas in the speech such as perhaps going back into Iraq to take their oil.

On Saturday night, a still irate Trump dispatched Press Secretary Sean Spicer to once again go to the media and lie about the attendance at the inauguration and attack the media for deliberating trying to divide the country by not reporting that lie. That was followed up by a remarkable appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday by Kellyanne Conway who claimed that Spicer’s lies were simply “alternate facts”.

Despite all the hue and cry, the fact of that matter is that the media once again fell for Trump’s bait. The reality is that his strategy of contemptuous and disrespectful lies dominated Sunday’s coverage and limited, if not dwarfed, the coverage of the demonstrations against Trump. Every national reporter covering Trump needs to spend a day researching the tabloid wars between George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees, and the New York Mets in the 1980s. Steinbrenner, a convicted felon for illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon and obstruction of justice, was a master at knocking any good news that the Mets could muster off the front pages with some outrageous statement or action. And those tabloid wars are where Trump learned to master the media, that any publicity, even bad, is actually good publicity if it takes away publicity from your opponents.

But Trump’s attacks on the media also have the additional bonus of inoculating him from further bad press down the road. Just like his lies, they create enough doubt within at least a segment of his supporters of what the truth might actually be. As Krugman points out in his op-ed today, when the BLS reports some bad employment numbers, do we have any doubt that Trump will attack them as biased and incorrect. And he will attack the media at the same time from reporting those BLS numbers that he labels lies. Heck, he has already done that with his claim about the “true” unemployment rate. And the sycophants in his cabinet will apparently back him up, as Mnuchin did in his confirmation hearings.

The personal cheerleading section is designed to add to Trump’s “cult of personality” which is really his primary political asset. His policy positions can change on a whim and his election largely rested on the fact that enough people felt he would “shake things up”, accompanied by an erroneous assumption that he would leave those things alone that they liked. His own narcissistic personality demands the constant adulation that those cheerleaders provide.

Attacking and delegitimizing the media is the first step any authoritarian power takes. As Moises Naim, distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says, populist leaders create an environment where “the results are the criminalization of political rivals and the delegitimization of the media. It’s very important — you know, they don’t — they start by denying the media the right — they don’t treat them as legitimate players, and they don’t treat their political adversaries as legitimate players”. We have seen that in spades from Trump. From “lock her up” to this speech at the CIA. And these authoritarian tendencies are reinforced by a Republican party that delegitimized Obama for the last eight years with unprecedented obstruction. Trump will provide that attacks on the media and the personality cult while the GOP, recognizing they are a really a minority party, will provide the authoritarian tools to maintain power.

The press needs to be aware of how Trump works and the long-term dangers that the country faces if they continue to do business as usual. If they continue to allow themselves to be played by Trump the way they did this weekend, they will find themselves to soon be an irrelevant force in our democracy.