The Breaking News: Trump Tweeted

By Bob Travica

Donald Trump will move to the American Presidential office in January 2017. In my public speeches during 2016, I forecasted this outcome. My reasons were quite simple: (1) American voters really care just about their pocketbook, (2) Poking the American dream can add some weight, and (3) The contender, Hillary Clinton, was a too weak candidate.

I won’t discuss in detail each reason, but just want to warn various pundits to never underestimate the first reason. It overshadows everything else, including the foreign policy (of which the typical voter has no clue), and transgressions of ethics, such as dirty language, lies and manipulations (which pack the world of entertainment, media, politics and business, anyway), and the like “issues.” Trump put all his trumps behind the first reason.

Mrs. Clinton underperformed on reason 1, totally neglected reason 2, and focused on these marginal things. Add to this her unsatisfactory performance as the Secretary of State in the Obama government (which has got her fired) and her long tenure in politics (which today is a liability in the eyes of the apathetic American voter). This explains reason 3.

The media and pollsters didn’t see Trump’s win in elections coming. This failure speaks volumes of a superficiality characterizing the media’s approach to elections. In the case of TV, the approach was a blend of empiricism and secondary analysis. There was too much focusing on polling (which lacked validity) and on daily occurrences in the worlds of politics and media. As if the American society is a reality show spun unpredictably by random actions of the actors. As if the shrinking of the middle class has not become endemic. As if the Occupy movement and the mass outrage against the one percent of the wealthiest has never happened. As if the rusting of the once prosperous industrial zones has not pushed a massive workforce out and into marginal, low-paid jobs. As if the American society is not deeply divided also on the political and ethno/racial basis. Still, the spinners of the mass reality show were hoping that the people would care more about a private, harassing babbling of the former reality host turned Presidential candidate than any of these things. How narrow-minded!

The failure of media to predict Trump’s win could be seen in the other light too. More precisely, one could wonder about the media’s dogmatic insistence that Trump was not a serious candidate and, therefore, was incapable of winning. The closer the election was, the more some media dropped Trump from their radar screen and assumed that Clinton’s win was a done deal. One may wonder, why did the media behave this way? Was this part of supporting the Clinton camp? The diligence and ferocity with which the media trampled Trump could lead to such a hypothesis. But testing it would involve unveiling the ties between the implicated media and Democratic Party, along with its corporate interest backing.

The major American media openly dislike Trump and don’t hesitate to show it. They didn’t spare ammunition while covering Trump’s outrageous campaigning moves calculated to entertain and shock. (For more on Trump’s manipulation of old and new media see my previous blog.) The immediate post-election coverage consists of Anti-Trump street protests, criticizing Trump for “softening” on extreme campaign promises (the same ones the media criticized during the campaign), suspecting Trump’s choices of officials, more criticism of Trump as for connecting to the public personalities he criticized during the campaign (while media “wish” that he “brings the nation together”).

In this interim period between Trump's mansions and the White House, the old media also punch Trump for being “lenient” toward Russia’s President who “influenced” American Presidential elections via Wiki Leaks. Overwhelmed with a patriotic zeal, the media ignore totally some really important questions, such as how could this happen, if it did? Who is responsible? Did Wiki Leaks really influence the voters? How many? All in all, the old media are just continuing to demonstrate their misreading of the business mogul/entertainer turned the President-Elect. Media cannot fathom the lesson Trump keeps broadcasting about the twisted character of media-ted politics.

Old media’s hate of Trump is deeply rooted and may be traced down to a basic instinct of survival. For the starters, Trump uses a hefty part of the media time and space without paying for it. During the campaign, the media tracked each step of his and amplified it through a prolonged rambling, a.k.a. “analysis”. Media couldn’t do anything but suck it, since Trump was delivering the media’s manna – scandals. Of course, a scandalous coverage increased the program ratings and brought more of the advertising money to media. That’s actually why they had to cover Trump before he became the President-Elect.

Second, Trump additionally undercuts the media’s revenues by choosing to bypass them. As a passionate tweetee (a Tweeter user), and not shy of other new media either, Trump proves that he needs not TV and newspapers as loudspeakers for his statements. The media keep losing a precious connection power, based on the privileges of special access to informing sources, gate-keeping and content filtering. The bell tolls for an era in old media’s historical trajectory. Now, the breaking news on CNN is not “Mr. Trump stated for our program…”, but rather “Trump tweeted…” The old media must cover new media which are totally out of their control. An inescapable move that, on the long run, is as clumsy as shooting one’s own foot.

Third, old media hate Trump because he equals them in spin-doctoring skills. Mastering impression management, keeping the audience on tiptoes, creating an endless reality circus… Trump does all this as effectively as the old media do. He steals the daily bread from the media’s hands, and so in a professional sense. Increasingly confused, the old media must cover an unorthodox public figure even when he drags them into his fairy tallish mansions and babble-Tweets the first thing he’s got on mind.

All in all, Trump Tasers the old media into the heart. But he doesn’t intend to kill them, just to put them in a different place than the media have been used to. Is this a real politician and real politics? But wait, who’s ever said that the mediated politicians and politics must be real? Politicians show their real face and do real politics just on the backstage, invisible to the mass audience. The old media have for long been an accomplice in this cover-up. Trump tears up the curtain by turning the public political play into a grotesque.  

The intrusion of new media into big politics may have as profound effects as the political insertion of radio and TV had in their times. Is this a change for better, looking from the perspective of democracy? Not necessarily. New media are as prone to manipulation as old media, except that the former is clear about it while the latter pretends the (journalistic) truth. Trump could easily start his own TV, radio, an old media empire. But that would mean falling back to the mediated politics orthodoxy. If nothing else comes out of Trump’s trumping or - if you will - trumpery, it is the realization that the model of parliamentary democracy, which is based on alienated parties and accompanying old media, has worn out.