Why Trump Attacks the Press During Coronavirus Briefings
Because he Knows How to Keep People Watching
By Sasha Stone and Ryan Adams
Donald Trump learned a lot about audience manipulation during his decade-long run on the Apprentice. He learned learned that conflict is the drama that drives ratings. Without confrontation, there’s no drama. No one wants to watch a show where the “stars” don’t cry or throw things or have a meltdown. Trump can’t very well cry or throw things. Instead, he delivers multiple rounds of gasp-inducing shockers, minute by minute, day after day.
Whether he’s doing it on Twitter to thousands of hearts, or he’s doing it at a rally to a chorus of roars and chants, or he’s doing it in a daily press briefing on a global pandemic. Either way is equally addictive. He embodies the kind of chaos that so many people seem to want to see: a charismatic villain.
And the scary part is, it works.
One of the most effective ways he does this on a regular basis is by attacking people you aren’t supposed to attack — John McCain, Serge F. Kovaleski (the disabled reporter Trump mocked), a grieving Gold Star family, and any female reporter but especially women of color. He attacks distinguished journalists as “fake news,” and tries to discredit entire media outlets with childish digs like “Concast” and “MSDNC.” He makes news by trashing the news and forcing the news to repeat his trash talk. He know that this not only keeps him in the spotlight, it also distracts us by eclipsing legit news that he doesn’t want people to hear. That gives him the “ratings” he wants, and it chums the water for his bottom-feeder base. They want to see him attack “fake news” because he’s convinced them that the press really is the “enemy of the people.”
This isn’t 3D Chess, and isn’t well thought out. It just the instinctual knack of a sociopath who has spent a lifetime honing his act as a lowbrow shock-jock. Trump has always been this guy. If you watch this interview with Phil Donohue you’ll see he did the same shtick then that he does now — he shocks people by saying things that normal humans never say, and he makes the jaws drop of a certain type of person (and there are a billion of them) who gaze upon professional assholes in awe.
The shock and awe of Trump is something he has been practicing and mastering his entire life.
And here is in 1987 claiming he’s a Republican and already lashing out at the administration. This was, of course, while a Republican, Ronald Reagan, was in office.
Attacking Ronald Reagan, or his veep, GHW Bush, was surely considered scandalous at the time, but as with any carnival barker showman, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
Seeing that he was not only unchecked, but in fact was rewarded for his vulgarity, it would only get worse. This is how Trump won the GOP primary, of course, by crudely attacking Jeb Bush and every other Republican candidate, eliminating them one by one with targeted poison darts. He gave voters a thrill every time a controversial dagger stabbed an opponent in the face, and in doing so he turned the debates into must-see trainwreck television. Even those who say they hate him, and warn that his rhetoric is dangerous, can’t stop watching, can’t stop talking about, can’t stop ranting and raving about the daily antics of the Coronavirus Task Farce.
Even back in 1987, there was a movement to “draft Donald Trump” for president. But timing wasn’t right, the requisite elements were not yet in place, so he didn’t go into politics — rather, he went into television. Trump’s gig as boss on The Apprentice wasn’t compelling because it had anything to do with actual business, but because it made a mockery of boardroom business that common folk loved to see.
For every working stiff who ever heard the dreaded words “you’re fired,” it was fun to watch a pack of fatuous has-been celebrities get sacked. Audiences tuned in to watch Trump kick fancy-pants people in the teeth. His scripts gave him a chance to say the sort of crap that a lot people think but don’t have the guts to say. He was a human version of Triumph the Insult Dog, and the fabricated aspect of the whole charade gave him leeway to beat up on anyone, no matter their skin color, or their gender. (In fact, his success with that attitude was early evidence of the vast number of racists and misogynists hungry to see their hidden hateful feelings broadcast coast to coast.)
Some of Trump’s business advice from The Apprentice is quite useful if your ambition is to be a ruthless prick. He says “never lose your cool” unless “you’re acting.” That’s important for observers to remember when he’s putting on a show, and it’s especially fascinating to witness him fail to follow his own advice and lose his cool (if someone goes after Jared Kushner or Ivanka). Most of the time, though, he keeps his show under control. Controlling the show its the only real talent he’s got, and now that the country is in crisis mode, he can seize an unlimited time slot for his performance on every network, every single day.
Which brings us back to his theatrics. Trump knows that if he goes after reporter during a briefing it might drive down his approvals slightly because who does that? Especially when it looks so petty in the midst of a national tragedy.
Television is the whole ballgame for Trump — partly because he has an entire news network devoted to Trump propaganda but also because Trump works on TV better than he does anywhere else. As long as he’s on TV he is succeeding and he’s always on TV.
Trump’s appearances created a Pavlov’s dog response to the media in the early days of his campaign that even just an empty podium in anticipation of Trump speaking could hold viewers’ attention on CNN.
One reporter described it this way in PBS Frontline’s America’s Great Divide, “Donald Trump is a plane crashing every day.”
The more untouchable the target of his attacks, the more horrified we are by the attack and the more he holds us in his thrall. Even after three years of this, it is somehow still shocking. It’s obligatory at this point. We now expect that that every press briefing will include at least one spiteful attack on a reporter. It has to. Otherwise, what else would there be?
Imagine if he never made a spectacle of himself during these briefings. Would anyone even watch? Doubtful. By now we all know that we won’t be hearing any helpful information. We watch because if we don’t then we can’t gather ‘round the water-cooler to rehash his disastrous behavior.
This was bad enough when producer Mark Burnett put a crazy person on TV and NBC executives allowed the mess to happen for the sake of ratings. But now it’s the most powerful person in the country wrangling a way to put his crazy self back on TV — and news executives on a dozen channels allowing the mess to happen for the sake of ratings. Trump adapts the sick lessons he learned he learned from The Apprentice to exploit us now the same way he did then: in a time of information overload, the only thing that rises to the top of the heap is often the worst thing, the one thing you can’t look away from.
We’ve only seen two presidents in power in the era of Twitter and Facebook. Each of them utilized what these networks were designed to do, but they did it in diametrically opposite ways. Obama has chose the route that plays well to people who virtue signal to show the world how noble and great we all are. Obama’s tweets — because they are imbued with pure and genuine goodness — receive many more favorites than Trump’s ever will. Millions vs. thousands.
So the good news is that there are more virtuous leaning people online. But remains true that Trump unleashed the troll contingent as the first internet troll to become president. He’s the living embodiment of internet’s dark underbelly that allows anyone to say anything to anyone regardless of whether it’s socially acceptable or not.
The internet has brought out the best and the worst in us. It is more collective power than we humans have ever held in our hands in all of our time on this planet. The things we say to each other every day — when you really stop and think about it — are horrifying. The internet has taken dehumanization to a whole different level and most people join in on it, left or right. We justify our anger and our rage because each of us has a different idea of who is being wronged and what must be set right.
Few things in modern life are more depressing than to see the tools at our disposal turned into weapons. How would Hitler have used Twitter? How would he have used Facebook? How would he have used YouTube?
What will it take for us to learn how to control it? Can it ever be controlled? Where will all of this lead us?
It’s hard to say, because it’s impossible to imagine. But one thing we can be certain about — Donald Trump will swagger into another press briefing today, he will create more chaos to disguise his ineptitude, and he will attack a reporter in a shameful display because he knows his indignant dramatics will keep the red light gleaming. And most of us will still be watching because we can’t look away. And he knows it.
