At the recent Tony Awards Robert De Niro used his star power to promote Trump.
While he did it by giving a big fuck you to the president, he might as well have recorded a Superbowl commercial for Trump.
De Niro got himself an extra 15 hours of fame, but like so many of us on the left he’s helping buy the guy another four years.
Propaganda Everywhere…
But few people get how it really works.
The most basic ingredient of Trump’s winning campaign was…
ATTENTION
Negative attention is still attention, and what Trump most needed to win.
The TWO BILLION dollars in free promotion that the mostly left-selling media handed Trump got him elected, and even top promoters like De Niro still fail to see it.
While many on the left of course believe that the liberal media is “on their side” and trying to stop Trump, they fail to understand that the media is on their own side.
Media Has Only One Bias
For years I just assumed that the media was biased.
If you want good gun-toting Christian red-state propaganda you tune into Breitbart or Fox or the even less news-like Alex Jones’ of our world.
And, of course if you are left-leaning you go to your friends at the New York Times, CNN, and near everywhere else.
But when I got closer to the propaganda machines in writing the Trump book, I realized that I had it all wrong.
The media is biased…
But not towards left or right…
They are biased towards one thing…
RATINGS
Trump Bump
At CBS during the election campaign they called it the Trump Bump.
They’re incredibly savvy and figured out that just mentioning the guy’s name drove their ratings, so they kept doing it.
While those of us on the left might think that CBS and the other left media are “just like us,” what most fail to understand is that they are “just selling to us.”
It’s not that the media is left or right biased, it’s that in being biased to ratings, they cater to their left or right leaning audience.
Dig deeper into the world of propaganda and you see there are plenty of conservatives acting the part of liberal to their left-leaning audiences, and plenty on the other side too.
It’s not that they believe in their role any more than Robert De Niro believes that he is Carl Van Loon, or Jim Cramer is really that nut you see on the screen…
They’re talking heads, actors playing the part that gets them paid, the role their audience tunes in to.
Obviously, The Media Wants Trump Re-Elected
The greatest thing that has happened to the media in the last 20 years is that Trump came along and at least partially stalled the demise of their collapsing business models.
Fake news. Real news. Whatever news.
It’s all propaganda, and as long as it drives ratings, everybody wins, other than us citizens who are being roiled up hating on each other.
And what’s bad for America is even better for the media as it gives them a secondary storyline to drive ratings—like, in this time of the #metoo ratings boon, celebrating a restaurant kicking out a patriot for doing her best public service in an unwinnable role.
If the media gets lucky some serious harm will come to someone in the Administration, which just like every school shooting will provide a top notch ratings opportunity for promoting more violence.
Like bullet manufacturers the media thrives on war. They don’t care about our safety, and especially not our sanity. They’re paid to pull our emotional triggers to get us to tune in and spread their propaganda.
Jack Welch once said, “Show me an incentive system and I’ll tell you how people behave.”
The media is heavily incented to keep building Trump up, and that’s exactly how they’ll get him elected again.
Just Like The First Time
Although our society is way too bludgened by noise and faux outrage to actually care how Trump won, it should be remembered that until he was the center of attention he was nowhere.
From the get go, the talking heads supposedly thinking they were deriding Trump powerfully launched his campaign for him.
Attacking him. Calling him stupid. Hating on him drives a massive amount of attention to Trump, which he most skillfully directs for his own use.
In his Trump commercial, De Niro did the same.
By making his stage show about the president, he brought him into his house and homes everywhere, handing Trump a much bigger mic to drive his messaging.
In predictable Trump fashion, he gave De Niro a new nickname, Punchy, short for punch-drunk. Then, of course he reinforced how good a job he is doing citing the economy and anything else that he could fit into a tweet.
Attacking Trump Makes Liberals Look Powerless
The opposite of love isn’t hate…
IT’S INDIFFERENCE
In making Trump a bigger villain the left only continues to reinforce their powerlessness.
That someone as important as a famous actor would diminish his station by cussing out a lowly politician on live TV signals just how powerful Trump is.
Near everything the left and left-selling media do only makes Trump a bigger star. People who already agree with them, agree more. And those who are on the fence, seeing how desperate they are to soil Trump, wonder what’s really going on.
Just like the 16 GOP candidates that Trump thrashed before Hillary, when the left makes him the center of their attacks they only elevate his status as the man at center stage.
The eighth biggest mistake Hillary made was plastering Trump’s name all over her campaign, including her website, and the left makes the same mistake over and over again.
Perhaps the most skilled propagandists on the planet, churches, are highly effective at referencing the Devil here and there, but only as a counterpoint to selling their God.
Barack Obama didn’t make his campaign about how much the other guy sucked, but about what we all want, a visionary to drive hope and change.
How To Beat Trump
To put out a fire, you don’t add fuel…
Trump is a black hole that will absorb every ounce of media attention that is directed at him, and then barf it up in a way that drives his agenda.
He crushed the GOP and Hillary alike using this basic strategy, and any skilled operative can see a simple way to combat it.
While even our best politicians and political hacks clearly have no clue how to take on Trump, in 5 seconds any savvy influencer could lay out the strategy.
Give Trump what he most fears…
A VACUUM
Say nothing about him. Minimize him.
Stop talking about how he sucks and merely say things like, “Well, of course America is ready for a real president who brings us all together.”
The worst thing that can happen to a Hollywood celebrity isn’t their movie receiving worse reviews than Dirty Grandpa, it’s them failing to get the casting call to begin with.
Trump is a master of spin, and the absolute best way to out-Trump him is to give him nothing to spin.
But, of course, then, De Niro and the media would need to find new ways to become relevant again…