Chap. 27: Taking Back Trump's America Serialization

Dominate the News Cycle or Be Dominated

Enjoy the read! The entire book is available on Amazon.

What is truth?

Pontius Pilate

This is a president who…is acting erratically and desperately, and we need to not normalize that…. I think we need to lean into that.

Jeff Zucker, President, CNN

Just parse that Zucker moment for a minute. That’s the president of what was once the most respected cable news channel in the world caught red and Left Wing-handed on a secret tape by Project Veritas plotting to overthrow that other President – yeah, that guy in the White House who actually got elected.

This is what we were up against writ large with the Never-Trump media. Its mission was to defeat Donald J. Trump by whatever means necessary – short (perhaps) of committing a felony. And, in many ways, the now ex-president Jeff Zucker and CNN were the tips of this poisonous, spinning out of control, spear.

Tell Us What You Really Think

That the Never-Trump media was on a lethal mission to take down and take out the President in 2020 should not be in dispute.

Consider this zinger, for example, from the New York Times editorial board: “Mr. Trump doesn’t care if you think he’s corrupt, incompetent and self-centered. He just wants you to think everyone else is just as bad….”²²⁰

In endorsing Joe Biden, USA Today’s Editorial Board went full character assassination, citing “Trump’s unbounded narcissism” and his “ducking responsibility for his actions, spewing streams of invective at his critics, trafficking in racial fearmongering, governing more as the leader of the red states than of the United States, and relentlessly attacking the free press.”²²¹ Ouch.

And here’s how the Washington Post led off its endorsement of Joe Biden with arguably the lowest bar set in presidential election history: “In order to expel the worst president of modern times, many voters might be willing to vote for almost anybody.”

Note, here, how these serfs on the Jeff Bezos plantation snuck in that qualifier of “modern” times. Through my lens of history, and taking the longer view, there are surely worst presidents in less than modern times – James Buchanan, who helped trigger the Civil War; Warren G. Harding, renowned for corrupt scandals like Teapot Dome; or Herbert Hoover, Father of America’s Great Depression. Not to mention Millard “Fugitive Slave Act” Fillmore or Franklin “Bleeding Kansas” Pierce.

But if the Bezos propaganda machine wants to limit its assessment of Donald Trump to modern times, are you really telling me that Jimmy Carter with his stagflation and double-digit “misery index,” Bill Clinton with his signing of NAFTA and shoehorning Communist China into the World Trade Organization, Richard Nixon with his Watergate scandal, or Barack Obama with his stagnant wages and serial fumbles on foreign policy were better presidents than a POTUS 45 who created the strongest economy in that aforementioned modern times, finally stood up to the Chinese Communist Party, and delivered at least a quasi-vaccine in one third the time it normally takes?

My broader point is simply this: During the 2020 election cycle, these media propagandists wore their Never-Trump biases on their collective editorialist sleeves. Here, the idea that there is some Chinese wall between the editorial side and news side of today’s modern times newspapers and news stations has long ago gone the way of all flesh.

The Daily Spin

The core information warfare strategy of the Never-Trump media was as simple as it was relentless and cynical: Dominate the Daily News Cycle and thereby drive down President Trump’s favorability and job approval ratings and drive up those ratings for Joe Biden.

The Daily News Cycle is simply and collectively the lead story or stories that will be incessantly featured that day. It’s the front page stuff you see in papers like the New York Times and Washington Post. On Cable TV news, it is collectively the major stories that inhabit the so-called A- and B-block segments that comprise the first half of any given news hour.

Here, it is axiomatic that every day of a President’s political life, it’s a battle over this News Cycle. If it’s favorable to a President, that’s a very good day. If not, it’s going to be a very long day of defense – never a good position to be in.

Of course, the single most important responsibility of any White House Communications Team is to win the daily battle over the news cycle; and sadly, in what would be Strategic Failure #5, the Trump White House would fail miserably at doing so.

To execute its “Dominate the Daily News Cycle” game plan, the Never-Trump media used a complex and synergistic set of five basic “Daily Spin” tactics.

1.     Selectively screen the news for stories that enhance the anti-Trump and pro-Biden narratives and push these to the top of the news cycle.

2.     Deemphasize or ignore any stories that enhance the pro-Trump narrative or shine a harsh light on Sleepy Joe. This was the Fake News Lie of Omission.

3.     In league with the Democrat Party, parrot, and perhaps help craft, the talking points related to the daily anti-Trump, pro-Biden narrative.

4.     Use “echo chamber” in-house experts and other anti-Trump surrogates to relentlessly drive the Daily News cycle and its collateral Daily Spin narratives.

5.     Deeply freeze out pro-Trump voices from the White House or the Trump campaign while diminishing, harassing, or simply discrediting any pro-Trump surrogates if they appear on set.

Under the onslaught of the Never-Trump media’s negative press, President Trump’s overall job approval rating would plummet from a high of 52 percent²²³ at the start of the pandemic in February 2020 to as low as 38 percent²²⁴ in the final months before the election. At the same time, President Trump’s favorability rating would swoon from a high of 48 percent in January of 2020²²⁵ to 42 percent²²⁶ by the eve of the election.

In baseball terms, this was like falling below the Mendoza Line. That’s when a batter’s average drops below 200. Drop below that Mendoza Line and pretty soon you are out of the “The Show” – or, in this case, the White House.

Twisted Policy Twists

To attack the President’s personal character – and therefore his favorability rating – the Never - Trump media used any story that helped portray Trump as a liar, a racist, a cheat (usually a tax cheat), a homophobe or a heartless, horny misogynistic philanderer. These were surefire, favorability-rating killers.