Attacking Media as Distraction
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President Trump keeps hammering away at the media, in part because of his own watch-too-much, read-too-little inclinations, but also because he needs a foil, now that he’s not actively locked in an election battle.
In July, The New York Times analyzed all the insults Trump had published on Twitter and concluded that “Mr. Trump usually picks out a couple of chief enemies and attacks them until they are no longer noteworthy to him. This can last weeks or even months.”
“Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton have all held Mr. Trump’s attention in this way. Nearly one in every three insults in the last two years has been directed at one of them. After winning the nomination, Mr. Trump narrowed his focus on Mrs. Clinton. After the election, his attention turned toward the subjects described above: primarily the media, Obamacare and the allegations of collusion.”
Strategy for Trump is all street fight, on the widest street, under the brightest light. And the media is an easy target, because it targets him. The press is in search of truths and Trump is a fount of lies, which makes them natural adversaries.
But these two institutional forces — the press and the presidency — operate under different codes, have different objectives and are held to different standards. While the press is, for the most part, properly exercising its power to shine light into places that the powerful would prefer remained dark, Trump is abusing his power by trying to squash dissent through defamation of individual journalists, individual shows and individual networks or newspapers.
This battle that Trump insists on maintaining also serves a wider goal for him: distraction. As long as we focus on the latest outrage he publishes on Twitter attacking one person or another, the less time we have to focus on the fact that his presidency thus far is a colossal legislative failure, his cabinet is an unending game of cloak and daggers meets musical chairs, his Justice Department is systematically and unrelentingly expressing its hostilities to equal rights, and Trump’s reckless, emotionally triggered language and actions are making us less safe by denigrating diplomacy and advocating military aggression...
...Trump’s attacks on the media are mere sideshow; the main events are his attacks on civil rights and his itching for a military attack on North Korea.
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