Month: September 2017

A chart showing Trump’s mastery of the media news cycle and public attention.

A chart showing Trump’s mastery of the media news cycle and public attention.

The study shows that while Trump’s presidency has been action-packed, the public’s attention span doesn’t seem to last for long.

The visible spikes of increased Googling on a topic indicate that Trump-related news captures the public’s interest, but that attention quickly fizzles out or is captured by the next bombshell report or firing. The House health care bill, North Korea and Afghanistan troops are some of the few that have had slightly more steady interest over time, with Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation having several mini-spikes of interest.

https://www.axios.com/the-insane-news-cycle-of-trumps-presidency-in-one-chart-2487913807.html

https://plus.google.com/+JohnAHardy/posts/aVeqgZguhjg

Keep in mind that Trump’s rantings are all for the benefit of the US domestic media.

Keep in mind that Trump’s rantings are all for the benefit of the US domestic media. He manages to manufacture one or more storms in a teacup per day and this triggers intense media coverage. These frequent events are designed to appall not only liberals but also appear to appall his top advisers as well.

The media narrative here is that the Trump administration is reeling from one Trump induced crisis to another and that nothing ever gets done due to a combination of incompetence and paralysis. The reality is different in that the Trump adminstration has actually been very effective in doing what it set out to do which is to gut the public education sector, destroy the environmental protection agency, public housing and countless other departments. They have managed to pour buckets more money into the bloated coffers of the military, into private contractors and are moving to shift all the cost onto the low paid American worker through hefty tax cuts at the top. In other words, mainstream Republican policy.

If you look at Trump not simply as a rude impetuous man-baby but instead as a master of media manipulation who creates cover for his malicious government then when measured by it’s own yard stick, his adminstration has been a massive success. He is his own Man Behind The Curtain and all of his cabinet are in on the act.