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pseudo-event stunt

12 23 very useful term i have neglected promote 2nd

 hmmn original idea is torches of liberty PR stunt, i am extending notion to manufactured outrage?

see lafayette square xian facist photo op

orphaned, and basically most pressers and march/rally could be called one, so maybe reserve here for most bogus? eg drs summit

see performative vice signal provocateur troll CRUEL SADO-POPULISM

see own the libs eg desantis abbott plane bus immigrants to Dem Sanct cities in North (yankees)

see photo op [--> selfie eg mtg and kevin?]

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very useful term i have neglected eg cdv:

Because he is mentally unwell and lives in his own malignant reality, worships power in the service of his own fabulism, narcissism, ego and greed, lacks empathy and concern for other human beings, and is an authoritarian and a neofascist, Donald Trump is only capable of destruction. Healing and creation are anathema to him.

As such, Donald Trump’s response to the protests was to slur those Americans who are sickened by police thuggery and brutality and are therefore moved to force positive social change as being “thugs.” Trump also summoned his paramilitaries and street thugs to defend him at the White House by participating in “MAGA Night.”

Trump threatened to enforce martial law by invoking the Insurrection Act through which he would deploy at least 10,000 active duty soldiers to crush and “dominate” protesters.

Trump also threatened to attack the protesters outside of the White House with the Secret Service and their “ominous” weapons and “vicious dogs.” The protesters outside of the White House were shot with rubber bullets, choked with tear gas, and beaten by police and other law enforcement forces at Trump’s and William Barr’s command. Why? So that Donald Trump could have a photo op where he could look “strong” as he walked from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street in what was a Christian fascist authoritarian spectacle.

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7 25 trump hegs deploy nat gd usmc in LA

7.8/25 APC horse battle rattle griffin pk? kids summer camp

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AN 7 25

TX FLOODS

'ICE Barbie': Trump DHS secretary slammed for social media stunt during Texas tragedy

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an 725

President Donald Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz” on Tuesday, the federal immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades that boasts alligators as part of a natural escape barrier. Now, Trump is vowing to renovate the original Alcatraz, just off the coast of California, a former federal maximum security prison that he claims is, or will be, “surrounded by sharks.”

Before jetting off to Florida, Trump joked with reporters (video below) about detainees facing deportation who would have to navigate around the alligators in the Everglades should they try to escape.

Later in the day, Trump posted to his social media website about his new inspiration.

“Because of the Violence and Criminality I have seen due to the Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden, in particular allowing millions of people into our Country who shouldn’t be here, I wanted something representative to show how we fight back, and then, it happened,” the President wrote.

READ MORE: ‘This Is Fascism’: Trump Sparks Fury After Calling to Deport U.S. Citizens

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“I saw a picture of ALCATRAZ looking so foreboding, and I said, ‘We’re going to look into renovating and rebuilding the famous ALCATRAZ Prison sitting high on the Bay, surrounded by sharks. What a symbol it is, and will be!’ Conceptual work started six months ago, and various prison development firms are looking at doing it with us. Still a little early, but lots of promise!”

CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere remarked, “the president says he’s looking into spending federal money, in part, to put sharks into the San Francisco Bay.”

If Trump actually wants Alcatraz to be surrounded by truly dangerous sharks, as Dovere notes he may have to bring them there. The ones currently surrounding the tiny island reportedly may not be especially dangerous, according to the Pacific Open Water Swim Co.

Other critics blasted Trump’s remarks.

Investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze remarked, “So we’re rebuilding Alcatraz based on… a vibe?”

“Trump saw a moody picture of a defunct prison and decided that’s the future of immigration policy, locking up desperate families on a shark-surrounded island like a Bond villain with zoning permits,” he added. “This cruel and reckless governance is nothing but a cinematic cosplay with real human lives at stake.”

READ MORE: Trump Pushes Census Do-Over to Exclude Non-Citizens — and to Immediately Redistrict House

Another social media user wrote: “Trump wants to bring back Alcatraz. Not to house mob bosses or war criminals, but to make a ‘symbol’ out of locking up desperate migrants. Sharks and spectacle. This isn’t immigration policy. It’s a twisted cruelty straight out of a 1930s Germany. You don’t rebuild a prison for the camera unless cruelty is the point. That’s not ‘fighting back’, that’s feeding fear and hatred to your base and calling it leadership. History already wrote this playbook, and it ends in concentration camps, not justice. We are better than this, no?”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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cosplay ice ride along noem 4 25 with a badge boyfriend cory lew

selfie in el salv gulag cecot

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see fox

dirty trick pseudo-event

6 24

mma

in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, right-wing media are doubling down on deceptive messaging around gas prices to attack President Joe Biden — in part by promoting a campaign launched by Americans for Prosperity, the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers' conservative political advocacy group.

//

Right-wing media used OPEC oil cuts to blame Biden for domestic gas price volatility

10/24/22

  1. ### Fox News attacks Biden for “surging” gasoline prices as they fall for 27th consecutive day

07/11/22

  1. ### Fox News accusing the Biden administration of deliberately spiking gas prices represents a cynical narrative escalation

06/16/22

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https://www.alternet.org/arizona-taxpayers-200-billion-border/

border containers cost 200m$?

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:{May 13, 2024 rww

Just as they prophesied Trump’s victory and collaborated in the 2020 attempted coup, the Trump wing of the New Apostolic Reformation is on the offensive once again, waging a campaign in counties they think will swing the 2024 presidential election.

True the Vote is enlisting private citizens to help it overwhelm under-staffed and under-resourced election offices with voter roll challenges ahead of election day.

Rep. David Zimmerman’s bill is the latest carefully spun attempt to inject a right-wing brand of Christianity into schools in hopes of bringing more children to Jesus. It has already happened in Texas and Florida.

The freshman member from Georgia doesn’t have much of a legislative record, but he sure can stir up trouble online.

Johnny McEntee, the former White House Trump aide closely linked to plans for radical federal government reform should Donald Trump win re-election, stoked outrage with a TikTok video in which he claimed to give unhoused people fake money, thereby to ensure their arrest.

As Donald Trump remarks on “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” perhaps the former president ought to just give up on pop culture references altogether.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/gop-conspiracy-theories/

it's been happening for decades — but the transformation is now complete.

It started with the Whitewater investigation, went through all of the Benghazi investigations, and ramped up in recent years when Republicans turned around to falsely claim that the investigation into Donald Trump's ties with a Russian conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election was as a "hoax," ignoring the overwhelming evidence of rampant collusion. On Wednesday, the transformation of the GOP from a real political party to a conspiracy theory cult was finally fully completed.

Wednesday was the day Senate Republicans spent hours and a hefty chunk of taxpayer money to bolster the lie that Democrats "stole" the 2020 election, with their only evidence being the say-so of a narcissistic sociopath whose only spoken language is lying. No one, especially no Republican politician, sincerely believes that Trump was the "real" winner of the 2020 election, or that there's any evidence whatsoever of voter fraud or election irregularities of any real importance. As Sen. Gary Peters, D.-Mich., the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee declared during his opening remarks, "this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies" and " is a grave threat to the future of our democracy."

Of course, that is the point.

As the committee chair, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and his fellow Republicans understand, their party can no longer win fair elections or campaign on ideas, since the public rejects most policies the GOP stands for. So the party's only recourse is to dish out a steady stream of conspiracy theories meant to distract from the policy debate while leveraging their power to undermine democracy.

As the mainstream news coverage of the hearing dutifully noted, no evidence of voter fraud was presented during Wednesday's hearing and Democrats on the committee repeatedly emphasized that Trump's claims of "fraud" have been presented before the courts dozens of times and thrown out for lack of evidence. Indeed, anyone who actually watched the hearing or read responsible coverage of it would walk away with the impression that the Republicans were a bunch of raving madmen and the Democrats were the only people speaking any sense.

What the Republicans running the hearing understand, however, is that their audience, the Republican base, neither watched the hearing nor consumed the mainstream media coverage of it. Instead, the purpose of the hearing is to generate footage that can be edited, often misleadingly, into clips that are fed into right-wing media sources and circulated through social media.

Evidence is not needed, nor is proof, nor convincing arguments. All that's needed are clips of the Republican senators, looking officious in the trappings of a Senate hearing, railing about "stolen" elections and defending the honor of those who purport to believe that Joe Biden stole the election. And all those poignant and convincing rebuttals from Democrats? Those can be chopped and edited to make the Democrats look "crazy" and like they're unleashing "unhinged" attacks on the noble Republicans.

None of this is about keeping Trump in office.

Senate Republicans not only understand that he lost, but that his coup efforts are failing. Their crusade now is about exploiting his lies of a "rigged" election for their own political purposes. Feeding the GOP base's victim complex and riling them up with conspiracy theories keeps them too busy obsessively hating Democrats to notice that the Republicans have run the country into the ground. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri showcased the strategy perfectly, with a maudlin speech about how actual evidence of a rigged election wasn't the point, because "the constituents back at home" told him "theyfeltthey had been disenfranchised."

"These are normal, reasonable people. These are not crazy people," he said.

For someone actually watching the hearing, this is maddening. The folks Hawley is talking about are just rabid Republicans who back Trump's coup and are willing to stand by outrageous bad faith arguments to defend their belief that certain voters — namely Black voters in big cities — simply shouldn't have the same right vote.

But when Hawley's remarks about are inevitably cut into a video that removes all this context and fed into right-wing disinformation channels, all that audiences will see is Hawley defending his voters as "normal, reasonable people" who are "not crazy". It will read as him defending the honor of conservatives against those elitist, condescending liberals who are always calling them "crazy", instead of what actually happened, which was that Hawley said conservative "feelings" about the election matter more than the fact of who actually won.

Similarly, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky declared during the hearing that the election "in many ways, was stolen." He did not offer evidence, much less proof for this claim, which was a blatant lie. But it doesn't matter. He knows that his statement will be cut into a video and disseminated. He doesn't need evidence, so much as a quick clip with him looking authoritative as he offers this lie without rebuttal.

That's what GOP politics is all about these days. It's not about making a policy case to voters, since Republican politicians know that will never fly. Instead, it's about identity politics and stirring up hate, however ridiculous, against liberals. Hawley is hoping his constituents be so angry at the alleged liberals calling them "crazy" that they focus on getting their revenge by voting Republican, rather than asking hard questions about, say, why the Republican-run Senate has abandoned them to economic devastation during this pandemic.

This is all the Republican Party is these days: A propaganda engine churning out fake "scandals" meant to send their voters down conspiracy theory rabbit holes or stir irrational right-wing grievances. Anything, really, but ever talk about actual policy or governance, which Republican politicians know is territory they will always lose on.

That's why Republicans have fully committed to Trump's lies about the 2020 election. It's not that they care one whit about Trump — I suspect many of them are glad to see him go since he's a miserable person to be around — but because this conspiracy theory is so useful. Republicans can now focus their voters, ideally for four years, on nursing a grudge over losing an election they "should" have won, if only the votes of those meanie Democrats had been thrown in the trash.

After all, what's the alternative?

Republicans know they'd lose a reasonable debate about policy differences with Democrats. So this is what they've turned themselves into: A conspiracy theory cult that is always dashing from one mad lie to another, stirring up the base with nonsense and hoping the voters will never catch onto what a con the whole thing is.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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NOTE CORP  CNP ALEC KOCH BASTARDS USE HYDROXY IN CYNICAL? FURY?  MOVE TO RE-OPEN ECONOMY

9/20

https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/

On July 27, a dozen physicians posed in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., dressed in white lab coats with “America’s Frontline Doctors” stitched over the pocket. The group’s chief spokesperson was Dr. Simone Gold, an emergency physician from Los Angeles. They were introduced by Jenny Beth Martin, the founding CEO of Tea Party Patriots, as participants in the “White Coat Summit.” The doctors made spirited arguments for the use of hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for Covid-19 and against wearing masks and imposing lockdowns—all running counter to the recommendations of Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.[[1]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn1)

Although the event was billed as a “press conference,” few journalists attended. A video posted by a bystander showed only a handful of attendees, most of them dressed in tourists’ shorts and T-shirts. But the event was livestreamed by Breitbart News and quickly went (so to speak) viral.

There was a rapid backlash. Much of the media attention focused onDr. Stella Immanuel, one of Gold’s cohort. Following the press conference, the Daily Beast posted a video of Immanuel, who is also a Pentecostal preacher, delivering a sermon claiming that various female ailments were caused by sexual visitations from “demons.”

Immanuel has since disappeared from the America’s Frontline Doctors online roster, but the group has continued to get traction. On August 10, Pat Robertson’s show on the Christian Broadcasting Network carried an interview with Simone Gold and an endorsement of her hydroxychloroquine cure.On August 21, Alex Jones’s NewsWars carried an interview with another member of America’s Frontline Doctors, Mark McDonald. McDonald—a child psychiatrist—maintained, “If all Americans had access to hydroxychloroquine, the pandemic would essentially end in about 30 days.”

Science has shown otherwise. Despite early hopes last spring, there is mounting evidence that hydroxychloroquine is a problematic—and even dangerous—treatment for Covid-19. One expert with firsthand knowledge is Nick Sawyer, an academic emergency physician in Sacramento, Calif. In July he wrote an article for Lifeline, the publication of the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, describing his harrowing two weeks of service in the Covid wards of Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. Sawyer was part of a team of California doctors dispatched by Governor Gavin Newsome to offer emergency assistance at the epicenter of the epidemic, at the height of the New York City outbreak.

Sawyer is now dealing with the spike in cases in California, this time with the benefit of four months of additional Covid research. “The science on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating Covid-19 is settled—multiple high-quality studies have shown that it shows no benefit,” he notes. Far more concerning, Sawyer says, is its potential harm: “Hydroxychloroquine can cause unstable cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death.” Over recent months, the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, and other organizations have issued warnings that the drug should be withdrawn as a Covid-19 treatment. “It’s irresponsible for America’s Frontline Doctors to continue to push this medication on the unwitting American population,” Sawyer states.

Why, then, would Gold’s band of physicians continue its campaign to pitch the treatment to the public? Simone Gold has repeatedly described her group as a “grassroots organization” acting in the service of its patients.[[2]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn2) In fact, it has been a highly orchestrated effort, months in the making, assembled by conservative Washington insiders in direct consultation with the White House, with the goal of reopening the economy in time to benefit Trump’s reelection prospects—regardless of the toll in human lives.

The first public mention of the initiative may have been a Washington Post story on April 13, as the virus raged across New York City and Covid-19 deaths passed the 20,000 mark.[[3]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn3) The Post reported the creation of a new conservative coalition “pushing for the White House and GOP lawmakers to push back against health professionals who have urged more caution.” The leadership was listed as Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, and Lisa Nelson of the American Legislative Exchange Council. A fourth individual, Jenny Beth Martin, is the founding director of the Tea Party Patriots. She would play a key role in organizing the events to come, including the doctors’ Washington “summit” in July.

Brandon, Nelson, and Martin are all prominent members of a secretive organization called the Council for National Policy,a shadowy coalition that coordinates initiatives among conservative megadonors, political operatives, and media owners, many of them Christian fundamentalists (see “Holding Democracy Hostage”).

The Post story quoted an interview with Richard Viguerie, a co-founder of the CNP, on the mission of the initiative: “The sooner we get the economy going and back up, the better it’s going to be for conservatives and Republicans in this election year. . . . Conservatives feel the government has overreacted, and it’s got to end.”[[4]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn4)

The new coalition, called Save Our Country, officially debuted on April 27, as U.S. Covid deaths approached 55,000.[[5]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn5) Headed by economist Art Laffer, its maiden press release featured quotes from Brandon, Nelson, and Martin. “The long-term consequences of a prolonged societal shutdown outweigh the damage done by the virus itself,” Martin stated. “We must immediately reopen the economy.”[[6]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn6) Earlier that week, The New York Times reported that the Save Our Country coalition’s members were mobilizing their networks for state-level rallies, filing lawsuits, and commissioning polls, all to counter the lockdowns: “Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about protests across the country.”[[7]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn7)

But the state-level protests turned out to be of limited utility, and the group began to look for new avenues. In April, CNP Action, the lobbying arm of the CNP, began a series of weekly conference calls to discuss Covid strategy. On May 11—as U.S. Covid deaths reached 74,270[[8]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn8)—one of the calls was intercepted and published by the Center for Media and Democracy and the Associated Press.

Among the participants were CNP President William Walton, CNP member Nancy Schulze,[[9]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn9) and Mercedes Schlapp, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. Schulze, the wife of former nine-term Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Dick Schulze, opened the call with a warning that two-thirds of the American people were wary of reopening the economy. But, she added, “Doctors are seen by the American people—they have a 92 percent trust rate with the American people according to polling. . . . There is a coalition of doctors, doctors’ coalition, who are extremely pro-Trump, that have been preparing and coming together for the war ahead in the campaign on health care, andthese doctors could be activated for this conversation now for reopening. NOTE RWI NICHE SLEEPER CELLS]

“The one thing the left does give credence to, in that they tend to be motivated by a secular worldview, the one thing that they do appreciate and listen to is science, and we have doctors that have the facts, that lived this themselves, that are in the trenches, that are saying it’s time to reopen,” Schulze continued. “I’ve been working with them for three years. There’s a coalition of doctors . . . including the most respected doctors in this country, that are ready to speak if somebody will just call on them.”

Walton told her, “We need to not just make the economic argument,we need to make the health argument, and we need doctors to make that argument, not us. THIRD PARTY TOBACCO PR BS And so that would be great if you, if we could tee that up.”

Schulze said she’d be happy to put him in touch “with any and all of these doctors, and I have submitted 27 of these doctors’ names to the campaign for the doctors’ coalition that they’re in the process of building.”

Mercedes Schlapp asked Schulze if she had spoken with Hannah Castillo, director of coalitions for the Trump campaign.“I know they’ve been working on building that coalition. I know they’re going through the vetting process right now. As long as you have the names, that would be helpful. . . . Those are the type of guys we want to get out on TV and radio to help push out the message.”

Schulze replied, “I’ve been working with Hannah for over six weeks now, so they already have been vetted. But they need to be put on the screen.”[[10]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn10)

Dr. Simone Gold, a 54-year-old emergency physician from Los Angeles, was ready for her close-up. On April 22, Gold had tweeted a stand-up of herself wearing a white “Emergency Dept.” coat, in front of Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai hospital emergency room, suggesting that concerns over the virus were inflated. She pointed out that the hospital “parking lots are empty, the emergency department volume is down, the patient census is down, and that’s really in most of the areas I’ve been to.”[[11]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn11)

On May 7, she brought a more explicit anti-lockdown message to a program on the Whiskey Politics show on Salem Radio, part of the massive Salem Media conglomerate owned by two leading members of the Council for National Policy.[[12]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn12) It was headlined “DR. SIMONE GOLD GOES PUBLIC! What the Government WON’T Tell Us About COVID-19.”

“It’s not at all clear that overall, that social distancing is going to make a huge impact,” Gold said.[[13]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn13) “We’re all acting like as though there’s a huge medical crisis. There’s a medical issue, we should handle it responsibly, but what’s going on in our country now is a terrible legal crisis. Our constitutional rights are being trampled on right and left.”[[14]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn14) Gold later added, “There’s always viruses . . . but I’m not sure that it’s front-page news.”[[15]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn15)

The Guardian reported that over the same period, the Save Our Country coalition spent $50,000 on videos on social media platforms “targeting independents and Republicans with the message that Covid-19 mostly hits the elderly to minimize risks for others.”[16] GUK

On May 19—as U.S. Covid deaths reached 84,640[[17]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn17)—the CNP’s doctors coalition (billed as “A Doctor A Day”) made its debut with an open letter to Donald Trump signed by “500+ doctors” (a number that was later revised to over 800). “In medical terms, the shutdown was a mass casualty incident,” it stated. “It is impossible to overstate the short, medium, and long-term harm to people’s health with a continued shutdown.” The lead signatory was Dr. Simone Gold.

On June 16—with U.S. Covid deaths approaching 110,000[[18]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn18) and the U.S. economy in freefall—the Save Our Country coalition published an open letter to President Trump and Leader McConnell, urging “that the multi-trillions of dollars of federal government debt spending in the wake of the Coronavirus come to a stop.”[[19]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn19) Twelve of the 20 signatories (among them Brandon, Nelson, and Martin) were members of the CNP, including CNP President William Walton and Executive Director Bob McEwen.

The push to reopen the schools became a full-court press. On July 7, Trump assembled a White House meeting on the subject. Jenny Beth Martin spoke as both the CEO of Tea Party Patriots and “as a mom.”

“Mr. President, you were right, and I hope you will trust your instincts,” she told Trump. “America is not meant to be shut down. And we have to reopen schools this fall. I’ve been in touch with almost a thousand doctors from around the country. I helped Dr. Simone Gold spearhead a letter to you signed by 800 physicians and surgeons who talked about the side effects of the lockdowns. I’ve done a second letter with over 150 doctors, 240 nurses, 330 educators, 70 national groups, and thousands of parents and concerned Americans who want to see schools reopened.”

A video of Martin’s statement appeared, billed as “Mom Gives Unexpected Speech Directly to Trump” without naming her or her affiliation. It was posted on various social media platforms, including Glenn Beck’s YouTube channel, The Blaze (where it clocked over 400,000 views as of August 4).[[20]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn20)

Dr. Simone Gold was now preparing to join Jenny Beth Martin on center stage. On July 22, Gold warmed up for her appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show, with over 157,000 YouTube subscribers. Kirk, a member of the Council for National Policy, heads a group called Turning Point USA, which recruits right-wing campus activists. (Donald Trump addressed its Youth Action Summit last December, and Donald Trump Jr. is quoted on its website stating, “I’m convinced that the work by Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk will win back the future of America.”)[[21]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn21)

The introduction for Kirk’s show summed up the case Gold and her colleagues would make over the coming weeks: “Charlie is joined in studio by board-certified emergency physician Dr. Simon [sic] Gold, who says nearly everything we’ve been told about the Chinese Coronavirus is a lie.She and Charlie take a deep dive into the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and why the U.S. government is barring physicians from prescribing the drug—endangering potentially 100,000 lives, at least. Charlie also takes on Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, asking if Dr. Gold challenges the effectiveness of wearing masks. Dr. Gold makes a stunning and factual assertion about the death rates and who exactly is to blame for what she believes is one of the biggest lies ever perpetrated against the American people.” [[22]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn22)

Gold’s “stunning assertion” was the often-repeated claim that doctors were falsifying death certificates, speculating without foundation that they were inflating Covid-19 cases by “20 to 30 percent.”[[23]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn23) Gold also asserted, “Masks are really foolish, they don’t do anything. . . . There’s zero scientific justification for the mask.”[[24]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn24)

Jenny Beth Martin emphasized a social media campaign from the start. Her Tea Party Patriots website posted the program of the White Coat Summit, offering the participating doctors a two-hour session devoted to expanding their social media reach: “YouTube and other social media vastly exceed television news as the information source for most Americans. Interviews and Q/A with social media personalities with large followers is the best way to talk to Americans. Doctors who want to answer questions from these modern journalists will have the opportunity.”

By the time Jenny Beth Martin hosted Gold’s White Coat Summit on July 27, U.S. Covid-19 deaths had skyrocketed to over 136,000.[[25]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn25) The physicians’ presentation carried a lethal stew of misinformation. Dr. Bob Hamilton, a pediatrician from Santa Monica, assured viewers, “Children are not passing [the virus] on to their parents or their teachers.” (A few days later, the CDC released a report on a massive transmission event in June at a Georgia summer camp, with a median age of 12.[[26]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn26))

Dr. Richard Urso—an ophthalmologist—praised hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for the virus,but it was not clear that Urso had ever had any significant experience treating Covid-19 patients. Another speaker was Dr. Daniel Erickson, a Bakersfield physician who co-owns an urgent care facility. In April he had been censured by the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine for his “reckless and untested musings” opposing stay-at-home orders and promoting the conspiracy theory about doctors misattributing deaths to Covid-19.[[27]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn27)

The social media strategy paid off. Gold and her colleagues’ video, livestreamed on Breitbart News, reportedly reached 185,000 concurrent users.[[28]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn28) The New York Times’ Kevin Roose reported that over its six hours on Facebook, it was the second-most-engaged post on the platform, with 14 million views.[[29]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn29) (The audiences for network news broadcasts, by comparison, range from 9 to 12 million.) A few hours after the presentation, President Trump tweeted the video to his 84.5 million followers. Donald Trump Jr. told his 5.3 million Twitter followers, “This video is a much [sic] watch!!! So different from the narrative everyone is running with.”[[30]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn30) Trump redoubled his support at his press conference the following day, stating “I think they’re very respected doctors.”[[31]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn31)

But major social media platforms reacted with relative speed. Facebook took the group’s video down a few hours after it was posted, and Twitter and YouTube followed suit, all three on the grounds that the video violated their Covid-19 misinformation policies.[[32]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn32) Twitter took the unusual step of suspending Trump Jr.’s account for 12 hours.

Gold had built the original America’s Frontline Doctors website on a SquareSpace platform, but SquareSpace took it down. Gold rebuilt the website (omitting Stella Immanuel of “demon sperm” renown) and started raising money through PayPal and fundly.com. The doctors’ program also remained on the Tea Party Patriots site.

There was an additional reaction to the doctors’ “frontline” Covid credentials. MedPageToday, a peer-reviewed medical news site, was unable to find evidence that any of America’s Frontline Doctors in Washington had served in “frontline” emergency rooms during the Covid epidemic.[[33]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn33) Simone Gold came under additional scrutiny. Her initial Whiskey Politics introduction described her as a “frontline doctor” in an “inner-city emergency room” that treated “150 patients a day,” but neither her LinkedIn profile nor other available sources listed the emergency room in question. Her personal website (taken down amid the controversy but archived) described her as a “Concierge Immediate Needs Physician” working in “C-Suite Medicine.”[[34]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn34)

On July 29, Cedars-Sinai, the backdrop for Gold’s Twitter video, issued a disavowal stating, “Simone Gold, MD, has not worked with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center or any of its offices or affiliates since 2015. For three weeks in late 2015, Dr. Gold was employed on a per diem basis by Cedars-Sinai Medical Network, a component of Cedars-Sinai. She worked during this brief time in a network urgent care clinic. Dr. Gold is not authorized to represent or speak about any information on behalf of Cedars-Sinai.”

The sharecare.com “Find a Doctor” site stated that “Dr. Simone Gold, MD, is a[n] emergency medicine specialist in Los Angeles, CA. and is affiliated with Centinela Hospital Medical Center.” But on July 31, Centinela Hospital posted a statement reading: “Simone Gold, MD, is not credentialed as part of the Centinela Medical Staff, as she resigned her position here a number of years ago. Dr. Gold was never employed here as we don’t employ our physicians.”[[35]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn35)

Also troubling was American Frontline Doctors’ repeated suggestion that patients should demand hydroxychloroquine from their doctors for Covid-19. The medication has been an important treatment for lupus and other autoimmune diseases, but the publicity around its application to Covid has created an ongoing shortage with devastating consequences.

Much of the mainstream coverage of America’s Frontline Doctors was devoted to Stella Immanuel’s “demon sperm” sermon, but alternative platforms were another story.

Simone Gold was reaching a vast new public and was now celebrated as a victim. On July 30, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson interviewed her on his nightly program. The crawl stated, “Doctor Censored by Big Tech Has Now Lost Her Job” (though that job was never specified)—echoing Trump’s executive order on Big Tech censorship released the previous day.[[36]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn36) (Carlson’s show is currently the highest-rated program on cable television, with an audience of over 4.3 million.[[37]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn37))

Glenn Beck’s multi-platform media operation, The Blaze, covered the story on his radio program and posted the Tucker Carlson video on its website on July 31, with a companion piece repeating her case for hydroxychloroquine.[[38]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn38) A similar report was posted the same day on CNS News, founded by Council for National Policy Executive Committee member L. Brent Bozell III.[[39]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn39) (MediaPost recently named CNS News as the country’s fastest-growing conservative website, with more than 8.3 million unique visitors in June and over 1,000 percent gain in year-over-year unique visitors.[[40]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn40))

Pat Robertson’s CBN.com averages over four million unique visitors each month. Add these to Alex Jones’s August 21 coverage—as well as legions of subsidiary platforms—and you have a deadly misinformation campaign that’s reaching tens of millions of voters, most of them off the radar of the national news media.

Emergency physician Nick Sawyer is disturbed by the implications for medical practitioners. The America’s Frontline Doctors campaign, he says, “violates two of the primary principles of medical ethics. Medical ethics has four major principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. As hydroxychloroquine offers no clinical benefit and may be harmful, it violates the first two tenets. Further, their statements place actual frontline physicians treating patients with Covid-19 in conflict with patients’ right to autonomy.

“Patients have the right to make decisions regarding their medical care, but as more and more patients are asking—if not outright demanding—that physicians prescribe hydroxychloroquine to them, it places these physicians in a position where they are faced with an ethical dilemma. We respect patients’ right to autonomy, but we are not willing to allow them to demand a treatment that is not helpful and may be harmful. In sum, America’s Frontline Doctors are introducing additional havoc into the already complex Covid-19 pandemic.”

As of the publication deadline for this article, neither Jenny Beth Martin or Simone Gold had responded to requests for comment.

The day after Gold’s Washington presentation, U.S. Covid-19 deaths stood at 140,309; they swelled to 147,653 only a week later.[[41]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn41) Less than a month later, on August 21, Donald Trump addressed the Council for National Policy at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, his last major address before the Republican convention. In his opening remarks, he thanked several figures from the CNP, including Jenny Beth Martin, “for your tremendous leadership of the CNP. You’ve done a fantastic job.”

As of that Friday, over 174,000 Americans had died of Covid-19. That number continues to climb.[[42]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn42)

Anne Nelson is the author of Shadow Network: Money, Media, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. She is the recipient of the Livingston Award for journalism and a Guggenheim Fellowship for historical research. 

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aha/DOH:

XO

9/20 aha, fash-y, strong man acting alone: trump loves signing things foto op with fawning followers (he leaches gravitas, assent/ applause from them) maybe experts who look like they know what they're doing, but congress deadlocked/polarysys (in pocket of corps that want to continue extract $ HMO]  and does not want to ACT, just make it look like he HAS many eg neglected but typical: gop beat up bad 2018 blue wave on pre-existing conds, to trump pretends to defend AT THE SAME TIME still trying to kill ACA that actually provides; also visual, reality TV apprentice-like

trump mocked for finally releasing ‘health care plan’ — which is really a ‘toothless’ executive order

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement  September 25, 2020

For at least four years President Donald Trump has been promising the American people a health care plan. He famously sat for the “60 Minutes” cameras just days after the…

==

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see town hall

DN 819

And then, finally, perhaps most importantly, Koch has built a nationwide activist network called Americans for Prosperity. And what this is is a boots-on-the-ground operation. So, Americans for Prosperity has chapters around the country. They can activate people to go knock on doors, take petitions. They will charter busesfrom West Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, you name it. They will get buses of angry voters[pseudo-populist trigger anti-gubmint] to come to Washington, D.C., and then go visit congressional offices that have been specifically identified by that big corporate lobbying shop we talked about, where they can pressure lawmakers.

And Koch put this political machine into full force in 2009 and 2010, when it looked like the United States was going to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for the first time. You know, back then, there really was bipartisan support to do something on climate change. The Republican, John McCain,ran on doing something about climate change. But Koch Industries intervened, and, I think more than even Exxon or other companies, it sort of — it politicized this issue of climate change. And Koch went after any moderate Republicans who acknowledged that climate change was real, who supported any effort to put a price on carbon. And Koch helped to drive those people out of office. So it played a vitally important role in making it clear to Republicans that they could not support any effort on climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: The Kochtopus? Elaborate further.

CHRISTOPHER LEONARD: The Kochtopus, here’s a great example. In 2009, when we were debating climate change, my book shows that Koch secretly funded a think tank report from this group called the American Council [for] Capital Formation. And this report said that if we regulate climate change, it will be a disaster for the American economy. Then another Koch-funded think tank called the American Energy Alliance took the findings from that report, made political ads and targeted those ads at Republican politicians, like Lindsey Graham, who supported climate change legislation, so now Lindsey Graham has got these horrible campaign spots running back home. And then the corporate lobbyists from Koch will be visiting the offices of Lindsey Graham and explaining why they can’t support climate change bill.

So, the Kochtopus is this remarkably effective 360-degree machine that affects the public debate around issues like this, that has lobbyists who work on issues like this, and that can, finally, bring voters in. You know, Americans for Prosperity will — I’ve been at these events where they bus voters into Washington, D.C. They give them glossy printed protest signs. They feed them a boxed lunch. They take them to the congressional offices. And they can stoke what appears to be a real public revolt against legislation like this.

==

EB

Pseudo-event, an event produced by a communicator with the sole purpose of generating media attention and publicity. These events lack real news value but still become the subject of media coverage. In short, pseudo-events are a public relations tactic.

:{:{:{}:

The term pseudo-event was coined by American scholar Daniel J. Boorstin in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), his book about the effects of media publicity and advertising on political and social practices in the United States in the 1950s. Boorstin defined a pseudo-event as an ambiguous truth that appeals to people’s desire to be informed. He argued that being in the media spotlight was a strong incentive for public figures to stage artificial events, which became real and important once validated by media coverage. Boorstin described pseudo-events as the opposite of propaganda, although both forms of communication have similar consequences and result in public misinformation. Whereas propaganda slants facts to keep the public from learning the truth, pseudo-events provide the public with artificial facts that people perceive as real.

:{:{:{}:

Pseudo-events are carefully choreographed, following a prepared script and leaving nothing to chance. In order to maximize the event’s exposure, they are scheduled in advance, and journalists are informed of the specific time when the event will occur. Pseudo-events are designed to be dramatic, to make them interesting for the public, and they tend to generate iconic images, such as big enthusiastic crowds. Pseudo-events can include press conferences, advertisements, speeches, and other similar events covering issues with little value in terms of content and importance.

}:}:}:}:

==

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/all-the-president-elects-pseudo-events/509630/

Donald Trump, Master of the Pseudo-Event

The president-elect is a pro at marshaling ambiguous unrealities to his advantage.

CONOR FRIEDERSDORF

DEC 8, 2016

no lnx

Days ago, President-elect Trump broadcast this message to his 16.7 million followers:

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump’s lawyers “stated unequivocally that there was, in fact, no evidence that any voter fraud had occurred,” declaring outright in one Michigan court filing, unearthed by the Washington Post, that “all available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake.”

How should Americans understand this president?

* * *

In 1961, the historian Daniel Boorstin warned about the rise of a new American type, the celebrity “who is known for his well-knownness.” This purposely fabricated figure is “made by all of us who willingly read about him, who like to see him on television, who buy recordings of his voice, and talk about him to our friends,” he wrote. “His relation to morality and even to reality is highly ambiguous.”

The passage appeared in a book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, that “remains as poignant as it is prophetic,” my colleague Megan Garber observes, for it anticipated not only the rise of figures like “the Real Housewives,” Kim Kardashian, and Trump, but the way that their mastery of a certain phenomenon might affect politics—and the unnerving feeling that, as Garber puts it,  “we don’t quite know what reality is, anymore. And, more worryingly, we don’t seem much to care.”

To illustrate the term’s meaning he conjures a hotel. Its owners wish to increase its business. “In less sophisticated times, the answer might have been to hire a new chef, to improve the plumbing, to paint the rooms, or to install a crystal chandelier in the lobby,” he wrote. Instead, the hotel retains a PR counsel, who “proposes that the management stage a celebration of the hotel’s thirtieth anniversary.”

He continues:

A committee is formed, including a prominent banker, a leading society matron, a well-known lawyer, an influential preacher, and an “event” is planned (say a banquet) to call attention to the distinguished service the hotel has been rendering the community. The celebration is held, photographs are taken, the occasion is widely reported, and the object is accomplished.

Now this occasion is a pseudo-event, and will illustrate all the essential features of pseudo-events. This celebration, we can see at the outset, is somewhat––but not entirely––misleading. Presumably the public relations counsel would not have been able to form his committee of prominent citizens if the hotel had not actually been rendering service to the community.

On the other hand, if the hotel's services had been all that important, instigation by public relations counsel might not have been necessary. Once the celebration has been held, the celebration itself becomes evidence that the hotel really is a distinguished institution. The occasion actually gives the hotel the prestige to which it is pretending. It is obvious, too, that the value of such a celebration to the owners depends on its being photographed and reported in newspapers, magazines, newsreels, on radio, and over television. It is the report that gives the event its force.

About pseudo-events generally, he goes on to say that their relation to underlying reality is ambiguous—and in fact, that its interest arises largely from its ambiguity.

He recalls President Kennedy giving a speech shortly after the practice of releasing advance text to the press began. Early editions of the next morning’s newspaper reported on the speech per the words given to newsmen ahead of time. But Kennedy’s remarks as delivered departed significantly from the text—and later editions of the newspaper emphasized not the substance of the speech as delivered, but the fact that it was different from a draft that was never in fact spoken.

“We begin to be puzzled,” Boorstin wrote, “about what is really the ‘original’ of an event. The authentic record of what ‘happens’ or is said comes increasingly to seem to be what is given out in advance. More and more events become dramatic performances in which ‘men in the news’ simply act out their script. The story prepared ‘for future release’ acquires an authenticity that competes with that of the actual occurrences on the scheduled date. In recent years our successful politicians have been those most adept at using the press and other means to create pseudo-events.”

Conversely, incompetence at creating pseudo-events can backfire.

Recall George W. Bush donning a flight suit, landing on an aircraft carrier, and having his picture taken in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner years before the end of the war in Iraq. Were contemporaneous observers to conclude that the mission in Iraq had been accomplished? That President Bush believed the mission was accomplished? That Bush knew the mission was not accomplished, but wanted the public to believe that the mission was accomplished? That Bush knew the public would not be convinced by a banner and a photo-op, but wanted the press to report on the event with a photograph of the words “Mission Accomplished” because it would provide a positive news cycle or crowd out bad news?

Did it matter that the crew of the ship rather than a White House staffer originally requested the banner, wanting to draw attention to a discrete deployment? In light of all the possibilities, and the impossibility of knowing what was on Bush’s mind or the minds of the dozens who participated in creating the event, what was the news?

Even now it is hard to say.

* * *

In 2012, Donald Trump and his children created a video to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Trump International Hotel and Tower. Harkening back to what made the New York City property an ostensible success, Trump told this story about its address: “At the time it was called Columbus Circle. But really it was on Central Park West. I worked very hard and was able to secure Number One, Central Park West. And it’s turned out to be one of the best addresses in the world.”

By then, Trump, who began his career in real estate with aspirations to be a builder, had long since transitioned from trying to erect buildings as the centerpiece of his business to selling his image through licensing and branding deals. His name would appear on the tops of many buildings he neither built nor owned.

He starred in The Apprentice, a program on reality TV, the beating heart of the pseudo-events industry, where teams competed in pseudo-projects to avoid being pseudo-fired.

And Trump’s start in politics?

Boorstin wrote that Joseph McCarthy, a bygone master of the pseudo-event, had “a diabolical fascination and an almost hypnotic power over news-hungry reporters,” adding that “many hated him; all helped him … without the active help of all of them he could never have created the pseudo-events which brought him notoriety and power.”

He quotes a reporter who served in the press corps during the McCarthy era and later wrote:

He knew how to get into the news even on those rare occasions when invention failed him and he had no unfacts to give out. For example, he invented the morning press conference called for the purpose of announcing an afternoon press conference. The reporters would come in––they were beginning, in this period, to respond to his summonses like Pavlov’s dogs at the clang of a bell––and McCarthy would say that he just wanted to give them the word that he expected to be ready with a shattering announcement later in the day, for use in the papers the following morning.

This would gain him a headline in the afternoon papers: New McCarthy Revelations Awaited in Capital.” Afternoon would come, and if McCarthy had something, he would give it out, but often enough he had nothing, and this was a matter of slight concern. He would simply say that he wasn’t quite ready, that he was having difficulty in getting some of the “documents” that he needed or that a “witness” was proving elusive. Morning headlines: “Delay Seen in McCarthy Case––Mystery Witness Being Sought.”

Trump began the most consequential phase of his political career by declaring his doubts about President Obama’s birth certificate and sending or pretending to send a team of investigators to Hawaii to probe the matter. Roger Ailes would reward him with recurring interview segments on Fox News, each a pseudo-event in itself. On those segments, pseudo-events were discussed by Trump and pseudo-journalists. Among actual journalists, there was deep disagreement about whether Trump’s statements about running for president should be taken seriously.

As Trump prepares to enter the White House, similar questions are being raised about his public statements, especially the ones that he makes through Twitter. “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag,” Trump wrote last week. “If they do, there must be consequences––perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Observers were divided about how to receive the statement. Was it off-the-cuff venting or tweeted with a purpose? A signal that the president-elect would crack down on freedom of expression, or a fleeting outburst he’ll never return to? An attempt to distract the media and the public from news stories about the Trump administration’s conflicts of interest? A gambit to induce anti-Trump protestors to burn the American flag, alienating centrists? A statement that was better ignored to avoid falling into Trump’s trap, or an attack on the Constitution that would be dangerous to ignore? These are just some of the plausible theories that were aired.

The challenge for the press is not entirely unfamiliar.

Writing about the officially sanctioned leak, Boorstin pointed out that “the reporter himself is often not clear whether he is being told a simple fact, a newly settled policy, an administrative hope, or whether perhaps untruths are being deliberately diffused in order to allay public fears that the true facts are really true. The government official himself (who is sometimes no more than a spokesman) may not be clear. The reporter’s task is to find a way of weaving these threads of unreality into a fabric that the reader will not recognize as entirely unreal.”

A reporter can, however, decline to report on a leak that seems designed to manipulate the press or the public.

In the Twitter era, the press cannot ignore statements on the president’s feed that will always be crafted to game current standards of newsworthiness, but neither can it responsibly report on those statements as if they are events rather than pseudo-events.To ignore their unconcern with truth, or that they are written and broadcast in part to provoke certain kinds of reactions in the media, is to become complicit in manipulation. A reporter who weaves Trump’s threads of unreality into a fabric that the reader will not recognize as unreal is guilty of aiding and abetting fabrication.

At the same time, confidently deconstructing a Trump tweet or speculating as to its “true,” hidden meaning can be irresponsible, too. Unverifiable analysis can be faulty. The presumption that there is a discrete meaning or clear motive behind a given pseudo-event could be wrong. Covering a powerful serial manipulator with no regard for truth is hard, so long as one adheres to higher standards of integrity than he does.

Doing so as well as possible is the journalist’s charge—and the stakes are high.

“We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions,” Boorstin wrote. “We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality. To discover our illusions will not solve the problems of our world. But if we do not discover them, we will never discover our real problems.”

The press cannot prevent Trump from using pseudo-events to distort reality, nor can it ignore them. But if the press is to convey reality, it must convey the nature of pseudo-events to its readers—their ambiguous relationship with truth, their inseparability from the media attention they are designed to receive. And if the press is to fulfill its obligation to focus on real problems that face the country, even as powerful actors attempt to distract the polity with shiny objects aplenty, it must resist the temptation to let coverage of pseudo-events dominate its output.

That temptation is rooted partly in the incentives that the president and the press share—both stand to profit, in different ways, from public interest in pseudo-events.

And it is also rooted in widely held assumptions about the presidency itself, assumptions like the ones articulated unusually explicitly by the late Clinton Rossiter, a Cornell political scientist, in his 1956 book, The American Presidency. That book argued that the president of the United States is the leader of public opinion. “While he acts as political chieftain of some, he serves as moral spokesman for all,” Rossiter declared. “The president is the American people’s one authentic trumpet, and he has no higher duty than to give a clear and certain sound … and whether or not he enjoys this role, no President can fail to realize that his many powers are invigorated, indeed are given a new dimension of authority, because he is the symbol of our sovereignty, continuity and grandeur as a people.”

Gene Healy observed in his 2008 book, The Cult of The Presidency (now available free online), that few Americans now find anything amiss “in the notion that it is the president’s duty to solve all large national problems and to unite us all in the service of a higher calling. The vision of the president as national guardian and redeemer is so ubiquitous that it goes unnoticed … In their rhetoric, presidents stoke the public’s inflated expectations, promising moral leadership and government action that can heal the country and the world. Americans don’t quite believe it, but can’t bring themselves to give up the dream. From popular culture to the academy to the voting booth, we curse the king, all the while pining for Camelot.”

He warned against conceiving of the president’s role so expansively, contrasting the modern vision with the original view of the office. The Framers designed our system of government so that the president would be “a constitutionally constrained chief executive with an important, but limited job,” he wrote. “To defend the country when attacked, check Congress when it violates the Constitution, enforce the law—and little else.” Insofar as the press conceives of the president, even implicitly, as an authentic trumpet of the people, with no higher duty than to sound, it will feel obligated to pay his pseudo-events undue attention.

In contrast, conceiving of the president as one of many elected officials, with limited, enumerated duties—as no more authentic a trumpet of the people than the members of Congress with co-equal standing in government—inoculates Americans against being swept up in presidential pseudo-events toward unrealities of his making. Exploding the pseudo-fact that the president is owed stature as an exhorter and commentator in chief, that the occupant of the office is due ‘a bully pulpit’ unmentioned in the Constitution, is one way Trump may make America great again.

==

If you had told me last week that the conservative movement would soon be outraged about a shoe that never went on the market, I might have thought you were joking. But it’s not a joke, and the dustup reveals a depressing truth about the conservative movement.

Many prominent conservative thinkers, writers, and politicians have expressed their outrage this week about Nike’s decision not to sell a shoe it had originally designed with an image of the so-called “Betsy Ross flag,” an older version of the American flag with 13 stars arranged in a circle, representing the original 13 colonies. What made this decision particularly explosive, it seems, is that Nike made this decision after hearing from NFL star and activist Colin Kaepernick. He partnered with the company after sparking controversy for refusing to kneel during the national anthem at football games in protest of racism, and the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that he told Nike “it shouldn’t sell a shoe with a symbol that he and others consider offensive.”

Cue the overwrought fulmination from the right wing.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey started early by injecting his absurdly excessive reactions, saying, “Words cannot express my disappointment at this terrible decision. I am embarrassed for Nike.” And Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), chimed in as well,  saying the “decision to cancel Betsy Ross shoe is ridiculous.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) made a comment that I still haven’t entirely deciphered yet:

It’s a good thing @Nike only wants to sell sneakers to people who hate the American flag.... @NFL #HappyFourth https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1145838971731226624 …

The Wall Street Journal

Nike is yanking a sneaker featuring the "Betsy Ross flag" after Colin Kaepernick said he and others consider the symbol to be offensive https://on.wsj.com/2Nr3xJB

31.9K

5:31 PM - Jul 1, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

16.1K people are talking about this

Naturally, a boycott was triggered by conservatives now calling on people not to buy Nike shoes because Nike decided not to sell a particular kind of shoe. No word yet on whether boycotts are coming for every other company not selling items with the Betsy Ross flag on them.

And it wasn’t just politicians looking to pander to right-wing outrage. Fox News, Breitbart, Twitchy, and other conservative outlets got in on the controversy.When presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke made a mild comment about having “respect” for Nike’s decision, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapirosaid, “I hope every Democrat candidate jumps on this idiotic bandwagon,” suggesting that this controversy might have an impact on the 2020 election. (It won’t.)

My intention isn’t to defend Nike’s decision. I don’t really have much to say about a shoemakers’ decision not to sell a shoe. While symbols are important and matter in society, the more interesting fact about the whole affair is that the right wing ate the story up.

Conservative writer Bret Stephens at the New York Times placed the incident in a list of other bizarre controversies that soaked up far more oxygen than they ever deserved, saying that it showed a capitulation to “Woke culture.” He argued that such incidents somehow show a troubling trend in American society. “The story has resonated widely not because it’s outrageous, but because it’s predictable,” he said.

In other words, it played into the pre-existing narrative that conservatives have cooked up to inflame the masses.

Meanwhile, if you look at the issue that has outraged Democratic leaders and voters in recent weeks, you’d find that they’re focused on the abuse and treatment of immigrants held in abusive conditions by the Trump administration. Of course, the right wing thinks these complaints are overblown or misplaced, but they are about actual human being suffering at the hands of the administration. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has even found that Custom and Border Patrol’s treatment of migrants actually violates its own standards and policies.

But the right wing is concerned with shoes that were never even sold in the first place.

It’s not that every issue that grips the public and the commentariat’s attention has to be the most pressing issue of the day. But it should be at least about something. And yet the Betsy Ross flag isn’t being banned, and nobody is being punished for wearing it or displaying it. No one is even burning it(!). A company simply made a decision that, on reflection, it wanted to avoid sending a message that it worried might be misinterpreted. Cautious companies make these decisions all the time.

Seeing this as a threat to American patriotism, or perhaps more accurately, to conservative identity, is just absurd. It’s reminiscent of the entirely incomprehensible debates about Starbucks holiday cups, which some see as part of the imaginary “War on Christmas.”

But prominent figures on the right love to stir up these controversies over non-events because they know their base and viewers are so easily riled. They display the traits they say they most despise among liberals and Democrats: oversensitivity, excessive attention to trivia, overblown outrage. They were the “snowflakes” all along.

And yet while the controversy itself doesn’t matter, it’s grip over the conservative mind does. It reveals how the movement’s ideology distracts from issues that matter — inequality, poverty, racism, environmental degradation, corruption — and encourages its followers to waste their energies on irrelevancies. It convinces right-wing voters that their identity is under attack by liberals, the elite, the media (but not conservative media), so that they don’t care when these groups expose and draw attention to the actual dangers of unregulated industry or the abuses of immigrants at the border. The migrants, after all, aren’t the real victims; the real victims are the people who don’t get to wear Betsy Ross flag shoes.

==

Pseudo-event | Britannica.com

https://www.britannica.com/topic/pseudo-event

2.

In short, pseudo-events are a public relations tactic. The term pseudo-event was coined by American scholar Daniel J. Boorstin in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), his book about the effects of media publicity and advertising on political and social practices in the United States in the 1950s.

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America | work by Boorstin ...

https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Image-A-Guide-to-Pseudo-Events-in-America

2.

In pseudo-event. Boorstin in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), his book about the effects of media publicity and advertising on political and social practices in the United States in the 1950s. Boorstin defined a pseudo-event as an ambiguous truth that appeals to people's desire to…

Media event - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_event

2.

A media event, also known as a pseudo-event, is an event or activity conducted for the purpose of media publicity. It may also include any event that is covered in the mass media or was hosted largely with the media in mind.

Types · ‎Historic examples · ‎References

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo-events_in_America

1.

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America is a 1962 book by the ... He argues that Americans mistake certain "pseudo-events" for real news, when in fact ...

Published**‎: ‎1962

Author**‎: ‎Daniel J. Boorstin

Donald Trump, Master of the Pseudo-Event - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/all...pseudo-events/509630/

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Dec 8, 2016 - Donald Trump, Master of the Pseudo-Event. The president-elect is a pro at marshaling ambiguous unrealities to his advantage.

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