outfluencer

<div>---</div><div>contractor direct line to trump brain // whitaker:</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/24/how-one-company-used-fox-centric-pr-strategy-try-get-trump-give-it-lucrative-federal-contract/223793">https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/24/how-one-company-used-fox-centric-pr-strategy-try-get-trump-give-it-lucrative-federal-contract/223793</a></div><div>
</div><div>omg</div><div>Fox News has <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">unprecedented influence</a> over President Donald Trump’s decision-making. Trump’s worldview is shaped by the <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/01/11/executive-time-hail-live-tweeter-chief/219036" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">hours</a> of propagandistic and sycophantic programming he often watches in a day, as well as his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-cable-news-cabinet-how-trumps-television-diet-has-become-a-to-do-list-for-aides/2018/08/28/e3fabce0-a710-11e8-97ce-cc9042272f07_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">private consultations</a> with many of the network’s stars on a wide variety of topics. As a result, Fox’s commentators have at times <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fox-news-pushes-trump-to-make-every-bad-decision" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">dictated</a> the president’s <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/09/10/what-trumps-fox-news-cabinet-urging-him-do-right-now/221257" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">policy agenda</a> and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/10/23/study-caravan-coverage-has-taken-over-news-cycle-s-exactly-what-fox-news-and-trump-wanted/221806" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">political strategy</a>, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/01/05/trump-s-fox-livetweets-are-problem-press/218981" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">harnessed the news cycle</a> by directing his attention to their particular obsessions, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/04/12/comprehensive-list-former-fox-employees-who-have-joined-trump-administration/223413" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">provided staffers</a> for his administration, and hand-picked the <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/21/fox-host-lobbied-trump-pardon-accused-and-convicted-war-criminals-heres-how-fox-talked-about-cases/223761" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">recipients</a> of his <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/04/18/fox-news-pardon-pipeline/219986" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">pardons</a>.</div>And now, the network is emerging as a platform that can determine who could receive hefty federal contracts.The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/he-always-brings-them-up-trump-tries-to-steer-border-wall-deal-to-north-dakota-firm/2019/05/23/92d3858c-7b30-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html?utm_term=.da41314e2034" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">reported</a> Thursday that Trump has “alarmed” military commanders and Department of Homeland Security officials by aggressively lobbying them to grant a border wall contract to Fisher Industries, a North Dakota-based construction company whose CEO, Tommy Fisher, has regularly appeared on Fox and other conservative outlets to promote his company’s bid.Fisher claims that his company can build a border wall both faster and cheaper than his competitors thanks to a patent-pending installation system, but the Army Corps of Engineers determined that Fisher’s design “did not meet its requirements and lacked regulatory approvals” and that the firm’s previous work on a barrier project “came in late and over budget,” the Post reported. Rejected through the procurement process, Fisher is trying to go around it through the right-wing media, a method that has allowed him to reach the president. Trump is now trying to sidestep the contracting process because, as Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) explained to the Post, he “had seen [Fisher] on television” -- specifically on Fox -- “advocating for his version of the barrier.”Fisher has used a Fox-centric PR strategy to directly pitch the president in hopes of obtaining a federal contract, making at least 10 appearances on Fox News and its sister network, Fox Business, since January 2018, according to a Media Matters review. Programs the president regularly watches, including Fox & Friends and The Ingraham Angle, have repeatedly granted Fisher an uncritical platform to shill for his company.Fisher’s strategy mimics that of <a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/03/10/how-lobbying-has-changed-donald-trump-washington/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">K Street lobbyists who pay off TV pundits</a> to promote their messages during on-air appearances and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/04/18/fox-news-pardon-pipeline/219986" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">lawyers who put their clients and their relatives</a> on Fox to ask the president for pardons.
[<a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/03/10/how-lobbying-has-changed-donald-trump-washington/">https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/03/10/how-lobbying-has-changed-donald-trump-washington/</a>By the time of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Roger Dow realized he had a problem. Dow, president and CEO of the <a href="https://www.ustravel.org/" style="font-family: Lora, Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(53, 149, 210); text-decoration-line: none;">U.S. Travel Association</a>, is the tourism industry’s top lobbyist in Washington. Over the previous two years, he’d grown increasingly troubled by some unfavorable trend lines: From 2015 to 2017, the United States was one of just two leading global tourism destinations that had experienced declines in incoming international travelers. Throughout the world, the market for overseas travel was expanding, and if America could simply have retained its share of visitors, domestic businesses would have gained, according to the association’s estimates, $31 billion in revenue and added 96,000 jobs. Instead, tourists were heading to Canada or the United Kingdom. (The only other destination to decline, Turkey, had been destabilized by a failed military coup.)The development, Dow explains, was rooted in several forces, including a stronger US dollar, economic weakness in Latin America, and dirt-cheap airfare in Europe. But there was another factor, Dow says: “the Trump effect.” The 2017 executive order blocking entry to citizens from six majority-Muslim countries, and the President’s hostile proclamations about immigration, had signaled to foreigners they weren’t welcome here, even if they only wanted to spend money in Times Square and go home.Dow put together a plan to reverse the decline. He assembled a collection of similarly affected Washington trade groups into what became known as the <a href="https://www.visituscoalition.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(53, 149, 210); text-decoration-line: none;">Visit U.S. Coalition</a>, and its leaders identified specific policy fixes that they believed would ease the way for foreign tourists. More important, though, Dow and his allies were hoping for a stylistic change to accompany the policy tweaks: They wanted Trump to tamp down his language so as not to scare people away. Talking tough on national security was fine, Dow says, but it had to be coupled with the message that America still welcomed visitors from abroad. “The rhetoric,” he says, “is not balanced.”Given all of Trump’s talk about expanding the economy, Dow was convinced that the President would embrace the industry’s recommendations—if only they could reach him. And therein lay the problem. In another administration, policy and rhetoric alike might have been worked up in a bureaucracy whose officials might be in a smart lobbyist’s Rolodex. In Trump’s government, though, the rhetoric came from the President’s own gut. Sharing policy insight with an agency functionary wasn’t going to help. They had to plant their talking points in front of POTUS himself. But how?The coalition hired <a href="https://s3publicaffairs.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(53, 149, 210); text-decoration-line: none;">S-3 Public Affairs</a>, one of the many DC lobbying-and-media-consulting firms scrambling to adjust to the city’s new power structure. In prior years, says S-3 partner Amos Snead, the firm might have designed an “outside-in” approach—collect letters or petitions from industry backers around the country, bring them to Washington, and use the testimonials to influence lawmakers, agency officials, and other thought leaders. Trump’s Washington, Snead believed, required a different approach. He sensed there might be a more direct path into the President’s head, via one of his favorite mediums: Twitter.Snead used a technique known as geofencing to send digital ads via Twitter, as well as Facebook and You-Tube, touting the benefits of foreign tourism. Instead of targeting the entire capital, they were aimed at the coordinates of a vanishingly small audience: the President and his top aides, wherever they happened to be. The consultants tracked Team Trump’s movements inside the Beltway and beyond. When the commander in chief was in Washington, they sent their ads to IP addresses that covered the White House and the Trump hotel. If Trump headed to his golf club in New Jersey, they beamed the ads to IP addresses there. When he went to Mar-a-Lago, they sent them to his club in Florida.As Snead puts it, “We’re following [Trump] where he goes.”This tactic is part of what’s known, in the parlance of the industry, as the “audience of one” strategy—and tourism boosters aren’t the only people using it. In fact, it’s become a staple of the business of Washington under the 45th President....Trump marched into Washington promising to “drain the swamp,” but his administration has been great for K Street. Total spending on lobbying reached $3.4 billion in 2018—the most in eight years.
Yet just because the influence industry is swimming in cash doesn’t mean its world hasn’t been rocked. Trump’s arrival in the White House has had a profound impact on the way K Street operates, according to interviews with more than 30 lobbyists, consultants, former administration officials, and others. In prior years, lobbyists and consultants felt compelled to work officials in all corners of the federal bureaucracy when trying to shape policy. But now, with decision-making consolidated inside the Oval Office, they’ve had to rewrite their playbook.
“It’s two different worlds,” says Eric Bovim, a managing director of Signal Group, a public-affairs agency in Washington. “Under President Obama, the government was a finely tuned instrument, all the parts working together to produce a single note. You needed to work with everybody to calibrate the sound. Today, for the most part, it’s a one-man band, the President in a never-ending guitar solo on the White House lawn, overpowering all the other instruments.”
From the beginning, pressing a case with Trump was difficult for a run-of-the-mill lobbyist: Veteran GOP influencers—the Establishment—didn’t have many friends in Trump’s inner circle. With the administration struggling to fill agency positions, even many well-connected consultants and lobbyists didn’t have a lot of other corners of the government to go to for help. Instead, the focus was on Trump.
HOW DO YOU GET TRUMP TO PAY ATTENTION TO POLICY? MAKE HIM THE STAR OF A COMMERCIAL.
In the early days, influence peddlers ran ads designed to appeal to him in New York newspapers—the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post—which they believed he was still reading. They also used the peculiar way that other articles got to him.
One key discovery was the story folder. During at least the first seven months of the new administration, staffers in the White House communications department compiled flattering news stories about Trump into packets, which they delivered to the President twice a day. According to a former White House aide, as the packet made its way to the Oval Office, additional officials inserted other news articles they wanted the President to read. “It would typically be, like, Stephen Miller putting his latest race-baiting story in there,” the former White House aide says.
When consultants and lobbyists learned about the folder, they saw a fresh opportunity. One Republican consultant told me he was able to plant stories favorable to his corporate clients in Breitbart News—the far-right outlet once run by Trump’s former strategist, Steve Bannon—and then pass those stories to a friend in the White House, who in turn slipped them into the daily packet destined for the Oval. “If you have a friend in there who can get something on the Resolute desk,” the consultant says, “it doesn’t really matter what the source [of the information] is anymore.”
Others try to influence the thinking of the White House officials Trump listens to. One consultant told me he has geofenced the Kalorama home of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump with digital ads in an effort to shape their views on an issue. Beyond the White House and Trump’s hotel, S-3’s influencers also targeted power restaurants such as Central Michel Richard in case a top aide popped in for lunch.
Special interests have begun targeting Trump’s “outfluencers” as well—people like Oklahoma billionaire Harold Hamm and ex–UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, who don’t work in the White House but are believed to have the President’s ear. One consultant went so far as to geofence the school of the child of a particular outfluencer with ads specifically designed to appeal to younger viewers. “If [the family is] sitting around the dinner table talking and the issue comes up,” the consultant told me, “I want that kid to be able to say, ‘Hey, I saw something about that.’ ”
The cornerstone of the audience-of-one strategy, though, is Trump’s love affair with television. After the election, consultants began buying commercial time during Fox & Friends, the conservative morning show that the President is known to watch religiously. But how do you get a 72-year-old man with no interest in policy to watch a commercial on ethanol subsidies? Well, the influencers decided, you find old footage of Trump discussing the issue on the campaign and make him the star of the commercial.“The President’s favorite topic is himself,” says a Republican consultant. “What better way to get him interested in a message than by providing him with the thing that he’s most obsessed with?”Snead used the tactic during his work for the Visit U.S. Coalition. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in early 2018, Trump declared to the roomful of elites that “America is open for business.” There it was—Snead’s money shot. He and his team immediately created a commercial that featured Trump saying the line. They then beamed the ad to the IP address they were using to geofence the President in Switzerland. “As soon as those words came out of his mouth,” Snead says, “we’re turning those into ads.”..]The CEO has honed his pitch to appeal to the president in particular, as demonstrated by his March 5 appearance on Fox & Friends, during which co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked him to explain “why should the president, or why should his administration, choose your company?"[vid]Fisher first appealed to the president as a businessman, saying Trump should know that his company would do the work for less money than other companies, get it completed faster, and throw in access roads and other additions.<div style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He went on to describe his company as “the first responder” of the industry, appealing to Trump’s well-known obsession with <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/29/16826152/trump-police-immigration-blue-lives-matter" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">police officers</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/trump-firefighters-biden.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">firefighters</a>.And he also tried to link the bid to one of Trump’s notable construction successes, the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-09-29/a-1980s-new-york-city-battle-explains-donald-trump-s-candidacy" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">renovation</a> of the Wollman Rink in Central Park in the 1980s. “I think he’ll understand,” Fisher argued, “just like the Central Park deal with the ice skating rink, if you need it done now, nothing against government bureaucracy, but it takes time, so you need an expert to come in there and do it now and do it right.”Earhardt ended the interview by giving Trump another reason to prefer Fisher: “You might be able to build it just in time for that election, too.”  And Fox’s promotion of Fisher’s bid has not been limited to the network’s supposed “opinion” shows. On April 19, the <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/03/07/foxs-news-team-essential-cog-corrupt-propaganda-machine/223071" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">network’s flagship “news” broadcast</a>, Special Report, ran a packaged report that essentially served as an infomercial for Fisher’s proposal. Introduced by anchor Bret Baier and reported by national correspondent William La Jeunesse, the segment featured an interview with Fisher and credulously repeated his claims that he could construct the wall “faster, better, and cheaper."[vid]All of this laudatory coverage has had Fisher’s desired effect, with the president reportedly promoting the company’s bid in meetings with senior military and DHS officials and forcing them to explain “that the president could not just pick a company” to get the contract in defiance of the federal procurement process.</div>Fisher harnessed the incredible power of Fox’s hold on the president to get much closer than he should have to taxpayer dollars. He won’t be the last to try to do so.<div>==</div>