I mentioned in a blog a few days ago how important it was to incorporate traditional media into our information sources. Check that. Included in the sale of CBS’s parent company Paramount to Skydance Media is a stipulation that CBS install a “bias monitor” which is basically someone who will make sure the news company’s reporting meets standards demanded by President Trump. WTF? Trump already has Fox News under his thumb. Now CBS. ABC has revealed it’s spineless organization would also rather lay down and get steamrolled by one of Trump’s frivolous lawsuits. That company might be just another Trump threat away from capitulating to demagogury. What to do? Good alternatives are PBS and NPR. Oh shit. I forgot. They are in Trump’s crosshairs too. He’s been able to claw back their funding that congress had previously approved. Are you starting to see a pattern here?
Controlling the media is a primary tool for authoritarian ascent. Think Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey. The Trump media megaphone is suddenly a serious threat to democracy. He knows he needs all the help he can get now that he is at the center of the slippery Epstein vortex.
Whatever your prefered media source, if Trump is front and center be prepared to hear him utter the word “hoax” after every third breath. So far not much seems to be working for Trump in the way of Epstein deflection. But “hoax” is tried and has always been true. It’s uncanny but there is something entrancing to the MAGA base about that word. Repeating “hoax” over and over again mysteriously transports them into the Trumpian nether reality where everything he says becomes believable.
But he’s been saying that, you say, and he’s still not breaking through? Yes, he has been promoting his hoaxing pitch, but he can’t seem to stick to one story. Maybe this is a case where deflection is counterproductive. Maybe the usual bag of tricks doesn’t play so well when a sensitve topic like pedophila is involved. Too much diversion and the power of the word “hoax” gets diluted.
As we know, the story starts with the seedy Epstein documentation that upon getting elected Trump said he was going to expose. But when the spotlight suddenly started shining a little too brightly on him, he started up with his usual hoax routine. Nothing there he said. But because of AG Bondi’s revelation that there indeed was a shitload of Epstein material, the public didn’t buy into the hoax business. Trump didn’t give up on it though. He simply embelished the story a bit and stuck with the ever reliable hoax messaging by declaring that the stuff out there, wherever it is, is still a hoax but only because it is perpetrated by Obama and Hillary and Comey and any and all of his usual tormentors. But he suddenly careened off the hoax track with rants about Obama and Russian election interferience and the Biden laptop and imagined election shenanigans by Kamala Harris, Opra, Beyonce’ and Al Sharpton. It’s surprsing he didn’t continue on and accuse the entire membership of the Black race. He did make that one course correction when the Wall Street Journal said it possesed an Epstein birthday letter that had a risqué contribution from Trump, calling it a hoax. But then, reponding to public pressure, he veered the hoaxing wagon off path by ordering DOJ to release “pertinent” grand jury testimony concerning the Epstein case. Since then he’s been off the hoax beam and just randomly haranguing about anything that comes to mind- badgering NFL and Major League Baseball management to change their team names back to something a little more racially slurring and acceptable to him, posting AI generated mug shot images of his political enemies, slinging allegations of mortgage fraud at his arch enemy Adam Schiff, and lying about positive polling numbers, and that’s just a small sample of his ragings.
A major opportinity has opened up for Trump to get his hoaxing train back on track and squelch this embarrasing Epstein business. Start labeling the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict as a hoax. How hard would it be for Trump to sell that narrative to his fawning tribe. Sure she’s a convicted pedophile, but no one can spin it like Trump. After all, he’s the guy that somehow managed to convince millions of people to disregard what they saw with their own eyes on January 6th 2021 and believe in the almighty word of Trump. The Democrats and mainstream media would have you believe it was a rampaging insurrection incited by none other than President Trump. Gasp. Hoax! Hoax!
If I may Mr president. That’s the playbook. Stick to it. I know it looks bad. Word is you are mentioned over 100 times in the Epstein files. And I must say, good thinking with that preemptive move, you know, sending in about a thousand federal prosecutors and FBI agents to scour the data for any mention of the word “Trump.” Decisive action like that shows the nation you are the president and you mean business. You know you have the power to do anything you want. Remember- the Supreme Court said so. So get back on that horse and lasso this thing, cowboy! Hoax! That’s the ticket. Ghislaine Maxwell’s convictions- all a HOAX. When she conveniently reveals that she can’t ever recall seeing you with Jeffrey Epstein, go ahead and pardon her. You don’t want all that work Todd Blanch did to prep her go to waste. Remember, you pardoned and commuted over 1,500 Jan 6th convicts and there was hardly a peep. All the photos and video of you cavorting with Epstein- AI. All a hoax. Of course you might want to see to it your professional loyalists take care of loose ends like making sure anything that looks “hoaxy” disappears.
You are the omnipotent president for god’s sake, with unparalleled media power behind you. If you don’t control all of it quite yet, what everyone realizes now is the simple threat of litigation will remarkably force media outliers to get in line. So stay the course. HOAX, HOAX. You can now spread the word like soft butter over warm toast.