Trump's Media Machine: Humbug or Bullshit? Business As Usual Political Lying? An Attempt To Make Putty Of American Minds?

New York Magazine takes a deep dive into the verbal mess that is communications coming out of the White House in 'The Rhetoric of Evasion: What Trump's White House Has Done to the Language of Lying by Christian Lorentzen. 

About three weeks after the New York Times first used the word 'lie' in a headline as a way of confronting the lack of truth coming out of the West Wing, the entire media world, bloggers, Twitters -- anyone associated with communications -- now calls 'lies' for what they are. Trump spokesperson and adviser Kellyanne Conway may have invented the terms: 'alternative facts', but you can't pour water in that vessel without having leaks everywhere. Lorentzen writes:

It would be exciting to be able to trace a lineage for the language of the Trump administration from the modernists through deconstruction’s destabilizing of the text, but the truth is, Conway & Co. engage so much in the simple act of lying that there are simpler models at hand, like Jonathan Swift’s “The Art of Political Lying” or Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man. As the administration grinds into its second month, Trump’s flacks have made increasing use of a variation of Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to”: “I can’t speak to that.” Or, as I like to translate it, “I haven’t prepared any lies to respond to that question.” The irony of Flynn’s termination is that he was fired for lying while working in a house full of liars. Among Swift’s requirements of a good political liar are that “he ought to have but a short memory,” that he be ready and willing to swear to “both sides of a contradiction,” and that he never consider “whether any proposition were true or false, but whether it were convenient for the present minute or company to affirm or deny it.” The listener, faced with such a liar, is best served by abandoning any effort at verification or interpretation or sorting the true from the false: “[T]he only remedy is to suppose that you have heard some inarticulate sounds, without any meaning at all.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t work on Twitter.

Of course, some statements are plainly untrue without quite being lies. For these we have Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s 2005 treatise On Bullshit and its great forebear, Max Black’s “The Prevalence of Humbug.” This is how Black defined humbug: “deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes.” 

SNL Ratings Soar In Its Parody Of Trumpians

Donald Trump respects ratings, and Alex Baldwin delivers. Host Baldwin set a five-year Saturday Night ratings record on February 12, besting Donald Trump's own ratings hosting the show in 2015.  

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Alex Baldwin averaged a 7.2 rating among metered market households -- the best except for following a 2011 NFL game -- since Betty White hosted in 2010. Baldwin beat the pants off Trump in the key 18-49 demo, clocking a 3.6 rating vs. Trump's 2.34. 

He's Back!!! America's New Media Hero!

Melissa McCarthy returned to Saturday Night Live Feb. 11 in her impossibly great gig playing White House press secretary Sean Spicer. McCarthy used action figures and Barbie dolls to explain Trump's new immigration ban -- the judicial stay in place in a decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday -- and what the president calls 'extreme vetting'. Using a blonde, white-skinned Barbie and a dark-haired, brown-skin one, McCarthy drew race-baiting comparisons between who is the threat to America and who isn't. 

McCarthy's in-drag Spicer chastised the news media for failing to report on terrorist attacks like “the Horror at Six Flags,” “the Slaughter at Fraggle Rock,” and “the Night they Drove Old Dixie Down”; and then plugged some of Ivanka Trump’s merchandise including a bracelet and leopard pumps (“These babies are real head-turners”). 

The pumps were great for two reasons: McCarthy was wearing them and word is that Trump goes crazy when women impersonate his male staff. Second, just yesterday afternoon -- as North Korea had successfully launched yet another missile test -- America's president was on Twitter complaining about the media hating his daughter Ivanka. His list of priorities continues to scare the hell out of millions of people. In the case of Ivanka's problems, Trump is like a dog with a bone. 

SNL got in Trump's face on the drag-queen issue sending out Kate McKinnon to make a brief appearance as Trump's new Attorney General Jeff Sessions. McKinnon later appeared as Senator Elizabeth Warren on Weekend Update, challenging labor practices at SNL. 

It took an hour for Alex Baldwin -- who hosted SNL -- to appear with his orange face and rug hair wig in 'Trump's People's Court'. President Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) versus the Ninth Circuit Court judges (Kyle Mooney, Vanessa Bayer, Pete Davidson) on a new People's Court. Vladimir Putin appears as a character witness. 

Related: Please, Please Come Back Melissa McCarthy: The White House Press Briefing Needs You AOC Women's News

(In a separate article on AOC, we begged for more McCarthy doing Spicey on SNL. The goddesses answered our prayers.)

For all the criticism of Sean Spicer, his ratings are up. Who new the daily press briefing could supplant age-old soaps in the ratings game!

In a separate article, the Times writes "He is no match for 'The Young and the Restless.' But he is beating 'The Bold and the Beautiful.'  Bottom-line, the White House soap opera that is Spicer's daily press briefing causes Fox News, MSNBC and CNN audiences to jump at least 10 percent. Overall, the Times reports that Fox, CNN and MSNBC have seen big increases in daytime audiences. 

“There’s huge interest in everything Trump does, and Sean is benefiting from that,” said Alex Conant, a Republican consultant who helped lead Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. “Depending on your perspective, you either tune in to watch Sean defend the indefensible, or to watch media bias in action.”