Cry wolf too many times, and...

[garote]

"Disloyal", Michael Cohen:

• Best enjoyed: On a long ride
• Enjoyment rating (1-10) : 7
• Distraction level (1-5) : 2

I'm not mentioning this book to critique it, but just to quote from it:

- - -

"What about self-funding the campaign?" Trump said to me one afternoon.

I knew there was no way he was going to spend his own money on politics. He was far too cheap to begin with, and he was far less liquid than was understood by outsiders, but he appeared to be seriously contemplating the idea.

"I don't want to take money from a Super PAC," Trump said. "A billionaire can't ask people for five bucks. Maybe I'll self-fund the primary but do it cheap. I don't need to spend a lot of money, because we'll get all the free press we want."

Please, pause over that final sentence, and read it again. And again, and again. Because if you want to understand how Donald J Trump became president, you have to grasp the essential fact that, by far, the most important element wasn't nationalism or populism or racism or religion or the rise of white supremacy or strong-man authoritarianism. It wasn't Russia, or lying, or James Comey, though all of those forces were hugely influential. It wasn't Hillary Clinton, though heaven knows she did all she could to lose the election. No, the biggest influence by far, by a country mile, was the media. Donald Trump's presidency is a product of the free press. Not free as in "freedom of expression", I mean free as "un-paid for". Rallies, broadcast live. Tweets. Press conferences. Idiotic interviews. 24-7 wall-to-wall coverage, all without spending a penny. The free press gave America Trump. Right, left, moderate, tabloid, broadsheet, television, radio, internet, facebook. That is who elected Trump. And might well elect him again.

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

Interesting. It's like the case with Jerry Brown. For months we heard his name repeated many times. It was something bad about him being told, but all you heard was "Jerry Brown!". Whitman was totally clueless in this (and btw, spent her own money on all these ads, afaik).