Rinse, spin, repeat
There they go again. The right wing media machine is cranking on all cylinders to change the narrative about the incident at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. And the legacy media is bringing a pea shooter to the gunfight.
Let’s start with the blatant campaign to build the White House Boondoggle, er, Ballroom — a structure that would be smaller than the Washington Hilton facility and operated by future administrations.
The right-wing echo chamber was quick to hit social media with a unified message even before there was a clear sequence of events. That’s SOP, because, as Amanda Crawford, associate professor at the University of Connecticut who has studied media coverage of mass shootings and conspiracy theories, told the New York Times:
“Getting out the truth and establishing facts and reliable information takes time. But our audiences really don’t have that kind of patience. And so you’re immediately seeing narratives that are being geared to answer the questions that people want to know, often building on the biases of people that are sharing them.”
Trump also immediately called for the dinner to be rescheduled within 30 days. Assuming the WHCA hasn’t lost all of its dignity, would it even be appropriate to agree to allow any elected official to control the timing and venue of their event?
We might actually find out if the WHCA agrees with Trump. Of course, if they did, where would they hold it if not the Hilton — which Trump has labeled “not a particularly secure building."
“Today we need levels of security that probably nobody has ever seen before." But he also said, "We're not going to let anybody take over our society."
Well actually, we do have a level of security that no one thought to implement, even though the presidential line of succession was present on the dais and in the hall:
“When so many officials gather in one place for official functions such as an inauguration or State of the Union address, the secretary of homeland security typically puts the Secret Service in charge of coordinating all security through a formal designation known as a ‘National Special Security Event.’”
Then there’s the matter of Saturday night reports of a “kinder, gentler Trump” who, we are told, went out of his way to praise WHCA chair Weija Jiang for event planning and offering her the first question at a post-shooting White House availability.
That was enough for Jiang to say she hoped the shared experience — so common to thousands of schoolchildren across the nation — would:
“[R]estore some normalcy between the Trump administration and the press. Maybe I was naïve, but I wanted it to be a room we don’t see enough of in Washington: a bipartisan one.”
Yet less than 24 hours later Trump — offering a first interview to CBS News “60 Minutes” — was back to the man who told a women journalist to be “quiet, piggy.”
Trump erupted when Norah O’Donnell read him a portion of the alleged shooter’s “manifesto” where he declared “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.’
“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people,” Trump spewed, claiming inaccurately that he had been “totally exonerated.” You should be ashamed of yourself, reading that. You’re a disgrace.”
O’Donnell, to her credit, shot back:
“Oh, do you think he was referring to you?”
It might have been even better to remind Trump — who boasted to a TV host that he liked to “grab a woman by the pussy” — that a jury had found him civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation against E. Jean Carroll. The presiding judge said Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word, which doesn’t necessarily imply penile penetration.
And for that matter, when was the last time you saw legacy media refer to Trump as a convicted felon?
Trump may have expected a softball interview because days before the correspondents association dinner Skydance Paramount President David Ellison hosted Trump for a private dinner “honoring” the man who has made shredding the First Amendment a centerpiece of his second term.
When O’Donnell asked whether there is something a president can do about political violence, he deflected:
“I do think the hate speech of the Democrats is very dangerous.”
This from the man who is attempting to wipe from the history books a failed insurrection where over 150 police officers were injured, and four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide in the seven months after he urged supporters to storm the Capitol.
And while there have been incidents of political violence against Republicans, Trump and his sycophants conveniently ignore the assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman; the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of U.S. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi; and the Passover night arson attack on the residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
Not to mention the insane Pizzagate conspiracy that led a North Carolina man to drive up to Washington, DC and fire three rounds from an assault-style weapon into a pizza parlor/bowling alley because it allegedly harbored a Democrat-led pedophile ring in a non-existent basement.
Don’t expect the spin cycle to end anytime soon. First Lady Melania Trump entered the fray with a renewed call for ABC to fire late night host Jimmy Kimmel because of his mock alternative speech at the dinner:
"Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow."
Taking to that cesspool of hate known a Xitter, she declared, with an apparently straight face:
"Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy – his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate. A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community."
It was the second assault on Kimmel, who ABC temporarily yanked off the air after a comment following the assassination of right wing influencer Charlie Kirk, only to reinstate him after viewers rained cancellations down on ABC owner, the Walt Disney Company.
To date the company has imitated one of its cartoon characters: a cricket
The legacy media did a superb job in covering the first draft of history of what happened at the Washington Hilton Saturday night. But it appears to be heading down the same old path of botching the subsequent redrafts.
Using old journalism standards in a new media environment — where lies are the bitcoin of the realm — is a recipe for disaster.