President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Still doesn’t make him influential.

 

Hmmm.



That Hannity wields influence is less a sign of his importance, than it is a reflection of this particular president's, um, suggestibility.

Next stop, Secretary of State Steve Doocy.

 

Haha. I was just going to make a joke about Doocy!

What policy has Hannity influenced?

 

The links I posted all refer to his general influence, but pretty specifically to the release of the Nunes memo.

I can never remember the other guy's name, but I assume once Doocy ascends, he'll be made our Ambassador to France.

 

That worked out well. Hannity is just sycophant of the moment. He’ll be quickly and easily replaced.

 

Do you think this is something that would be announced to the public?

 

Donald Trump for President counts, right?

 

Chait on new Howie Kurtz book:

Terrible stories about Trump are simply elbowed out of the news by other terrible stories about Trump. If it were revealed that another president had paid hush money to a porn star shortly before the election, you’d hear about nothing else for months. The Stormy Daniels news virtually disappeared.

Reporters Should Leave Trump Alone, Argues America’s Worst Media Critic

 

He’s been one of the two most prominent “conservative” radio hosts of the last 20 years.

He’s been hosting one of the highest rated shows on the most watched cable news network in America for a decade.

He is a hand-picked surrogate of both the Trump campaign and the Trump administration.

 

Man, Trump is going to be crushed by this betrayal by Kilmeade ...

 

There goes the ambassadorship!

 

This post got me looking at Cambridge Analytica, which is actually a subsidiary of Strategic Communications Laboratories based in the U.K. and owned by Nigel Oakes, and it led me to this fascinating story.

The story behind Nigel Oakes, Trump’s weapon of mass persuasion

It's a long read, but worth it.

“Trump's strategy seems to have been: I say whatever I wish and its opposite, my social media expert will then make sure that each potential voter hears what is right for him or her. With tightly integrated and strictly monitored social media pipelines, this approach appears to have worked quite well."

The story does not conclude that CA was responsible for the President's victory (in fact, it calls into question just about every Nigel Oakes says), but it does give the reader a sense that we really need to be much more discerning about what we read and its sourcing, particularly on social media. So much of what we are seeing in our newsfeeds is manipulated and/or targeted to us in some way and, as all of this information comes out about Russia's meddling efforts, we're seeing how easily information is being weaponized against us.

Let's all be careful out there and have a happy This Post May Have Been Written By a Russian Bot Day.