News

What the actual fuck! Weren’t Americans promised $2000 tariff refund checks?

Who cares? He's not going to annex Greenland.

He's been creating a media circus since the beginning of this month on every topic imagineable so that all the news coverage and social media discussion is on that, rather than on the health care subsidies that he and company in the GOP took away, where this is the first month of jacked-up insurance premiums. That is an actual political threat to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy

The dead cat strategy, also known as deadcatting, is the political strategy of deliberately making a shocking announcement to divert media attention away from problems or failures in other areas.[1][2] The term is popularly associated with political strategist Lynton Crosby's work on the successful London mayoral campaigns of Boris Johnson.

Let us suppose you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you, and the more people focus on the reality the worse it is for you and your case. Your best bet in these circumstances is to perform a manoeuvre that a great campaigner describes as "throwing a dead cat on the table, mate".

That is because there is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don't mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout "Jeez, mate, there's a dead cat on the table!"; in other words they will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone

"Flood the zone" is a political strategy in which a political figure aims to gain media attention, disorient opponents and distract the public from undesirable reports by rapidly forwarding large volumes of newsworthy information to the media.[1][2][3][4] The strategy has been attributed to U.S. president Donald Trump's former chief political strategist Steve Bannon.[4][5][6]

The strategy came to public light after Bannon told Michael Lewis in 2018 that "The Democrats don't matter... The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit". Trump adopted the strategy during the 2016 presidential election,[3][7] followed by other right-wing political figures such as Éric Zemmour and Elon Musk.[8][9][1][10]

There have been articles talking about how healthcare premiums have gone up. But they aren't the topic of conversation, because everyone is talking about whether Trump will annex Greenland or invade Canada or whatnot.

This is the US. You can't ban the news media from talking about something that you don't want talked about. But you can jingle keys really loudly, and as long as they sound enticing enough, that's what everyone will focus on, not on what you're actually doing.