The Passion of The Trump
How the Trump Media Explosion is playing into his martyrization narrative
Justice, clearly, is blind. For if it could see, really and truly see, it would almost certainly not have arraigned Donald Trump during Holy Week …
So here’s where we are. Trump entered the city of Manhattan this morning, not on the back of a donkey. Rather, Trump arrived on a garish private plane bearing his name. “Trump's plane - painted in red, white and blue with ‘TRUMP’ in big letters on the side and an image of the American flag on the tail - arrived at LaGuardia Airport in Queens after a 3-1/2 hour flight from West Palm Beach near his Florida home,” wrote Karen Freifeld and Rich Mckay for Reuters. So much for Christian humility.
And instead of an adoring crowd bearing palms, Trump was greeted in Manhattan by a suppliant media. The media coverage of Trump — see the above chart — has exploded like a ripe fruit, once again, as Trump hits the campaign gtrail. CNN, which shamelessly promoted Trump’s nativist rallies during his first run, is even tracking the former President’s plane. Have we learned nothing since 2016? Back then, flush in his novelty and in the media’s naivete, Trump rode to the Presidency with $5 billion worth of free advertising.
In 2017, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society found that Trump, by far, was the more discussed candidate over Hillary Clinton in media outlets, amounting to free advertising for the issues for which he advocated. “According to the report from Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, which applied data analysis techniques to 2 million election stories to understand better what people were reading and sharing, Trump not only got the most attention from media outlets across the political spectrum, but his preferred core issues — immigration, jobs and trade — received significant coverage and were widely shared online,” wrote Christina Pazzanese for the Harvard Gazette. And this week, Trump is arguing for his martyrization over the news of the indictment, and, worse, fundraising off of this free media. He has already raised at least $5 million in the 48 hours since Palm Sunday.
Further, this Trump media explosion threatens to destroy the fundraising efforts of Trump’s opponents, all but giving the former President the Republican nomination on a silver platter. It does not hurt that the Republican playing field refuses to go on offense against Trump, shielding him for covering up an illegal campaign contribution that was hush money for a sex worker. Which, I must say, is sort of surreal for the morality police party. But here we are.
Welcome to the Trump Media Distortion Field. The media, though they hate to say it, love Trump’s populist spectacles. Trump is good for business; Trump is good for ratings. Trump is good for ratings because he is shameless and thus quite entertaining to the angry and aggrieved at life. Trump says the bitter, bigoted things that many people think but cannot say aloud because, you know, civility and all that. But the bubbling, oozing, festering Id of the far-right personality is entertaining, ina dark, forbidden way. Trump is, obviously, more Thersites than Jesus, but who says crime doesn’t pay?
We are rapidly becoming a society more fascinated than appalled by criminality. Not just “True Crime” podcasts, either. Downtown Manhattan is today the “scene.” And the media is an active participant in this populist spectacle. From Charlotte Klein at Vanity Fair:
For the reporters who cover the criminal courts, and are accustomed to high-profile proceedings—such as Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape trial or the 2011 sexual assault case against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, which was later dismissed—the circus surrounding Trump is reaching a whole other level. “I think this is going to dwarf those cases,” said Laura Italiano, who worked at all three New York City tabloids before landing at Insider, where she’s been focusing on Trump’s legal exposure in New York state court. “I’ve been at this for 30 years, and it’s the biggest case in my career.”
There is also the timing of it all — in the mid-morning of ‘24, where his opponents, like DeSantis, are trying, under increasingly difficult conditions, to raise money to secure the nomination (boo hoo). The aspiring Republican nominees are finding that the oxygen — their campaign dollar — is being depleted by the dumpster fire that is the media’s Trump obsession. “Critics warn that breathless coverage could play into Trump's press strategy,” notes Sara Fischer. “Trump has been leveraging the made-for-TV moment to secure fundraising and rally supporters.”
Trump, who claims to be the physical embodiment of white (male) aggrievance and retribution, is in the process of realizing full martyrization during the holiest week in the Christian calendar year. I am curious what jellicle-evangelical Mike Pence thinks of that? Does Pence, for fear of losing the Trump base, concede the martyrization narrative to his former boss?
I cannot fail to note that the arraignment, amidst a full-blown media s*itshow, is taking place in New York City, the media capital of the world. In this “Passion Play,” the part of Pontius Pilate will be played by — who else? — Alvin Bragg. Barabbas, of course, by Hunter Biden, just because. The media will be bearing cameras, not palms. In attendance will be Marjorie Taylor Greene, fresh from her controversial 60 Minutes appearance, as well as George Santos, fresh from not appearing in the district he presently represents.
Trump came not to rescue the lost and the weary and the brokenhearted. Let’s be clear here: Trump came to the city of New York aboard his private plane to face charges stemming from a probe into hush money paid to a sex worker that was essentially an illegal campaign contribution. And he is now using this arraignment, on campaign fraud, to raise — wait for it — more campaign money. And his people are out and out bragging about it.
Charmed, I’m sure.
“When disaster struck and the ship was forced to unexpectedly overwinter for months in Antarctic darkness, Cook ensured that each crew member was adequately taken care of, often leaving the ship to personally hunt for meat to keep the crew’s scurvy at bay. His heroism put him on the radar, as it were, among explorers and adventurers alike, and he used his newfound fame — and respect — to gain support for his own expeditions.” (Avenue)
“In his new book, Nights of Plague, (Orhan) Pamuk invents an entire island and combines these two scenarios: a weeks-long quarantine followed by a political uprising against the Ottoman Sultan, where revolutionaries fire their pistols in the name of freedom and sovereignty.” (Kaya Genç
/TNR)
How Kenya's startups go pan-African (Yinka Adegoke/ SEMAFOR)
“The U.S. is 33rd out of the 37 richest nations in terms of what we spend on child care, and millions of parents—mostly mamas—are kept out of the workforce because they can’t find safe, affordable child care. The pandemic drove this crisis into the open, fueling a national outcry over the sorry state of care for our youngest children.” (Elizabeth Warren/TAP)
"Fusing influences stretching from Korean indie rock and electronica to leftfield bass and techno, the New York-via-Seoul creative’s intricate 13-track record arrives seven years after breakthrough single ‘Raingurl’ elevated her to underground cult status, and shares a similar ethos with 2020 mixtape ‘WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던’, which NME described as a 'dazzling, genre-blurring tribute to communal spirit'" (NME)
“How did anyone at ‘60 Minutes’ think this was the correct approach to airing a piece on Marjorie Taylor Greene?” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)