The propaganda machine
By Eugene Robinson
Columnist
May 27 at 4:14 PM
... this will be a summer of nonstop, shameless propaganda from Trump and his minions. It will be clumsy, ridiculous and pathetic — but don’t ignore it. Call it out. Laugh at it. Recognize it for what it is: a sign not of strength but of fear ...
Last week ... Trump was announcing $16 billion in effective welfare payments to farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by his ill-advised trade war with China. As usual, the president went off-script. The assembled farmers must’ve been puzzled as he went into a diatribe about media reports saying he had been irate the day before, when he had stalked out of a meeting with congressional leaders that was supposed to be about infrastructure.
He had been perfectly calm, Trump claimed. Then, one by one, he called on aides to attest that he had indeed been serene and unruffled — counselor Kellyanne Conway, communications aide Mercedes Schlapp, economic adviser Larry Kudlow, press secretary Sarah Sanders. Oh yes, Mr. President, you were sooooo calm and collected they told him. I was afraid one of them might call him “Dear Leader.” Even deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley, who hadn’t even attended the meeting in question, .. dutifully offered his measure of fawning praise ...
It’s just noise. Fight it with truth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tune-out-president-trumps-propaganda-machine/2019/05/27/8979b80e-7e63-11e9-a5b3-34f3edf1351e_story.html?utm_term=.514adc15523a