Getty Fourth Estate How Trump Hypnotizes the Media Clearly he's put a spell on the press. The first step in breaking it? Figuring out how his tricks work.

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

Every politician games the news media, but few play better ball control than Donald Trump. Because he’s shameless and because he’s brilliant, Trump has run the court with journalists this campaign season. Even this late in the cycle, reporters seem unaware of how he continues to get the better of them.

There’s no better place to start than Trump’s demonstration Tuesday night. He had just fanny-whacked the Republican field in Michigan and Mississippi and called a post-victory “press conference” that went on for 40-plus minutes. There has never been a moment in American politics like it. The press conference—likened to an infomercial for the way Trump hawked Trump wine, Trump water, Trump magazine, Trump Angus steaks, and other Trump-branded goods and services—accomplished several publicity goals for the candidate. By taking to the air first and performing in such a clownish, rambling fashion, Trump dared the top three cable networks to break away from his entertaining buffoonery to cover the Hillary Clinton victory speech in real time. He won that dare. Clinton was relegated to tape delay.


Trump has put a spell on the press. He hasn’t rendered them powerless, of course. Exposés of his business affairs abound, and the commentariat keeps ripping into him like a bandsaw, but the punches don’t seem to land. Likewise, TV news’ top interlocutors—NBC’s Chuck Todd, CNN’s Jake Tapper, and CBS’ John Dickerson—have pounded him, but they might as well be punching the Pillsbury Doughboy for all the damage they’ve done. Cable news has been hypnotized into believing that any willingness by Trump to appear—on camera or remote via telephone—amounts to news. And don’t get me started on the producers who have decided that any Trump “speech” deserves airplay. The only explanation for Trump’s allure has to be witchcraft.

The news media must break the spell. But before it can, it must understand his magic. At the core of his game is distraction: He shows the media and the public something shiny, sparkly, and outrageous, and they race after it. While they’re running, he returns to his laboratory to conjure something else equally shiny and outrageous for them to chase. It’s like watching a dog trainer leading a pack of feral hounds into performing a ballet.

Last night’s buffoonery fit the pattern Trump has been weaving all campaign long: Do something provocative for maximum coverage. Wait a day or two or three, to allow the provocation to fester in the press corps’ collective mind. Then, lance the provocation with yet another provocation. In the case of last night’s infomercial, Trump’s design wasn’t just to declare victory: It was to counter the speech Mitt Romney gave last week in which he attacked many of the mogul’s branded businesses as defunct. Romney’s point was Trump’s poor business acumen, and that acumen serves as a preview for what would be a failed Trump presidency.

But Trump got the last laugh: By going on TV last night, waving a copy of Trump magazine, a bottle of Trump water, and exhibiting a platter of Trump steaks, he presented visual refutation of the Romney speech. Or did he? Romney never said anything about Trump water in his speech, according to the transcript. When Romney said Trump Airlines, Trump Mortgage, and Trump University had vanished, he was telling the truth. As for the steaks Trump put on display last night? They were fake—they still had Bush Brothers labels on them. Like a common three-card Monte dealer, Trump had distracted the audience—and the media—and fleeced them.

What should we expect to happen if—in a few days—a fact-checker contests the accuracy of Trump’s infomercial and shows that Romney is mostly right? The usual Trump flimflammery. He’ll toss out another mixed plate of provocations and half-truths to sow additional confusion. If all goes according to Trump’s plan, the new provocations will incubate for a couple of days before hatched into yet another cycle. The Trump campaign might feel like an improvised, seat-of-his-pants affair, but when it comes to raw politico vs. pressman gamesmanship, and commanding the spotlight, he’s a chess player with the gift of being able to see three moves ahead of his opponent.

Sometimes Trump’s manipulations look like ordinary flip-flopping. He says something and then takes it back. But it happens so frequently that it must be calculated. Flip-flopping allows him to reap publicity on both ends of the news cycle—first when he says something outrageous, and then when he tempers or withdraws it days or a few weeks later. He pulled this stunt last month by waltzing around the David Duke issue. First he disavowed the white supremacist. Then he feigned ignorance about Duke when asked about him three times CNN’s Jake Tapper. Then he blamed that evasion on a “bad earpiece.” Then he finally disavowed the white supremacist loudly. At every step of the way, Trump was the top topic in the news. By the time the cycle ended, probably Trump didn’t mind if some people came away from the spectacle thinking he leaned toward the racists. A lot more people came away thinking about Donald Trump. He’s sucked up a large share of the total media attention—and likely attracted a considerable number of racist voters—without really having to own that position.

In September, Trump called for the United States to accept Syrian migrants. The next month, he fully reversed himself. In December, he called for targeting the families of terrorists before saying we shouldn’t. He was for torture before he was against it. First he opposed H-1B visas. Then he expressed his affection for them. He was pro-choice then became anti-abortion. For the Iraq War, then against it. He’s been all over the map on gun control, government health care, the budget, taxes and more. Such a Gumby-like approach to policy would damage a conventional candidate, but Trump isn’t a conventional candidate. As we’ve seen, when confronted with his inconsistencies, he sloughs off the criticisms by changing the subject or instigating some new outrage.

Trump hasn’t media-proofed himself, but he has made himself impervious to the sort of criticism that usually slays lesser politicians. To lean on the reality TV trope, he’s been given a lightly scripted show and fleshed out the role of a lifetime for himself, occupying a place that is part docudrama, part biopic, and all fantasy.

Perhaps it’s too much to expect the news media to handle a chimera like Trump—especially cable news, which might like to cut away when he appears before their lens but loves the ratings too dearly. As for the hundreds of working reporters who have been covering him for the past eight months, my modest advice is to maintain your patience. Journalism is long, politics is short. Reporters, by virtue of their tenacity and the permanence of the paper trail, get the final say in recording a politician’s indiscretions and embarrassments. But inside the moment, politicians control the ball, determining the day’s winners and losers.

Your job is neither to stop Trump nor advance him. But we can all do a better job at resisting the shiny and sparkly media events he creates. The next time he launches one of his serial provocations, we should call him on it rather than chasing our tails. Stop letting Trump manipulate us. Compel him to articulate his policy positions. Keep digging into his past. And continue to expose his flip-flops. In the short run, Trump, like most front-runners, will command the advantage. But over the long haul, it’s still in the power of the news media to convey what a deceitful and nihilistic game Trump is playing.

******

Send Trump products via email to [email protected]. My email alerts eat Trump steaks. My Twitter feed bathes in Trump water, and my RSS feed subscribes to Trump magazine.